Ten Pacific Islander students from the University of Washington Burke Museum shared their collections care skills and muscles with the volunteer collections staff at Jean P. Haydon Museum Monday and Tuesday.
The full-day sessions included rearranging and relocating shelving, object handling, and implementing preliminary stabilization procedures for the books, siapo, and woven object collections.
“It is such a blessing to receive this hands-on assistance from the Burke Museum and University of Washington. The students routinely work with the collections at the Burke, so their skilled help and critical thinking skills proved invaluable to the Haydon collections,” said Erika Radewagen, volunteer Curator at the Jean P. Haydon Museum.
Program Instructor Dr. Holly M. Barker, Curator for Oceanic and Asian Culture at the Burke Museum explained that the students are studying a variety of topics and majors in social and cultural anthropology, medical/biological anthropology, oceanography and marine science. 
The students earn credits towards their specific studies under this program. The summer program is specifically designed to build the research capacity of Pacific Islander students so they will be able to support their communities in the future. The students are a mixture of graduate and undergraduate levels with ties to American Samoa, Samoa, Yap, Kiribati and the Marshall Islands.
The group of students will work with other entities during their 5-week stay including Land Grants at the American Samoa Community College for land-based education and Fa’asamoa Arts in Leone Village for siapo making.
