F26-30 Nature: Evolution and Regeneration
Class | Unavailable
The course will explore nature’s magic, regenerating life at the molecular level of a single cell and making entire ecosystems resilient. Charles Darwin noticed that life excels at adapting itself to stable, predictable environmental patterns. But what happens when “Punctuated Equilibrium” occurs, as illuminated by Stephen J. Gould? Peabody Museum’s Burke Hall of Dinosaurs is the backdrop for museum teacher Kate Walton’s overview of what nature already “invented.” When disruption occurs, humans are only beginning to understand…regeneration. How do those cute amphibians called Axolotls that live in the two lakes in Mexico regenerate entire limbs? Nature holds keys. Paleo artist Rudolf F. Zallinger’s mural (1947) depicting life from about 400 million years ago to 65 million years ago gives the student a framework for thinking in vast biological terms and times.
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.