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Annals of the Smithsonian Institution 1997 . NOV 15 2000 LIBRARIES i Smithsonian Institution Smithsonian Institution Archives National Collections Program Washington, D.C. For additional copies oft his publication, contact the National Collections Program, Smithsonian Institution Archives, 900 Jefferson Drive, SW, Room 3101, Smithsonian Institution, Washington, DC 20560-0404; (202) 357-3125; [email protected] Annals of the Smithsonian Institution 1997 Contents Smithsonian Institution 4 Award Activity at the Smithsonian Institution in Fiscal Year 1997 148 Statement by the Secretary 6 Publications of the Smithsonian Institution Press Report of the Under Secretary 9 in Fiscal Year1997 ~—'158 Report of the Provost = 14 Publications of the Staff of the Smithsonian Report of the Board of Regents 16 Institution and Its Subsidiaries in Fiscal Year 1997 160 Chronology 18 The Smithsonian Institution and Its Subsidiaries, Reports of the Bureaus and Offices of the September 30, 1997 238 Smithsonian Institution for Fiscal Year 1997 44 Donors to the Smithsonian Institution in Fiscal Year 1997 258 Members of the Smithsonian Councils, Boards, and Commissions, September 30,1997 96 Contributing Members of the Smithsonian Institution in Fiscal Year 1997 278 Visits to the Smithsonian Institution Museums and Galleries in Fiscal Year1997 104 Financial Report 296 Academic, Research Training, and Internship Appointments and Research Associates in Fiscal Year 1997 105 Notes: The arrangement of bureau and office listings within is not alphabetical but rather follows as closely as possible the organization of the Smithsonian Institution as shown on page 4. The contents of Annals were produced from electronic files provided by the bureaus and offices. Environmental Management and Safety Physical Plant Protection Services Senior Information Officer Imaging, Printing, and Photographic Services Information Technology Smithsonian Business Management Directorate Smithsonian Magazine Institution Smithsonian Associates Smithsonian Businesses —Rerail —Concessions —Product Development and Licensing —Smithsonian Press/Productions Provost Establishment, Board of Regents, Executive Committee, Museums and Research Institutes and the Secretary Anacostia Museum and Center for African American History and Culture Office of the Secretary Archives of American Art Office of the Under Secretary Arthur M. Sackler Gallery/Freer Gallery of Art Office of the Provost Center for Folklife Programs and Cultural Studies Office of Inspector General Conservation Analytical Laboratory Office of Planning, Management, and Budget Cooper-Hewitt, National Design Museum Office of General Counsel Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden Office of Government Relations National Air and Space Museum Office of Communications National Museum of African Art National Museum of American Art —Renwick Gallery Secretary National Museum of American History National Museum of the American Indian Inspector General National Museum of Natural History Secretariat —Museum Support Center Planning, Management, and Budget National Portrait Gallery Membership and Development National Postal Museum National Zoological Park Under Secretary Smithsonian Astrophysical Observatory Smithsonian Environmental Research Center Smithsonian Tropical Research Institute Operations Directorate Education, Museum, and Scholarly Services Chief Financial Officer Comptroller Center for Museum Studies Contracting and Property Management Exhibits Central Risk and Asset Management Fellowship and Grants Senior Executive Officer International Relations Equal Employment and Minority Affairs National Science Resources Center Human Resources Smithsonian Institution Archives Ombudsman Smithsonian Institution Libraries Senior Facilities Officer Smithsonian Institution Traveling Exhibition Service 4 Smithsonian Office of Education Affiliated Organizations Sponsored Projects John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts Other Support Services National Gallery of Art Accessibility Program Reading Is Fundamental, Inc. Institutional Studies Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars Scientific Diving Program Statement by the Secretary I. Michael Heyman Before I took up my responsibilities as Secretary of the we have something to offer schools that are special to our own Smithsonian Institution in September 1994, I had enjoyed 35 learning environment. years as a member of an academic community: the University Traditionally, education has relied heavily on texts and of California at Berkeley, with 10 as chancellor. One of the lectures, questions and discussions. Words are at the core of questions J am regularly asked is whether I miss the world of the experience. Object-based education focuses the learning students and the opportunity to shape their education. experience more on artifacts and primary documents ina The answer is yes, I do. I miss the company of undergraduates manner that taps children's