Youth Education Sales dynamo Kaylee Gund has taken a wild, winding path to the Houston Museum of Natural Science, and she couldn’t be happier that she’s here.

Kaylee Gund smiles as her favorite dinosaur, Lane the Triceratops, lurks behind her in the Morian Hall of Paleontology. While Gund was visiting South Dakota on a family trip, she was able to take a side trip to visit the Black Hills Institute while Lane was being prepped for display at HMNS.

Gund’s passion for science runs deep. Right after she began interning with HMNS in 2010, she made an extra trip to the Black Hills Institute in South Dakota and saw the Triceratops Lane while it was getting prepped for display in the Morian Hall of Paleontology. For Halloween this past year, she dressed up as a carbon nanotube. In December 2014, she even went on a dig looking for shark teeth in Midlothian, TX.

As a kid, Gund’s family moved around a lot because her dad “just liked moving.” She was born in Michigan and lived abroad in countries like Brazil and the Netherlands before coming to Houston when she was 13.

“I remember coming [to the Museum] with my family when I first moved here, but I never imagined that I would work here. My favorite part of the Museum was the [Welch Hall of] Chemistry,” Gund said. “I loved the giant periodic table with samples of all the different elements in there.”

Gund’s first stint at HMNS began in 2010 when she applied for a summer internship sponsored by ExxonMobil. Her job as summer camp resource manager was “a perfect match.”

“Before I started at the Museum, I worked for a company that was moving all of their files to electronic versions. We had all of this paper, and it was my job to shred the old files. At the end, I had about 10 huge transparent bags full of shredded paper. It looked like snow!” Gund said. “So of course I built a snowman out of the bags. I took a Sharpie and drew a snowman face on one of the bags, but nobody got it. They were just too grown up!”

Xplorations summer camp proved to be a much better fit. As a summer camp resource manager, part of Gund’s job was to do the shopping for summer camp. It was refreshing to work in an environment that was a lot more fun, she said, and there was hardly ever a dull moment.

Kaylee poses with the entrance to the HMNS Hall of Ancient Egypt, one of her favorite collections in the Museum.

After a few more summers working with Xplorations, Gund reached a major decision in 2013: she applied to the Peace Corps and moved to Africa.

Gund was placed in Guinea to teach chemistry in the country’s national language, French. Considering she graduated from the University of Dallas with a degree in chemistry and concentration studies in French, this, too, seemed like a good match. On July 4, 2013, Gund began what should have been a 27-month stay in Guinea.

Gund had her own hut in the village of Niandankoro that was “about three meters in diameter, complete with thatched roof and ceiling made of empty rice sacks,” she said. Electricity and running water were luxuries that she learned to live without. As Gund put it, “[those were] things that you almost didn’t think about after a while because you just didn’t need [them].”

Gund’s hut in the village of Niandankoro.

Gund fondly recalls her classes at the village’s school, where she taught chemistry for students in seventh through tenth grade. Her students affectionately called her “Madame Chimie,” or Ms. Chemistry.

While typical lessons in the school called for rote learning, with students copying down notes from a blackboard, Gund was able to lead her classes with several experiments to aid learning and retention, and these experiments were some of her favorite memories.

For one class, she was able to import litmus paper to test pH, and her students tested everything from water and juice to saliva. On another day, she built an electrolyzer out of a jam jar, some batteries and wire. To review organic chemistry for tenth-grade board exams, Gund made salt dough and bought toothpicks to fashion molecule kits for each student, finishing with one giant alkane model that spanned the whole classroom.

Gund’s tenth grade students make organic molecules using salt dough she made and toothpicks. This was an extra review session as her students prepared to take their end of year examinations.

After a year in Niandankoro, Gund left the village in early July 2014 to train new Peace Corps recruits before returning to the United States to visit family before starting her second year of service. She never made it back.

The ebola outbreak in western Africa forced the Peace Corps to halt its operations in Guinea 14 months into Gund’s 27-month tour.

“We got evacuated, not so much because of the risk of us getting ebola, but it was that all of the medical centers and all of the hospitals were so busy and preoccupied with ebola that if one of us broke a leg, there wouldn’t have been the necessary staff available to take care of that,” Gund said. “[The Peace Corps] determined that it wasn’t a good idea for us to remain there.”

She never got to say a proper goodbye.

While Gund waited to hear if she would be able to go back, she contacted Nicole Temple, HMNS’ Vice President of Youth Education, for some work and spent some time teaching lab classes. When it became clear that Gund was not going to be able to return to Guinea, she applied for a job as a Youth Education Sales Assistant and began work mid-September 2014.

“I really like having the opportunity to share with others about HMNS,” Gund said. “I think everything here is interesting. I love being able to tell people about our exhibits and what we offer.”

Gund poses in front of a model of a giant squid next to the Strake Hall of Malacology.

For the next eight months, Gund assisted teachers with booking field trips to the Museum. She thought of it as a puzzle, matching interests with what the museum has to offer.

“My favorite part about it was having teachers basically give me free reign. They would say, ‘Oh, I’m an AP chemistry teacher’ or ‘a pre-K teacher,’ and then I would work something out that would fit their age range and their interests. We have such a variety to offer, so it was cool to be able to pair things, like [the Farish Hall of] Texas Wildlife with Tiny Giants,” Gund said.

Less than a year later, Gund received a promotion and now is the Youth Education Sales Curriculum Coordinator and Data Analyst. For all of the museum’s permanent exhibit halls and special exhibits, Gund writes curriculum correlated with Texas Essential Knowledge and Skills objectives for teachers to use in class before and after a field trip to the Museum. She relishes the creative parts of her job, using her teaching experiences to come up with innovative ways to reinforce material.

“I’m really glad that [this job] happened. To this day, I walk into the museum every morning and find something new to be amazed at,” Gund said. “I don’t think I have a favorite part, really. I like all of it.”