Last month, the Bean Life Science Museum opened its new exhibit, the Evolutionary Tree of Life, to the public.
“It was a fabulous feeling,” said museum director Michael Whiting.
Whiting said the exhibit takes visitors through the relationships between major groups of living creatures throughout the history of evolution.
“It took 200 yards (of paper) to show the relationships among all the major groups on the planet,” Whiting said.
But the amount of paper was just the beginning. Whiting said the exhibit is unique due to the amount of scientific information displayed and the number of undergraduate students involved in the process.
“It's been a lot of back and forth with different people on the team,” said Jerah Chino, a student on the graphics design team.
Part of that back and forth came from working on an expansive project.
“A lot of it was just communicating with everybody on like, hey, I'm designing this case. I'm thinking of doing this. What kind of specimens do you want in there so I can design around that? Or are you wanting to match the specimens to the design first?” Chino said.
And the role of communication went beyond developing the exhibit. Whiting said the goal of the exhibit and the museum is to help make scientific lingo understandable to the public while preserving the message.
“I put classes of students to sleep about beetles, right? But if you say the question, okay, in 50 words, tell me the most important thing about beetles, that really forces you to focus your thoughts and your communication skills,” Whiting said.
After 3 years of students and staff building the exhibit and Whiting’s 35 years of researching the evolutionary tree of life, Whiting hoped the public could come and feel a greater connection with the world around them.
“We need to care for all the other species, because among all those 2.3 million species, we're the only ones who have the ability to really make a difference on the rest of the planet.”