UW Receives Funding to Revamp Rocky Mountain Herbarium and Support Botany Students

Thanks to a new federal grant and a generous private donation, the University of Wyoming’s Rocky Mountain Herbarium plans to update and expand its current facilities as well as support a graduate student in the Department of Botany.

With more than a million specimens in its collection, the Rocky Mountain Herbarium is one of the largest public university herbaria in the nation.

“But it’s in dire need of expansion,” says David Tank, a professor in the Department of Botany and director of the herbarium. “About 400,000 specimens are currently inaccessible to researchers and at risk of destruction.”

To address these issues, Tank and his team recently received a National Science Foundation (NSF) grant for more than $900,000. This funding will allow UW to expand the herbarium’s footprint, properly curate currently inaccessible specimens and continue to digitize the collection.

The three-year grant also will support a summer internship program designed to train undergraduate students in both traditional and modern approaches to collections management and collections-based research.

The Rocky Mountain Herbarium is not just for university scientists and students, Tank says. Public outreach -- through educational programs and access to physical and digitized specimens -- also is a key part of its mission.

To serve the public, it’s imperative to nurture the next generation of botanists working to conserve biodiversity, says Brent Ewers, head of the Department of Botany and director of the UW Biodiversity Institute.

A recent gift from the family of Aven Nelson, founder of the Rocky Mountain Herbarium, will help achieve that goal. The family’s gift, after being matched by the UW Foundation, added nearly $300,000 to the Aven Nelson Fellowship in Systematic Botany, an endowment supporting a graduate student in the botany program.

“The gift is the first private source to completely fund a graduate student in the botany department, and it complements our successes in federal grants,” Ewers says. “It’s a story of the lasting impact a person can have, and of generational pride and connection.”

Combined with the NSF grant, the Aven Nelson Fellowship in Systematic Botany will advance botanical research and help launch the herbarium into the 21st century.

“Often, people think of an herbarium as a thing of the past,” Ewers says. “But this new support is helping us move into the future by embracing the digital revolution.”

To learn more about the Rocky Mountain Herbarium, visit www.rockymountainherbarium.org or email Tank at dtank@uwyo.edu.

About the UW Department of Botany

The UW Department of Botany conducts innovative research, teaching and outreach on the patterns and processes of life. The department is rooted in a focus on plants and their environments, and its current work encompasses all of life, focusing on themes spanning taxonomic boundaries. The department fosters an environment of excellence and inclusion by attracting and supporting the outstanding undergraduate and graduate students, faculty and staff needed to sustain its vision. The department focuses on patterns and processes that enable predictive understanding of biodiversity at local, regional and global scales, leading to strengths in the areas of ecology, evolution and systematics. This work addresses pressing societal issues related to the environment, agriculture and human health.

About UW’s Rocky Mountain Herbarium

The Rocky Mountain Herbarium is the fourth-largest public university herbarium and is ranked 14th out of 873 herbaria in the United States. With over 1.4 million total specimens, its collections are central to basic and applied research investigating the diversity and distribution of plants and fungi in Wyoming and the Rocky Mountains. The Rocky Mountain Herbarium is a leader in the digitization of herbarium collections, and its digital collections are among the largest publicly accessible datasets at UW. The Rocky Mountain Herbarium champions the stewardship of plant diversity; inspires and prepares the next generation of botanists; and advances collections-based botanical research, education and outreach at UW through innovative thinking, transformative educational experiences and community engagement.