Museum für Naturkunde appoints federal spokeswoman of the Volunteering Working Group
Lea Friederike Schott is a scientific volunteer at the Museum für Naturkunde Chemnitz and has been the national spokesperson for the Volunteer Working Group since Sunday, 28 February 2016. She was elected to her new position at the Federal Volunteer Conference in Leipzig.
"I am particularly pleased to have the opportunity to work closely with other volunteers and the representatives of the German Museums Association," says Ms Schott. Together with her colleagues from the Volunteer Working Group, she will represent the interests of all scientific and non-scientific volunteers from museums, memorials and monument preservation in Germany in the German Museums Association for one year. She is particularly interested in the task of actively improving the working conditions of her volunteer colleagues and the exchange of experiences between volunteers. "I have two particular concerns. Firstly, I would like to campaign for better pay for volunteers. Many still work below the pay scale. Secondly, I am committed to ensuring that the period of pregnancy during the traineeship can be added to the originally agreed traineeship period," says Ms Schott, explaining her goals. As a natural science spokesperson, she also represents natural history museums, which are a minority within the volunteer positions.
Lea Friederike Schott is employed as a scientific volunteer at the Museum für Naturkunde Chemnitz. This is the first time the museum has had a botanist on the team. She is transforming the museum's historical herbarium collections into a main herbarium, enriching the museum's educational work with her events and providing new impetus for understanding the "Pompey of the Permian" - the Petrified Forest.
Ms Schott has a Bachelor's degree in BioGeo-Analysis from the University of Trier. For her Master's degree in Biodiversity & Ecology, she moved to the University of Bayreuth. From there, she came to Chemnitz in September 2015 to take up a traineeship as a scientific trainee. The aim of a scientific traineeship is to gain as comprehensive a qualification as possible for the complex tasks and departments in a museum.
For further information please contact:
Lea Friederike Schott
Museum of Natural History Chemnitz, Scientific Volunteer
Telephone: 0371 488-4557
E-mail: schott(at)naturkunde-chemnitz.de