Please visit Director, Sam Noble Museum for complete job posting and application instructions.
The Sam Noble Museum at the University of Oklahoma is seeking a visionary leader to serve as director and to work collaboratively with an outstanding professional staff. As the state’s natural history museum, the Sam Noble Museum is a venue for celebrating the state’s rich cultural and natural heritage.
The museum inspires understanding of the natural and cultural world through collection-based research, interpretation, and education that is supported by an annual budget of $3.5 million, 47 full-time permanent staff and faculty curators, 200 volunteers, and more than 1,100 member households. The 198,000-square-foot museum includes 47,000 sq. ft. of exhibit space and 39,000 sq. ft. dedicated to collection storage. With an average annual attendance of 150,000, the museum’s permanent and temporary exhibits and collections are important vehicles for engaging its audiences and promoting the museum’s educational and research mission.
The museum stewards over 10 million artifacts and specimens in 12 collections: archeology, ethnology, languages, herpetology, ichthyology, invertebrates, mammalogy, ornithology, genomic resources, invertebrate paleontology, paleobotany and micropaleontology, and vertebrate paleontology. Museum curators, staff, and students engage in research that addresses critical scientific questions relating to the Earth’s biological, geological, and cultural diversity and in the training and mentoring of the next generation of scientists and educators.
The museum engages in significant programming, educational activities, and outreach designed to serve diverse communities. These events provide opportunities for interactions between biological, geological, and social scientists and the public, leading to increased understanding of information and a better appreciation for the natural and cultural world. Oklahoma is home to thirty-nine federally recognized tribes, and the museum collaborates with tribal partners to foster respect for tribal sovereignty and the preservation of Native American language, art, and culture. The museum also plays an important role in Native language preservation and revitalization by hosting the annual Native American Youth Language Fair and supports science education in the community through programs like ExplorOlogy. The museum has received national and international awards for excellence, including the prestigious National Medal from the Institute of Museum and Library Services for its commitment to collection stewardship, outreach and education activities, and public programs.