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Museum Exhibit

Free Busing for Field Trips!

Jack Harkins Thanks to the John R. and Constance M. Harkins Fund of the Mt. Pleasant Community Foundation, we are once again able to pay for K-12 school groups? busing costs when visiting the museum on a field trip. Schools are welcome to make trip reservations. Mount Pleasant and CMU have many other great places to visit if you travel from out of town and want to have a fun-filled day! Field trip reservations are currently being made for the 2018-2019 academic year. Visit www.museum.cmich.edu

Summer Intern: JoAnna Lincoln

Joanna Lincoln JoAnna Lincoln spent her summer interning at CMU's Clarke Historical Library. She learned to process and encode archival material. She has worked with the papers of Michigan Supreme Court Justice Weaver, an extensive Great Lakes research collection, and a local family and business collection. For more about the Clarke and its collections, visit www.cmich.edu/library/clarke/Pages/default.aspx.




Summer Intern: Jonathan Strom

Jonathan Strom This summer Museum Studies student Jonathan Strom interned at the Sparta Township Historical Commission. He worked with 16mm films that document Sparta High School football games during the 1960s and 1970s. Here he is seen working with a film of a 1960s Sparta win over Howell. For more about the Commission, visit www.spartahistory.org/.




Conservation Workshop Held in Bay City

ATFHM Museum Studies Program faculty and students spent last year conducting research in support of a new vision for the Antique Toy and Fire House Museum (ATFHM) in Bay City, Michigan. In July MST faculty member Ron Bloomfield led a conservation workshop that involved students in the Cultural Resource Management, Public History, and Museum Studies Programs, as well as volunteers from ATFHM, in learning museum best practices. To learn more about ATFHM, visit: toyandfiretruckmuseum.org.


Bugs!

Bugs! On July 12, Museum staff participated in Downtown Mount Pleasant's Thrilling Thursday event series! The Team had a great time showing parts of the Museum's insect collection to the public and helping families have fun while learning.


Where Are They Now?: Ken Carstens (1971)

Carstens Dr. Ken Carstens grew up in Pinconning, Michigan. He initially attended CMU on a baseball (pitching) scholarship, but he also had a close association with anthropology and archaeology faculty and graduate students at UofM (Jimmy Griffin/James E. Fitting) and MSU (Charles Cleland). In 1969, CMU offered only one introduction to cultural anthropology and one introduction to physical anthropology (biological) course. Not to be deterred, Ken sought the assistance of CMU President William Boyd, and Dr. Boyd eventually hired Karen Chavez (ABD, Penn).

At the same time, Carstens worked with the first director of the Center for Cultural and Natural History (CCNH), Dr. Hal Mahan, as he built the museum and held the first archaeological field school at the Lalone site in Arenac County in 1969. Carstens was the first CMU undergraduate student to present a paper at the Michigan Academy of Sciences and subsequently, as an undergraduate, published the paper in The Michigan Archaeologist. The museum held a second archaeological field school at the Tobico Site (20By31) in Bay County, and Carstens also published that report as an undergraduate.

Ken went on to complete his MA and PhD through the tutelage of Professor Patty Jo Watson at Washington University-St. Louis, working along Kentucky's famed Green River, among its prehistoric shell mounds, and throughout the world?s longest cave system and uniquely preserved organic cave materials. Ken helped co-develop the first flotation recovery machine for archaeological research with Dr. Watson, and published results of their work in the book Of Caves and Shell Mounds (UA Press/Tuscaloosa, 1996).

Ken took his first academic position at Northern Kentucky University, and subsequently took the directorship of the anthropology and archaeology programs at Murray State University in 1976 and 1978, respectively. He retired from Murray State University in 2007 with Professor emeritus status, but retirement was not in Ken?s blood; he took a per course faculty position at Missouri State University in Springfield, Missouri, in 2016, and between 2007 and 2016, continued to teach web-based anthropology and world history courses for Murray State University.

To date, Ken has instructed more than 18,000 students, several of whom were selected as Lambda Alpha ?top anthropology student in the nation.? Ken has published nine books (with five more in various stages of publication); conducted, edited, or supervised more than 500 contract Section 106 reports; generated more than $1,000,000 in grants, contracts and properties for Murray State; and presented more than 200 peer-reviewed technical papers with more than 100 peer-reviewed published professional papers, book chapters, encyclopedic entries, and book reviews.

Ken considers his time at CMU as the most significant in his life, and the opportunities and friendships created during that time influence every success he has had throughout his career and life. He recently said, ?I?m very proud to have been part of the origin of CMU?s campus Museum!?

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