Burpee Staff

Anne Weerda is the Executive Director of Burpee Museum of Natural History in Rockford, Illinois.  She has focused on bringing natural science to the community through: 1) More inclusive Burpee programming, 2) Expanding the active science research and collection department, and 3) Offering new educational programming and scholarship opportunities to individuals from underprivileged backgrounds and with special needs.

Anne Weerda earned her undergraduate degree at Northwestern University (‘01) double majoring in Molecular/Cellular Biology and Radio/Television/Film.  Under the leadership of well-known Field Museum and University of Chicago researcher Dr. Lawrence Heaney, she developed one of the first on-line, and searchable, Fieldiana Guide detailing all discovered mammals of the Philippines.  This tool was developed in 2001 and is still in use today.

Responding to a call to work with underprivileged youth, Anne left The Field Museum to teach science in the inner city, southside of Chicago.  She taught high school biology, chemistry, physics, zoology, environmental science and more.

While teaching in Chicago, she received the Golden Apple Fellowship for Teaching, funding her work to become a certified teacher and receive training at University of Chicago and Northwestern University.  Finishing her fellowship, she completed her masters program through Northwestern University in Education & Social Policy (‘07). Her master’s thesis focused high school aged girls with behavior challenges including suspension and expulsion records.  Her research implemented a method of support that had large impact on 1) Decreasing suspension and referral rates, and 2) Improving confidence and self efficacy in school in a longitudinal study.

Anne continued in the education field working as a school improvement consultant, turn-around school advisor and director of curriculum and assessment  earning an additional masters in Educational Leadership and Supervision (‘09).

In 2013 she founded a Rockford-based company, Kids At The Core LLC., which provides educational services and professional development resources for teachers and administrators throughout the United States.  She received the most recognition for her development of assessment strategies to help teachers measure and monitor student growth, learning, and teaching impact over time. She is a speaker and writer on the topic of education and social policy giving talks both locally and around the country to educational professionals regarding assessment development, instructional responses, and student motivation.  She has been a presenter, writer and leader through IL ASCD, the Illinois Principal Association, Louisiana Association for Speech and Language, The Art of Education, and many more.

Anne accepted the position as Executive Director of Burpee Museum in late summer of 2017.  Anne lives in Rockford, has 3 young children and is married to Jim Weerda, a Rockford Firefighter.

Anders grew up in Rockford and began volunteering at Burpee Museum while in middle school, which continued through high school. He attended Augustana College, Rock Island IL, for his B.A. in Geology and German, the University of Wisconsin-Madison for his M.S. in Geology, and Oregon State University for his Ph.D. in Geology.

Following a postdoctoral position at Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution, he was an assistant and then associate professor at the University of Wisconsin-Madison from 2007 to 2012. In 2013, he moved to an associate professorship of high latitude climate at Oregon State University.

Anders’ research is on the past responses of ice sheets to climate change, with a goal of determining ice sheet sensitivity to varying degrees of climate warming. He has conducted research in Canada, Svalbard and Greenland, with hopes to extend this study to Antarctica. Anders has received over $2 million in funding from the National Science Foundation and has published numerous articles in such journals as Science and Nature. 

Josh is the Engelhardt-Moore Director of Paleontology at the Burpee Museum and a PhD Candidate in Biological Sciences at Northern Illinois University. He received Bachelors degrees in Biology and Geology from the University of Wisconsin-Whitewater in 2003 where he studied invertebrate paleoecology of Mississipian and Pennsylvanian deposits in Illinois. In 2004, Josh started volunteering in the fossil prep lab at Burpee and has been part of the Burpee family ever since. In the summer of 2005, he joined the Burpee expedition to southeast Montana that led to the discovery of the sub-adult Triceratops, Homer. The Homer Site became the focus of Josh’s Master’s thesis at NIU. Upon completion of the Homer project, he accepted the position of Chief Fossil Preparator and Research Assistant to Dr. William Hammer in the Geology Department at Augustana College. While at Augustana, Josh was part of the Transantarctic Vertebrate Paleontology Project and was part of an expedition to search for dinosaurs in Antarctica in the winter of 2010/2011. The fossils collected during this expedition were brought back to Augustana College where he worked on removing the remains from the rock in his prep lab. In 2014, he left his position at Augustana and returned to NIU to pursue his PhD in the Department of Biological Sciences. As a PhD student working for Dr. Karen Samonds, he spent two field seasons searching and excavating fossils in Cenozoic deposits in Madagascar. For his doctoral research, he is studying the biostratigraphy of the Hell Creek Formation in Carter County, Montana and documenting faunal change throughout the formation up to and across the K/Pg boundary.