diverse learning styles while and graduates. For someone of my generation, teaching the stimulating interest and providing a deeper understanding of young is a way to touch the future. But I am quick to add the subject. As one teacher put it, “Even young children can that I have not left the world of education; I have simply often be helped to understand quite complex concepts when exchanged one kind ofe ducational institution for another. they can discover them concretely manifested in objects.” James Smithson’s mandate to dedicate the Smithsonian to One Smithsonian project for a schoolchild based on this “the increase and diffusion of knowledge” well over 150 years approach is “Of Kayaks and Ulus,” which was created largely ago keeps this great complex of museums and research by the National Museum of Natural History for grades 7 institutes focused on goals that are at the heart of education. through Io. The project, originally presented in a kit but soon There are differences, of course. Much of the education that available on the Internet, involves Bering Sea Eskimos and happens within the Smithsonian universe can be described as emphasizes the journals and collections of af amous informal rather than formal. We are not a degree-granting nineteenth-century Smithsonian naturalist, Edward Nelson. institution, nor do we shepherd the young through the stages The kit contains a teachers’ guide, which suggests, for of classroom experience from elementary through high school. instance, that students view “mystery” slides of objects from We present to the public, both school age and adult, a wealth the Eskimo culture, then ponder how these objects were made of programs that represent and reinforce the excitement of and used. Further discussion usually elicits hypotheses about learning about the human and the natural worlds. We have no the environment in which the people who made these items alumni because there is no fixed starting or ending point to lived, the natural resources they depended upon, their ability what we offer. In recent years, however, the Smithsonian has as craftspeople, and similar topics. After this process, the taken more and more interest in making its resources directly students learn thar all the objects, and many others, are ina available to America’s schools. In the last decades oft his collection at the Smithsonian amassed by Nelson. Then they century, our nation has come to recognize a need to find new are introduced to reproductions of Nelson’s letters, journals, ways to support the education of our children and to help photographs, drawings, and field notes. prepare them for a rapidly changing world. The Smithsonian There are many other examples of similar projects has developed educational materials and programs based on developed by the Smithsonian. One is a popular science actual objects and other primary resources that, in effect, take curriculum featuring hands-on experiments for students in our museums and research institutes to the classroom. We feel grades I through 6. Created by the National Science Resources 6 Center (a joint initiative of the Smithsonian and the National variety of skills and subjects. If these techniques are to be Academy of Sciences), the curriculum enables children to widely used in schools and museums, considerable resources learn by doing experiments, as well as by reading texts and must be invested in the preparation and distribution of listening to teachers. As one of the world’s premier research materials and, most important, in teacher training. Teachers institutions, we are ideally suited to help students better who are confident they can use these new techniques find understand science by teaching them not only what we know object-based education an exciting way to enhance learning. but also how we know it. The program, called Science and The Smithsonian has been involved in a number of Technology for Children, is used in more than 20 percent of activities to inform teachers and to offer relevant training, the nation’s school! districts, and similar curricula are now especially in the Washington metropolitan area. Summer being fashioned for grades 7 and 8. seminars for teachers, conducted largely within Smithsonian One of the pleasures of my position as Secretary is the museums and research institutes, focus on how to use opportunity to visit schools and see some of these programs in museum collections in the teaching process. Similarly, action. I can also keep in touch with students, though they Smithsonian staff have worked with the National Faculty, a are somewhat younger than the Berkeley undergraduates I nonprofit educational organization, in extensive teacher once knew. Last year, I observed classes using the NSRC training programs around the country that involve curators science curriculum while I was visiting Anchorage, Alaska. It from the Institution and local museums, as well as was a delight to see fifth- and sixth-graders not only reading distinguished university professors. about science