Casper College student Natalie Plumlee receives MPMA Carolyn Garrett Pool Award

Casper College student Natalie Plumlee was selected as the recipient of the 2024 Mountain-Plains Museums Association Carolyn Garrett Pool Award during the MPMA annual conference. (Courtesy photo)

Casper College student Natalie Plumlee was honored at the 2024 Mountain-Plains Museums Association annual conference. According to Justin Jakovac, executive director of the MPMA, Plumlee was selected as the recipient of the 2024 MPMA Carolyn Garrett Pool Award.

According to the MPMA’s website, “The Carolyn Garrett Pool Award is given in recognition of an outstanding student at a university within the MPMA region. The student must be enrolled in a museum studies program or a history, archaeology, or anthropology program with a strong museum emphasis. In addition, students must have demonstrated outstanding academic success, leadership, and the ability to complete projects within a museum setting.”

A museum studies major at Casper College, Plumlee curated an exhibit for the WHC and Goodstein Foundation Library titled “Wyoming Families Photo Album Exhibit.” Hanz Olson, archivist and librarian at the Goodstein Foundation Library and the Wyoming History Center at Casper College, noted that the semester-long internship “ … concentrated on creating an exhibit to explore the relationship between archives and museums to define the role of curator and the purpose of curation.” The photo albums curated by Plumlee covered the years 1914 through 1966.

“Natalie was honored for her work as a student of ours, for an archival project with Hanz and an internship at the Tate Geological Museum,” said Valerie Innella Maiers, visual arts instructor and director of galleries. For her internship at the Tate Geological Museum, Plumlee documented the museum’s collection and accessioned items that ranged from shark teeth to Pteranodon bones.

“My experience at the MPMA conference had such a positive impact on my future. It was my first conference, and it was amazing,” said Plumlee.