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Interpreting the wild to the world
Bethel graduate uses both art and liberal arts to explain Yellowstone to visitors
by Melanie Zuercher
Growing up on the plains and prairies of Kansas and Oklahoma, Jonita (Stucky) Suderman ’83 nevertheless dreamed about a variety of wild places.
As a child, she lived with her family – Bill and Marj ’52 Stucky, now of North Newton, and older brother Alan Stucky ’80 – in Deer Creek, Okla., Liberal and, when Jo was in high school, at Camp Mennoscah near Murdock. At the camp, she says, “I [really] fell in love with being outside.”
The family spent many vacations in national parks. Early on, Jo began to imagine one day working for the National Park Service (NPS). “I didn’t have a clear vision of how I’d realize the dream,” she says, “but I had a sense that the door would open if I kept watching.” That door did open at Bethel College. In a way, it happened simply. Jo met Brian Suderman from Mountain Lake, Minn., and discovered someone who had the same dream she did, of working for the Park Service. “Brian had a clearer picture – he knew he wanted to be a park ranger,” Jo says.
The couple married in 1982 and moved to northern Wisconsin after Jo graduated from Bethel in order for Brian to finish his undergraduate degree in outdoor education at Northland College in Ashland. He was then hired to work as a seasonal ranger at Apostle Islands National Lakeshore on Lake Superior, which he did for two seasons. The first summer, Jo was an NPS volunteer, which eventually helped her forge her own entry into the NPS.
In another way, the opening was more complex. When she came to Bethel, Jo also knew that she “had a great love of creating.” So she majored in art, studying with Paul Friesen, Gail Lutsch and Robert Regier ’52.
“All three of them have had a major impact on my life,” Jo says. “They were so professional and enthusiastic. They saw the possibilities for how we could use our skills and instilled in us a belief that we could go forth and do all kinds of things.”
When Jo applied to be a volunteer at Apostle Islands, she was asked to list her skills and interests. Her future supervisor identified the need for a wildflower phenology chart – an illustrated booklet showing what wildflowers bloomed and when – on South Twin (the tiny island to which Brian was assigned that summer). Jo created the chart as her main project, providing a baseline for successive rangers to use in wildflower identification. On days off, she spent many hours creating batiks that she framed and sold in local and regional art galleries.
After two seasons at Apostle Islands, the Sudermans moved to southeastern Wyoming, where their son, Aaron, was born in 1988 and where Brian worked for the United States Postal Service as a rural mail carrier for three years. It was not the usual route for attaining “career status” in the federal government, which he needed in order to have any hope of a permanent job with the NPS, but it worked for him. His first permanent NPS position was at Organ Pipe Cactus National Monument, on the Arizona-Mexico border. After two years there, the Sudermans saw another dream come true when they moved to Glacier Bay National Park in Alaska. Four years later, in 1996, the family moved to Wyoming and Yellowstone National Park.
When the Suderman family was at Organ Pipe, 1990-92, Jo worked two days a week in the campground and entrance station. As Aaron got older and went to school, she moved to full-time at Glacier Bay as park receptionist. But it was in Yellowstone, finally, that “my love of the Natural Park Service and of creating began to converge,” she says.
After working for a winter in the North Entrance station, she took a position in the photo library. “I loved doing that,” she says, “going through the photos, finding the right images to help the rangers illustrate their talks or for use in trail guides or the park Web site.” In 2002, Yellowstone’s exhibit specialist left and Jo applied for the job, was hired and has been doing it ever since. “I believe Brian and I followed the route that was meant for us,” she said, “and I also believe it was possible because we were open to adventure. We’ve had the opportunity to live and work in some of the most beautiful, wild and amazing places in the country. Our son has grown up with wildlife frequently in our yard.”
In her five years as exhibit specialist, Jo has designed nearly 60 of the 300 signs that stand alongside trails and roads (310 miles of it) or are part of visitor center exhibits. She combines photos, maps, illustrations, historic postcards, artwork and other images and writes text in order to interpret the natural and cultural landscape for literally millions of visitors to Yellowstone each year.
Exhibit topics range from Yellowstone’s diverse geological features (such as geysers, hot springs, mudpots, fumaroles and the Yellowstone Volcano, which is the heat source for the thermal features) to wildflowers and wildlife (everything from thermophiles, the colorful microscopic residents of the hot springs, to grizzly bears), to glaciation and fire ecology, to early park explorers, to architects of historic structures such as the Old Faithful Inn.
