Wachiska Speaker Series and General Meeting
Thursday, November 12, 7:00 PM
Unitarian Church, 6300 A Street, Lincoln, NE.

Live Stream: https://youtube.com/live/m5j0L6koldQ?feature=share

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THE EDUCATION OF WONDER WHEN ARCHIE WALKED

THE HISTORY OF NEBRASKA’S ANCIENT ELEPHANTS​

Presented by Jason Nord

University of Nebraska State Museum Education Supervisor  

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For Jason Nord, education begins with a particular kind of astonishment: the moment a child encounters something so immense, ancient, or so strange that the familiar world briefly falls away. At Morrill Hall, the University of Nebraska State Museum, that moment might arrive before a fourteen-foot mammoth or in the palm of a visitor holding a meteorite that predates the Earth as we know it. Nord’s work is to turn that first encounter with wonder into something more durable: curiosity, understanding, and a desire to know more.
Nord, the museum’s Education Supervisor, came to museum education after eighteen years in the
classroom. His route to Nebraska began in Rapid City, South Dakota, where he grew up between the
Black Hills and the Badlands. The landscape made a lasting impression. He still finds his happiness in backpacking and camping, preferably far from the nearest road, and in working with students whose questions can lead in unexpected directions. In 2015, Nord received the prestigious Grosvenor Teacher Fellowship from National Geographic, recognizing excellence in the teaching of science and geography. The fellowship took him on an expedition to the Arctic, where the natural world offered its own lessons in scale, fragility, and change. Five years ago, he moved into museum education. Today, he oversees Morrill Hall’s gallery programs. Working with researchers across the museum and the university, Nord helps translate scientific inquiry into experiences accessible to the public. His team reaches tens of thousands of people annually, including more than four thousand students across the United States, Canada, and Mexico through virtual programming. That work was on display during a recent Saturday Science Lab devoted to climate change. The subject was not simply a matter of rising temperatures or distant geological upheavals. It was
a way of connecting the museum’s many scientific disciplines to a question with consequences for the present and the future. “It's something that really interlaces all of the science that we look at when we're here in the museum,” Nord explained. Climate change has shaped the past, he noted, and continues to affect people, ecosystems, and the other creatures with which we share the planet. “I love seeing children overcome by excitement or awe by the things we get to share with them,” he says. Education, he believes, should be moving and fascinating. Awe, rather than grades or tests, can be a more powerful reason to learn. At Morrill Hall, Nord has made it his work to help visitors discover that the world is not merely something to pass through, but something to wonder at—and to understand, while there is still time to protect it.

 

Join us for Jason Nord’s When Archie Walked:
A History of Nebraska’s Ancient Elephants
Thursday, NOVEMBER 12th, 7:00 PM
6300 A Street, Lincoln, NE. Or live stream:
https://youtube.com/live/m5j0L6koldQ?feature=share

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