Outreach

Outreach and engagement on behalf of the AUMNH will aim to fulfill two important roles through public interaction: 1) disseminate, to the citizens of Alabama, information on natural history and attendant human impacts to the region’s biodiversity; and 2) profile ongoing organismal and collections-based research of AUMNH and DBS faculty, staff, and students, emphasizing their contributions in documenting and understanding Alabama and global biodiversity. Outreach and engagement efforts will promote public awareness on these two fronts using educational materials, public events, and exhibits, and services geared toward a wide range of audiences and ages. Through such outreach platforms, the AUMNH will aim to acquaint our citizenry with their rich biodiversity, in an effort to instill appreciation and a sense of stewardship through heightened environmental awareness. Outreach efforts of the AUMNH will provide educational information on regional biota, habitats, ecology, and, more importantly, underscore scientific approaches used to study biodiversity, whether locally or worldwide. In addition to serving an important outreach goal, these objectives will greatly enhance the broader-impacts requirements of many granting agencies. Finally, while outreach and engagement are not tied directly to the collections and research goals of the AUMNH, such activities serve as a conduit for communicating the importance of collections and biodiversity related research, and thus, are integral to increasing funding for the collections and research from a diversity of sources.