but actually handling objects that had scientific The Smithsonian also brings thousands of Washington-area importance. This is a wonderful way to teach the scientific teachers together at an annual Teachers’ Night to see displays method. The pupils hypothesized about the outcome, did the and discuss materials and programs for local schools. As a way steps, and saw the results. They learned as much when they to reach more educators, we have begun to use the Internet to were wrong as when they were right. share curriculum ideas and lesson plans. By the year 2003, an Another time, I was surrounded by a kinetic first-grade Education Resource Center in the Arts and Industries group visiting the Hands On History Room at the National Building will allow teachers to try out a variety of curriculum Museum of American History. The objects here were not kits and other materials on site. A virtual version will also be scientific but historical, evoking the early nineteenth century, available on the Smithsonian Education World Wide Web and they were all piled into a big box. I was one of the adults site (http://educate.si.edu/). telling that excited group stories about the objects and In these ways the Smithsonian can collaborate with all clothing. The excitement mounted when the children were schools interested in our approach to object-based and invited to try on the clothing; one great big red cape was research-linked education. But two schools in the District of particularly popular. I know something important was Columbia are taking the Smithsonian connection one step happening there: the stimulation of curiosity and the further. In the fall of 1996, Robert Brent Elementary School glimmerings of aw orld beyond their own experience. It was and Stuart-Hobson Middle School became Museum Magnet one of the best times I have had at the Smithsonian. Schools through a partnership forged between the District of As I have come to know the range of educational activities Columbia Public Schools and the Smithsonian Institution conceived by my colleagues in the museums, the research under a grant from the U.S. Department of Education. The institutes, and in our central Smithsonian Office of Education, I Smithsonian Office of Education describes this partnership as continue to be impressed by the inventiveness of their strategies. “a groundbreaking program for elementary and middle school ‘The National Portrait Gallery, for example, takes to classrooms students allowing them to pursue real questions, becoming “The Trial of John Brown,” in which costumed gallery staff play both teacher and student, observer and curator.” the roles of judge, attorneys, and witnesses in a mock trial of the Using an interdisciplinary and thematic approach, students nineteenth-century abolitionist while students serve as jury. The in these schools collect, study, and interpret objects to learn National Postal Museum has put together an activity book in science, art, geography, history, and potentially a multitude of which students create their own postage stamps and another other subjects. What strikes me as particularly remarkable book thar is a guide to building letter-writing relationships about this program is its core insight that students may learn across generations. best when they have the opportunity to present their learning Other materials among the 455 items listed in the latest to new audiences. In February 1997, the Washington Post Smithsonian Resource Guide for Teachers include such reported on a tour that Erica Webster, 14, of Stuart-Hobson imaginatively titled booklets as Birds over Troubled Forests, Middle School gave “a wide-eyed group of kindergartners” of from the Smithsonian Migratory Bird Center of the National a Native American history exhibition she and her Zoo, and the Smithsonian Office of Education’s Image and eighth-grade classmates had developed. Erica’s sure command Identity: Clothing and Adolescence in the 19905, which explores of the material came across as she sat with the younger the clues that clothing provides to understanding culture. students in a 12-foot-tall tepee made of bed linens. Studies indicate that skillfully done object-based education is Erica’s principal, Yvonne Lewis, described the total a successful means of engaging young people and teaching a immersion of her eighth-graders in Native American culture. “Their lives became these people’s lives. Across the board, in A recent analysis of five years of test data shows that all their classes, whatever they were working on was tied to children participating in the SEEC program exceeded expected Native Americans.” Examples she gave were the use of achievement in all areas. Two-thirds of SEEC preschoolers score geometry to design tepees and igloos; the use of food and in the 99th percentile in nationally normed science tests upon culture as the basis of essays and poetry; and science teaching completion of the program. The application of the SEEC focused on Native American agricultural strategies. curriculum, known as