S25-08 Peabody Museum of Natural History – A Guided Exploration of Life on Earth Exemplified
Class | Registration opens 3/3/2025 9:00 AM
The course will consist of three 90-minute tours of the newly re-envisioned Peabody Museum at Yale. The course will expand the learner’s sense of the enormity of time during which life has been evolving on Planet Earth, its breathtaking diversity and how humans can conform their behavior to reflect principles of nature that are ultimately sustainable.
The First Session will focus on the beginning of life in the oceans through the age of dinosaurs and into the early realm of mammals and primates. The Second Session begins as humans emerge 300,000 years ago and became habitat- and creature-change agents. We’ll look at displays of historical scientific instruments and the discoveries by early humans. The Third Session will explore exquisite American habitat dioramas crafted by America’s finest three-dimensional scientific illustrators. We'll also study the gem and mineral collection, considered among the best in the world.
Kate Walton
Kate Johns Walton majored in Anthropology and obtained teaching certification while attending Goddard College. She obtained her Master’s Degree in Museum Education from George Washington University with field work done at the Smithsonian. As a graduate intern she was appointed Museum Teacher by the Dean of the Faculty of Arts and Sciences at Museum of Comparative Zoology and the Peabody Museum of Archeology and Ethnology at Harvard University. She later developed and managed “You and Your World” Summer Program at Peabody Museum of Natural History at Yale and worked full time as a professional docent in the School Services Division there. Kate has lived and worked extensively in Africa in the Democratic Republic of the Congo and teaching high school biology and English in Kenya while working with Richard Leakey to create school museums that helped local populations collect and preserve important natural materials from their own ancestral environments.