1973
Dr. Jerry Pickering, Dr. Art Shields, Dr. Frank Liegey
Department of Biology
Faculty Members
Indiana University of Pennsylvania:
"Who We Were"
1973
Dr. Jerry Pickering, Dr. Art Shields, Dr. Frank Liegey
Dr. Arthur G. Shields was an IUP Biology Professor from 1956 to 1971 and was the founder and curator of the IUP Biology Department's Herbarium. The photograph above was taken in 1973 on the occasion of the herbarium being named for him.
Dr. Jerry Pickering, also shown in the photograph, became the curator of the herbarium when Dr. Shields retired.
Dr. Frank Liegey was the chair of the department at the time.
Additional information from the 2021-2022 Annual Report of the Allegheny Arboretum at Indiana University of Pennsylvania, which included the same photograph above:
"Dr. Arthur G. Shields Herbarium
When Jerry L. Pickering came to IUP in 1969, Arthur G. Shields was the curator of the Biology Department Herbarium. Shields received his doctorate from Penn State University with a floristic study as his thesis. The specimens were placed in a separate "Shields Collection" in the herbarium at IUP. After Shields retired in 1972, Pickering suggested the herbarium be named in his honor. In 1973, a ceremony was held to honor Shields.
Starting in the fall of 1972, Pickering became the curator of the herbarium. In 1972, Pickering's first graduate student Jack McMillen developed a computerized system and specimen ID code for his MS thesis. This enabled the creation of a specific ID number for each herbarium specimen. McMillen started entering data from the annotation slips for each of the plant specimens. After he graduated, students continued to put data into the university's system. At that time, the data was entered on tapes that were housed in the university mainframe located in Stright Hall.
About 20% of the collection was entered when the university decided to eliminate the mainframe and tapes. As a result, all herbarium data was lost. Over the next several years, Pickering supervised student help to carry out various duties that upgraded the herbarium collection.
Over the years, many classes used the herbarium. In addition, some research and special topics projects also used the herbarium, and special collections were developed by students and faculty.
During the last eight years, Michael Tyree has been the A. G. Shields Herbarium curator. He has reestablished the Plant Biology Library and created an Herbarium Committee while supervising a full inventory of the collections. To date, the main collection and the Honduras collection consist of approximately 9,500 full inventoried items."