University of Michigan regents to consider $18M Museum of Zoology project
William Fink, professor and curator director of the Museum of Zoology, opens one of the jars containing a rattlesnake preserved in ethyl alcohol in the herpetology wet collection of the zoology department at the Alexander G. Ruthvens Museums Building in this 2008 photo.
File photo
What does it take to move millions of glass containers containing records of life on earth?
Design plans on the table at Thursday's University of Michigan Board of Regents meeting will shed some light on that question.
Plans for a $17.6 million project to relocate the Museum of Zoology wet collections and renovate portions of the Alexander B. Ruthven Museums building are up for approval at the regents' monthly board meeting at 3 p.m. tomorrow. The regents first approved the project in December 2008.
As for what makes up a wet collection: The U-M Museum of Zoology holds a priceless collection of 3.3 million specimens of fish, reptiles, amphibians and other animals in ethyl-alcohol-filled containers.
An internal audit, a report on a cost-saving initiative and a number of other major renovation projects are also up for approval tomorrow.
Among the agenda items are:
- An internal audit that shows Michigan football coaches did not submit monthly practice logs to compliance authors. Coach Rich Rodriguez said that's been corrected.
- A report will be given on U-M's space utilization efforts, one of the cost-cutting efforts the university is stepping up this year. The cuts and revenue areas being explored are connected to the general fund budget for U-M's Ann Arbor campus, which stands at $1.45 billion for the 2009-2010 school year. The general fund pays for teaching, administrative support and services, and is funded via tuition, state appropriation, grant awards and interest accrued on general fund balances. U-M has organized task forces this year to further explore savings, but a report on findings won't be available until April, officials said. A falling state appropriation hurts the general fund and is the main culprit for cuts, officials have said.
Other renovation projects on the agenda include:
- A $6.4 million makeover for 61,000 square feet of Wolverine Tower. The renovation will relocate MHealthy to Wolverine Tower and create more shared space and shared staff opportunities for the various U-M units in the building.Â
- A $1.5 million chiller replacement in the Chemistry Building.
- A $2.2 million renovation of biology laboratories in the Edward Henry Kraus Building.
Juliana Keeping covers higher education for AnnArbor.com. Reach her at julianakeeping@annarbor.com or 734-623-2528. Follow Juliana Keeping on Twitter
Comments
Epengar
Thu, Nov 19, 2009 : 12:23 p.m.
@Val Losse, That would be great. For what it's worth, many of the skulls and bones in the mammal collection have been photographed, and are included in the specimen photos at the Animal Diversity Web http://www.animaldiversity.org Also, the specimen data for many of the collections have been entered into computer databases, so the information that makes the specimens so valuable (when and where they were collected, by who, what species, etc) is easy to work with, and in many cases is available online, and is contributed to larger national and international datasets.
suswhit
Thu, Nov 19, 2009 : 9:10 a.m.
Ack! Why in the world would he want to open that jar!!
Val Losse
Wed, Nov 18, 2009 : 9:57 p.m.
Wouldn't be nice if the University spent some money on digitizing the collection so that many more items can be viewed by millions of people rather than a few? Even researchers would benefit from on line information. The public only see a small percentage of the collection now while digitizing would open up a new world of viewing by everyone.
Epengar
Wed, Nov 18, 2009 : 3:54 p.m.
Thanks 81wolverine! The collections being moved here are only research collections in the Museum of Zoology. The public displays will not be affected by the move. The Museum of Zoology is a research museum. It is a separate unit in the University, and not open to the public. The museum that is open to the public is the Exhibit Museum of Natural History. Here's the Exhibit Museum's website: http://www.lsa.umich.edu/exhibitmuseum There are actually four museums in the Ruthven Museums Building. The Exhibit Museum and three separate research museums: Museum of Zoology http://www.ummz.lsa.umich.edu/ Museum of Paleontology http://www.paleontology.lsa.umich.edu/ Museum of Anthropology http://www.lsa.umich.edu/umma/ When it was built, the Ruthven Building also housed the University Herbarium, but it has since been moved. http://www.lsa.umich.edu/herb/ These research museums are not widely known to the general public, but they are all world-class facilities, with literally millions of specimens, and curators all pursuing active research programs along with their teaching responsibilities.
81wolverine
Wed, Nov 18, 2009 : 2:52 p.m.
It's nice to see them spending major money on renovating the Ruthvens museum. Other than sports, it's probably one of U-M's biggest draws of out-of-town visitors - especially school children. It's my favorite campus museum. They also have a great bird specimen collection there which can be viewed by the public.