3/11/24

By FHSU University Communications

HAYS, Kan. – Most kids grow up wanting to become dinosaur-hunting paleontologists. At some point in their early teenage years, many of these budding dinosaur hunters move on to other interests. However, Maggie Wolf and Marjie Cone never waivered in a lifelong, shared, unquenchable curiosity about the natural world. Fort Hays State University’s Sternberg Museum of Natural History was there for Kansas City native Maggie and Chicago native Marjie when their friends began to move on to these other interests.

“We made regular trips to Colorado when I was a kid, and I always made my parents stop at the Sternberg Museum when we came through Hays,” Maggie said. “When I was little, I loved everything about the museum, except maybe the life-size model of a Mosasaur they keep in a dark cavernous space. I thought it might want to eat me.”

Marjie first learned about the Sternberg Museum from her mother in high school.

“I wanted to do an internship with the world-renowned Field Museum of Natural History in downtown Chicago, but didn’t submit my application materials until it was too late,” Marjie said. “Mom found the Sternberg summer camp program for me.”

The Sternberg Museum’s educational opportunities are perfect for kids like Marjie and Maggie, who are innately curious about the natural world, past and present. Sternberg’s immensely popular summer camps program offers elementary, middle, and high school students unique opportunities to explore and learn in classroom settings and at specimen-rich remote sites across the High Plains of Kansas and beyond. Kids who attend Sternberg summer camps also get to meet other kids their age who share the same interests and form bonds that last well beyond their time as campers.

Maggie and Marjie met in the summer of 2015 while attending Field Paleontology: Kansas high school camp. From that point forward, their camp connection quickly became a lasting friendship. Maggie and Marjie participated in several Sternberg Museum programs, including the Southwest Biology and Field Paleontology: Kansas camps. They were later invited to join the museum’s first international program in Ecuador.

Marjie and Maggie’s all-encompassing passion for science would guide their selection of colleges and chosen degree paths after high school. Marjie attended the University of Illinois, Urbanna-Champaign, and Maggie enrolled at Evansville University in Indiana.

Throughout their undergraduate years, the pair maintained their relationship with each other and the Sternberg Museum. An admirer of the two best friends’ extensive knowledge and experience in the field, David Levering, the museum’s camps director, invited the pair back to work as camp instructors. Over the next several years, Marjie and Maggie would advance from camp counselors to teaching assistants and on to their current roles as camp instructors.

“I call them the ‘M&M’s,’” Levering said. “They’re great leaders who’re accountable, team-oriented, open-minded, and very knowledgeable.”

“I think I can confidently speak for both Marjie and myself when I say we have put a ton of our time and effort into building a community and making these programs exciting, rich with learning opportunities, and inclusive,” Maggie said.

When they are not leading a summer Sternberg camp, Marjie and Maggie work as outreach educators, Marjie in Moab, Utah, and Maggie in Denver. Both call their conservation education work the most fulfilling they have done in their lives.

Learn more about the Sternberg Museum’s summer camps and educational programs at https://sternberg.fhsu.edu.