Museum Magic, outside the Smithsonian This is modern learning at its best—active and was tested in the fall of 1997 in Cleveland through an imaginative. These students are engaged in their learning and, arrangement with University Circle, Inc., in collaboration with as a result, are invested in it. They make observations, see five preschools and seven cultural institutions. connections, and find meaning for themselves. Like the No report on the Smithsonian’s new strategies for the curators they resemble, they conduct research and then choose “diffusion of knowledge” would be complete without an ways to communicate their discoveries to others. It is an electronic dimension. There are those who see electronic outreach encouraging start to an experiment we are watching closely to as a threat to direct people-to-people interaction. I am not one of determine long-term educational benefits. them. At the Smithsonian, we see successful electronic The Museum Magnet Schools project is one of an umber communication as built on human connections. The more we presided over by the Smithsonian's Office of Education, led by share our resources electronically, the more we can be of service to its energetic director Ann Bay. It reflects not only the our many publics and to the educational goals we all share. Institution's commitment to object-based and One of my first priorities as Secretary was the creation in interdisciplinary education but also our commitment to 1995 of aW orld Wide Web site, which has given many partnerships as the foundation of all our educational efforts. Americans easy access to a range of our collections and fields Whether working in Washington or elsewhere around the of expertise. More recently, my colleagues have created nation, Bay’s office emphasizes community-based outreach. experimental electronic programs that will invite the richest The Smithsonian goes to communities that invite us to work possible interaction between Smithsonian resources and the with them, building bridges between local museums and needs of our nation’s classrooms. Among the most remarkable schools. This was the theme of one of our most valuable Isoth of these is the Natural Partners Initiative, led by the National anniversary projects, a national teleconference jointly Museum of Natural History in close partnership with the sponsored with the Institute of Museum and Library Services, National Zoological Park and the Smithsonian Environmental which presented models of successful museum-school Research Center and, outside the Smithsonian, the National partnerships. Our magnet school program is new, but another Aeronautics and Space Administration’s Stennis Space Center, formal attempt to test the value of museum-based education Mississippi State University, the Council for Great City dates to 1988 and the establishment of our own Smithsonian Schools, and many other partners now and to come. This Early Enrichment Center (SEEC). The founding board initiative has already begun to benefit classrooms as far from envisioned this program as a national model, establishing the Smithsonian's home base in Washington as Alabama, museums as learning centers for preschool children. I'll let the California, Florida, Iowa, Mississippi, North Carolina, center's director, Sharon Shaffer, describe a typical day: Tennessee, and Wyoming. This creative new program has been designed to enliven the way science is taught. It will Children are fascinated by things that go, such as bikes, electronically link scientific and educational insticutions, cars, trucks, and planes. A group of three-year-olds may technical experts, teachers, and firsthand experiences in a local listen to the story “Curious George Rides a Bike.” A classroom setting. The program uses state-of-the-art museum visit sets the stage for expanding their technologies to enable live two-way videoconferencing understanding of bicycles as the children search fora between Smithsonian content experts and students and bike that is just like George's. As the hunt develops, the teachers wherever they are situated, as well as virtual cours of children view a unicycle, a tandem bike, and an antique exhibits, links to remote Smithsonian research sites, and bicycle. They discuss the size and number of wheels on teacher training and enhancement conferences, among a each bike and, as they observe wooden wheels and rubber wealth of strategies. In the words of its founders, the Natural tires, consider why some wheels look different from Partners Initiative will “allow educators to become immersed others. They want to know about spokes and chains and in content that was previously very difficult to access. It will gears and handlebars." The experience continues back in further support those teachers in using inquiry-based the classroom as children listen to the old-time song, “A learning. Natural Partners would like to see every classroom Bicycle Built for Two,” pretend to pedal around the become a museum.” room, and create collages of bicycles. So would we all.