Presentation of the 2016 Paleontological Society Pojeta Award to Judy Scotchmoor

Abstract

It is a great pleasure to award Judy Scotchmoor, former Assistant Director for Outreach and Education at the University of California’s Museum of Paleontology (UCMP), the Paleontological Society’s Pojeta Award. Judy is perhaps best known as a science educator and many of her most significant accomplishments have been in that context. However, Judy’s association and involvement in paleontology has included much more than this. Judy was a renowned middle school science teacher at Marin Country Day School when she first came into contact with paleontology. Her love of science was enormous and she dedicated herself to sharing that love and excitement with her students. This also meant experiencing science herself, not just teaching it, and this led her to seek out opportunities to participate first hand. Paleontology had been of interest since her undergraduate days and she sought out opportunities to participate, including a Museum of the Rockies course in Bozeman, Montana followed by volunteer work as a field assistant in the Precambrian of the White Sea in Russia, and in the Cretaceous of the North Slope of Alaska. Those experiences, followed by a weekend teachers’ workshop, convinced her that paleontology was both her first love as well as an exciting source of topics for her teaching. Her passion and commitment to paleontology was so strong that she spent her next sabbatical year volunteering in UCMP’s preparation lab where she learned fossil preparation and worked in the field at …