Claremont school’s paleontology museum opens student discoveries to the world amid pandemic

Nestled successful the foothills distant from the city, the Webb Schools, a backstage boarding schoolhouse successful Claremont, had been closed to students, unit and the nationalist similar galore institutions implicit the past year. But for the lone precocious schoolhouse with a nationally accredited depository of paleontology connected its campus, it recovered ways to support teaching.

The Webb Schools Raymond M. Alf Museum of Paleontology paused each in-person visits erstwhile the coronavirus pandemic began successful March 2020, forcing the 53-year-old depository to modulation to online. For years, museums person been seeking to alteration their missions for the integer property but the pandemic enactment that effort beforehand and center.

The alteration brought much eyes to the Alf museum’s exhibits, with a programme of virtual tours that reached astir 10,000 students astatine schools crossed the globe, Webb officials said.

“It truly opened up the learning opportunities for those that whitethorn person ne'er heard of our depository earlier but present are capable to acquisition this,” said William Diepenbrock, manager of Marketing and Strategic Communications. “It went beyond the Inland Empire and into the world.”

The Alf museum, which reopened its doors successful June, partnered with different subject organizations to make online acquisition programs utilizing the facility’s much than 195,000 specimens, 95% of which were discovered by Webb students, teachers and alumni.

Each summer, students caput retired to bash paleontology tract enactment successful places similar confederate Wyoming and the Mojave Desert. Over the years, galore person brought backmost hundreds of fossils, including a implicit skeleton of the duck-billed dinosaur, the parasaurolophus, which students yet nicknamed “Joe.”

Most precocious successful 2019, students uncovered a 67 million-year-old turtle successful Wyoming that could not beryllium brought to Claremont until this twelvemonth owed to the pandemic. Today, the fossil is being examined by students and volition hopefully pb to much discoveries astir the surrounding areas, said depository manager Andrew Farke.

“Scientifically, it’s a beauteous important specimen, it’s going to archer america a batch astir what was surviving determination astatine that time,” Farke said. “This is the aforesaid property arsenic similar a triceratops and T-Rex, and it was students that uncovered it all.”

Every Webb Schools freshman takes a two-month paleontology course, utilizing the Alf Museum’s resources, thing fewer precocious schools tin offer, according to Diepenbrock. That acquisition — whether an idiosyncratic volition prosecute a vocation successful paleontology oregon not — teaches students not conscionable astir uncovering fossils but besides knowing the technological process.

“Students spell connected these trips and they find retired that ‘Oh, possibly I don’t privation to beryllium a paleontologist and I whitethorn not privation to beryllium a idiosyncratic but I find that there’s learning aspects of being out, camping, looking for worldly during the time with my friends,” Farke said. “That’s a truly rewarding acquisition for them successful its ain right.”

Diepenbrock said the depository astatine the Webb School of California, which houses a schoolhouse for boys, and Vivian Webb School, the counterpart for girls, is conscionable 1 facet of the institution. The field spans 150 acres successful the Claremont hills, and includes a chapel built successful 1944, an observatory, a theatre and an creation studio.

Similar to a assemblage experience, students astatine the Webb Schools are connected a artifact docket and instrumentality 3 classes connected immoderate fixed day.

Currently, the Webb Schools person a combined enrollment of astir 400 students hailing from crossed California, 9 different U.S. states and 13 countries. Tuition for students who committee is $70,000 and successful the mid-$50,000 scope for those who be arsenic time students, according to the institution.

Nearly 80% of full-time module members unrecorded connected campus. Having this adjacent proximity among students and unit has resulted successful an immersive acquisition wherever schoolroom sizes mean 15 students, Diepenbrock said.

As the schoolhouse marks its centennial adjacent year, determination person been immoderate notable changes implicit the years but hands-on learning, Diepenbrock said, has been the constant.

“Students are ever progressive successful hands-on experiential learning, immoderate connected field and immoderate off,” Diepenbrock said. “This has go benignant of a signature of the school, whether you’re learning the arts, focused connected business, humanities, immoderate it mightiness be, you’re going to person your hands heavy into immoderate it is astatine Webb.”