Mar. 5, 2024 -- Lots of kids go through a “dinosaur phase:” Reading books about dinosaurs, wearing dinosaur pajamas, playing with plastic dinosaurs, even having dinosaur-themed birthday parties. But for Heights High senior Carter Fry, his childhood love of dinosaurs has turned it into a very adult career path.
He says the first time he saw Jurassic Park as a 4th grader “totally changed my world.” He followed that up with nature documentaries, a subscription to National Geographic, and years spent visiting the world’s best natural history museums with his family, from the Field Museum in Chicago to the La Brea Tarpits in LA to the London Museum of Natural History.
So when he learned about the Cleveland Museum of Natural History’s Science for Success Teen Internship program the summer before his sophomore year, Carter knew he’d be an excellent candidate. With a resumé and a letter of recommendation from Heights Biology teacher Janett Korb, Carter was invited to two interviews and eventually offered a three-year, paid internship in the Museum’s Education Department, on what he describes as “one of the best days of my life!”
He manages to juggle Honors and College Credit Plus courses at Heights while also working Saturdays, any days off of school, and 28 hours per week in the summer. His main task is visitor engagement, teaching Museum guests about fossils, geology, wildlife, and human evolution. He especially appreciates interacting with children who remind him of his younger dinosaur-obsessed self.
In addition to helping with the Museum’s camps for elementary and middle schoolers, Carter has had the chance to assist anthropologists and paleontologists in the Collections Department, unboxing, inspecting, photographing, labeling and rehousing rare specimens. With such behind-the-scenes access, he thinks visitors might be surprised to know that many of the fossils featured on display are actually casts of the originals.
Museums tend to keep their most fragile specimens safe for research and sometimes certain bones of a skeleton are never found and then replaced by bones from another specimen. Carter so enjoys the detective aspect of his work that he is considering a career as a museum conservator or collections assistant.
With plans to major in anthropology with a concentration in archeology at Cleveland State University next fall, he can continue working at the Museum part-time to save money for graduate school (he’s already gotten a raise and even has a 403-B retirement account!) and “to share my love of science with people in my community.”
