DIRECTOR’S MESSAGE Dear Friends of the Museum, all around, 2015 was another very successful year for the Naval Undersea Museum! It was a year of continued growth, especially when you look at how much our wonderful staff and volunteer corps has grown. I am happy to tell you that in 2015 the Naval Undersea Museum operated at a very high level of professionalism and that our excellence has been confirmed by the Naval History and Heritage Command (nhhc) and the American Alliance of Museums (aam). num received a 2015 Certificate of Excellence from Trip Advisor for consistently high online ratings. All of num’s staff members received On-The-Spot awards from nhhc in 2015 that highlight their dedication to professionalism in our field. Valerie Johnson received a Time Off Award for her excellent work with the Navy stem Days program. Steve Harvey and Jarrod Gahr received challenge coins for their work in developing the Skin Deep exhibit with the Puget Sound Navy Museum staff. Mary Ryan received an On-The-Spot Award and a challenge coin from nhhc for her work in collecting information and presenting the findings of nhhc’s 2015 Climate Command Survey to senior leadership. I received the Superior Civilian Service Award from Admiral Cox, Director of nhhc, which is the highest award a civilian employee can receive. Olivia Wilson, Mary Ryan, and Jarrod Gahr received their Five Year Service Awards from the Navy, and Jennifer Heinzelman received her Fifteen Year Service Award from the Navy. The list of awards is incredible; many of them received national attention, and I am extremely proud of our fantastic staff! This past year the makeup within the Navy staff changed with the arrival of a Collections Manager and a Volunteer and Events Coordinator at num. Collections Manager Kirk Dietz came to us from the Kalaupapa National Historical Park on the island of Moloka’i in Hawai’i. Kirk also has many years of museum experience working for the National Parks Service and the Department of the Interior. Kirk joined Lorraine Scott as part of the Collections Management department. Together they will continue organizing and tackling our collections issues and we are excited to welcome Kirk to our great team. Volunteer and Events Coordinator Mary Rogers came to us from the Smithsonian. She has years of collections management, disaster planning, and much more varied museum experience. She joined Olivia and me in the Administrative Department and we greatly appreciate her spirit, organization, and new ideas. In 2015 we also saw the departure of long-time Collections Manager Jennifer Heinzelman, who worked at num for more than 15 years. She departed for other museum opportunities, and while we will greatly miss her presence and expertise at the museum, we appreciate her years of service and wish her well with her new adventures! We are very fortunate to have all of the hardworking staff who make the magic happen at num. Changes in exhibits, the public face of the museum, occupied the staff through much of 2015. The Naval Undersea Museum opened several new temporary exhibits in 2015. Curator Mary Ryan developed a new Artifact Spotlight series that refreshes the look of the lobby. The opening of the temporary exhibit N.E.D.U.: Rising to the Challenge is the most noteworthy of the new temporary exhibits. This 500-squarefoot exhibit includes 30 informational panels, 9 graphic element panels, 20 labels, 28 flipbook pages, and 11 interactive screens that are part of a media interactive. The 10-panel mini-exhibit in celebration of the Year of the Military Diver opened in August. The newest installment of Every Picture Tells a Story featuring anti-submarine www.navalunderseamuseum.org
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