Shelbie Harris
Staff Writer
Herbert Maschner, Director of the Idaho State University Idaho Museum of Natural History (IMNH), will be leaving ISU to serve as a visiting professor in Italy and has accepted a position at the University of South Florida beginning in August.
Maschner, who spent the last fifteen years at ISU, said he very much enjoyed his ISU experience especially in recent years under President Arthur Vailas based on his continued efforts in improving academic research, something which the IMNH has taken part in on a consistent basis.
“Some professors use ISU as a springboard,” said Maschner. “15 years is a pretty slow springboard.”
Maschner continued, “I don’t think that’s what I’ve done, what I have done is accomplish almost everything I can do here at ISU. Given the nature of state politics and other things, there’s not a whole lot more I can do to grow things, in my world, here at ISU.”
Beginning Feb. 1, Maschner will spend the spring and summer semesters as a visiting professor at the University of Siena in Italy.
Maschner said his time in Italy will consist of hosting seminars and assisting graduate students as he works to complete a book on digital heritage and the implementation of 3-D technologies in archaeological sciences.
He will remain an official ISU faculty member until Aug. 1, after which he will be considered a non-paid research faculty member for at least two years in order to continue working on two separate grants provided by the National Science Foundation (NSF).
In August he will move directly from Italy to Tampa as he has accepted tenured professorships in the School of Geosciences and the Department of Anthropology at USF.
“Being here 15 years, you start to become a bit stagnant,” Maschner said. “It’s good for academics to move once in a while, even once in their career to rejuvenate their brain, rejuvenate their research and get them involved in some new things.”
Additionally, he will serve as executive director of the USF Interdisciplinary Initiative for Advanced Virtualization and will manage a project focused on scanning museum collections in order to create technologies and databases to expand science.
“A private foundation has given me $5 million to travel the world scanning collections and putting them online just like we’ve done here [at the Idaho Virtualization Laboratory] already,” Maschner said.
He continued, “Everything we’ve done over the last 10 years here at ISU, and everything I’ll be doing at my lab facility in Florida will be closely tied to the facility located here at Idaho State.”
ISU welcomed Maschner in 1999 as a visiting associate professor. He later became a tenured professor in the Department of Anthropology. In 2006 he became a research professor and was named director of the IMNH in 2010.
Maschner led the design and implementation of 28 new exhibits to the IMNH while increasing museum donations from about $10,000 per year to over $200,000 per year over the last two years. He also oversaw the expansion of K-8 student involvement in museum educational programs increase from 5,000 to 10,000 students.
He was the Founding Director of the Center for Archaeology, Materials and Applied Spectroscopy (CAMAS), Director of the Idaho Virtualization Lab (IVL) and Senior Scientist at the Idaho Accelerator Center (IAC).
His tenure at ISU includes receiving the Idaho State University Distinguished Researcher award in 2006, being named Idaho Academy of Science Distinguished Scientist in both 2011 and 2012 and also winning the Idaho State Journal Business Person of the Year for Education in 2012.
Director of Marketing and Communications, Adrienne King said the process of appointing the acting Director of the Idaho State University Idaho Museum of Natural History had been initiated however no candidate has yet been selected for the position left vacated by Maschner’s departure.
