Paulette Hervi Hughes began volunteering in the Paleobotany Department in 2002, alongside the Cleveland Museum of Natural History's first Paleobotany Curator, Dr. Shyamala Chitaley. Hughes brought a background in geology to her volunteer role, and she built upon that foundation to become a veritable expert on fossil plants. In June 2022, Hughes was presented the Volunteer of the Year Award at the Museum’s annual Volunteer Appreciation Dinner. This honor recognizes her impressive commitment to the Museum—936 volunteer hours in 2021. During her time as a volunteer, Hughes has performed a variety of duties in the Paleobotany Department, including working on databases, preparing specimen loans for researchers at other institutions, helping with numerous outreach events, solving many of the mysteries that crop up in older collections, and completing a myriad of miscellaneous tasks. She has even personally helped to expand the collection by facilitating the donation of Duke University’s pollen collection—one of the world’s largest collections of African pollen—and the donation of the paleobotany teaching collection from her alma mater, Bowling Green State University. As a result, Hughes has earned praise from researchers around the world—and acknowledgment in their papers for the assistance she provided when they visited the Museum’s paleobotany collection. Hughes has an encyclopedic knowledge of the department and its history. When a specimen is mentioned, she will often know the specimen number off the top of her head and immediately run off to find it. She can identify the handwriting of seemingly anyone who has ever volunteered or worked in the department, and will usually follow the identification with an anecdote about the writer. Her command of the department’s arcane card catalogs is unequaled; her work translating this information into the Museum’s digital database has made the collection significantly more usable. Understanding the importance of conserving the collection for future research, Hughes stresses proper specimen care and storage, data curation, and maintenance of digital and physical copies of records. During the pandemic, Hughes continued to volunteer from home and devote many hours to preparing the specimen database for its online debut, making it accessible to the public and researchers worldwide. Hughes’s tirelessness is legendary. She wakes up extremely early for her daily Richard Simmons video or swim exercises, and she often gets a sudden burst of energy—usually put to good use organizing things. This boundless energy is not confined to normal working hours. More than once, Museum staff have awoken to a text from Hughes at 6:30am on a Saturday with an idea about what needs to be accomplished ASAP. Hughes’s presence has been the one constant throughout the Paleobotany Department’s history. When previous staff members have retired or moved on, she has personally shared her knowledge with new employees and volunteers. This continuity has been invaluable; no amount of documentation can match Hughes’s familiarity with the collection. The Paleobotany Department is very fortunate that Hughes has chosen to volunteer her time, skills, and expertise over the last 20 years. Paulette Hervi Hughes: Volunteer of the Year EXPLORE WINTER 2023 | 17
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