“Yellowstone is full of surprises,” Jo says, “not only in the natural world but in the different needs that arise. The position of exhibit specialist was already formed when I started but I’ve been able to put my own touch on it, to interpret amazing sites through my own artistic expression and ideas. I’ve really thrown myself into that.”
She also works with numerous specialists, both park employees and interested outsiders. “I delve deep into the topics,” she says. “There is a bibliography on file for each exhibit I work with. I spend time with park biologists, geologists and historians, as well as with partners such as geologists from the University of Utah and the Yellowstone Volcano Observatory who monitor all the earthquake activity in the park, and microbiologists from the Thermal Biology Institute, located at Montana State University.”
In addition to praising the encouragement she received from her art professors at Bethel, Jo also points to the value of her liberal arts education. “There is no question that Bethel helped to prepare me for working with diversity,” she says, “both a diverse staff at the park and the people from all over the world who travel through the park. “True pacifism, reflected on from an early age and solidified at Bethel, provides a foundation for working with all kinds of people and for living in harmony with the natural world.”
She keeps these things in mind when creating exhibits. She loves writing the text, she says, with the requirement both to see the big picture and pay attention to details. However, “the visual elements are as critical as, or even more critical than, the text. No matter what language you speak or what age you are, visual elements can help provide some understanding of Yellowstone’s many resources. The interpretation can’t be too simplified, yet it still needs to help people connect with what they’re seeing. “The site that’s being interpreted provides a lot of my inspiration,” she continues. “I spend a lot of time at each site to get ideas for colors and the overall feeling. I also listen to the visitors at each site to find out what catches people’s eye and what they’re missing or not understanding.
“We design exhibits for three basic types – streakers, strollers and studiers. We try to layer information to provide for all types of users. For the streakers, a three-second glance should provide them with some information, perhaps a powerful photograph or expressive title such as Cooking Hillside, that tells them something about the site. The strollers might spend a minute or so and the studiers spend several minutes at the site, reading, observing and assimilating. Any person may be all three of these types – a person who studies may later be in a hurry for lunch and streak past a different exhibit, glancing at it as they go by. In all cases, we want to spark a desire to learn more, to ask a ranger a question or to find a book, with the ultimate goal of protecting and preserving the park through an enhanced appreciation of the place.”
In April, Jo received a Performance Award from her supervisor, Deputy Chief of Interpretation, Planning and Media Linda Young. “I felt very honored to receive the award from Linda – she is a joy to work for and sets an outstanding example of leadership through her professionalism, optimism, humor and appreciation of others,” Jo says.
What Jo regards as her highest honor, however, she says, is “the opportunity to interpret Yellowstone’s many natural and cultural wonders for others and to help preserve and protect the world’s first national park.”
Relieving the pressure
National Park Service gives alumnus an avenue for caring for the natural world
In the 1960s and ’70s, two people were growing up in different parts of the Midwest with a similar dream.
Brian Suderman ’83 was raised in Mountain Lake, Minn., the son of Alice and John Suderman, now of North Newton. Like Jo Stucky, who was living in the Great Plains at the same time, Brian remembers spending family vacations in national parks.
“I was always very impressed with what I found [in the parks],” he says. “I was aware from an early age that we humans are putting so much pressure on the natural world, and I wanted to do what I could to address that. The mission of the National Park Service is to preserve natural lands and ecosystems, as well as to educate people on those topics.”
At Bethel, Brian majored in environmental studies, with Dwight Platt as his primary professor. “My two years at Bethel gave me a really good grounding in biology and environmental studies,” he says. In addition, during that time, he met Jo, who also dreamed of working for the NPS. They were married in 1982.
When Jo graduated from Bethel in 1983, the couple moved to Ashland, Wis., where Brian finished his undergraduate degree at Northland College. “Both Bethel and Northland are liberal arts colleges, and I have been very grateful for that foundation,” Brian says. “My line of work requires a well-rounded educational background, a sprinkling of many different things. There’s science but there are also the humanities – sociology, history.”
Brian now works in a supervisory position at Yellowstone National Park. The park is divided into three districts, and Brian’s title is North District Interpretive Ranger.
“My area is what’s called ‘personal services interpretation,’” he says. “I oversee the visitor centers – there are two major ones – as well as the Museum of the National Park Ranger and the ranger-led programs, such as the interpretive walks and talks.”