Community Engagement Associate
At IUPUI, a Community Engagement Associate is essentially a graduate assistantship position. In my position, I worked under Dr. Holly Cusack-McVeigh in the Museum Studies department as both a Teaching Assistant and as a Research Assistant. This section details the various projects I worked on as part of this position.
Indiana Medical History Museum
For the entirety of my time as a CEA, I have been part of a project at the Indiana Medical History Museum in Indianapolis, IN. Here I, along with other students, have been working on a Toxic Heritage project where we have been researching and cataloguing the chemical collection at IMHM. We have had opportunities to work with different conservators and learn what this type of conservation and collections care entails. I also gained experience here in exhibit curation and installation as well as guest services by giving one hours tours during shifts at IMHM.
Teaching Assistant
In this position, I had the opportunity to be a Teaching Assistant for Dr. Holly Cusack-McVeigh's Indigenous Cultural Heritage class in the Anthropology Department at IUI. This included assisting her in gathering class materials, making sure technology and materials were prepared for class, researching materials, and occasionally facilitating the class. I was also an assistant for her Collections Care and Management class and solely ran a lab on object labeling and assisted in facilitating a lab on box making.
(Photo above is just of general museum box making, not from personal lab.)
Other Projects
During my time as a CEA, I was fortunate to take part in a few smaller projects. The photo above is from a project at the Children's Museum in Indianapolis, IN. Here, along with a team from Purdue University, we conducted XRF (x-ray fluorescence) testing on Indigenous cultural heritage items in the TCMI collection. We were testing for any hazardous materials (arsenic, lead, etc) that were commonly used in the past as a preservative for objects. This was done before these items were set to be repatriated back to their original tribal homes.