365 nights at the museum

Chris Robinson, M.Ed. Educational Leadership '08, broke down in tears when he started his new job - not because of the stress, but because of the significance.

As the first full-year teacher-in-residence for the National Museum of the American Indian (NMAI), Chris, an educator with Creek and Georgia Cherokee roots, helps the Smithsonian Institution strengthen its educational outreach worldwide. This role, he says, is "the highlight of my career ... Sometimes it's almost overwhelming just walking in the building."

After graduating from Sheldon Jackson College in Sitka, Chris rotated through Southwest Alaska villages as a mobile teacher, and later taught 5th-12th grade in Larsen Bay, on Kodiak Island. After two years at a school in England, he arrived in Anchorage to teach at East High, earn his master's in educational leadership from UAA and, coincidentally, meet his future wife, former UAA women's basketball coach Brandi Dunigan Robinson.

Outside of his Smithsonian appointment, Chris and Brandi are raising their family in the Appalachian foothills of Richmond, Kentucky, where Chris teaches at Model Laboratory. The K-12 school is physically located on campus at Eastern Kentucky University (EKU), where Chris is tenured faculty and pursuing a doctorate in education.

Teaching high school at a university provides a host of unique educational opportunities. Chris's most driven students can finish senior year with an associate degree. He mentors EKU education majors in his classroom and teaches two nationally unique courses in Egyptology and field archaeology, providing students research opportunities typically reserved for high-level undergraduates.

This year, though, he's in Washington, D.C., helping NMAI develop and write representative curricula for indigenous communities of the Western Hemisphere. These interactive lessons will be available online though Native Knowledge 360, which, like his one-year position, is funded by a grant from the Cargill Foundation.

Every region has an indigenous history, and Chris hopes to create accurate, informative, entertaining and easily adopted lessons for teachers worldwide. His UAA degree in educational leadership allows him "to see the content not just through teachers' eyes, but also administrators' eyes."

Though he hasn't broken down in tears again, the impact of working at NMAI hasn't faded.

"I actually can't verbalize the depths of what it means for me," he said of his role in D.C. "As someone with American Indian ancestry, to know that I'm helping and giving back to the ancestors, it's just more than I can describe."

"I walk the galleries at least three or four times a day just to be a part of it, and never lose sight or lose focus of where I am and what needs to be done."

Written by J. Besl, UAA Office of University Advancement