Hallowed objects like the original Star-Spangled Banner that hung at Fort McHenry in 1814. Iconic items like Dorothy’s red slippers. Historic artifacts like Abraham Lincoln’s top hat from April 14, 1865. They’re all part of the work environment for Leo Mullen, a May 2022 history graduate of South Dakota State University and current employee at the Smithsonian Institution in Washington, D.C.
Leo Mullen poses outside the Smithsonian’s National Museum of American History, where he began work in June as a program assistant. Living in Washington, D.C., and working at the Smithsonian has been a history major’s delight, the ’22 graduate said.
Mullen works as a program assistant in the Draper Spark!Lab at the National Museum of American History, one of 17 museums within the Smithsonian’s D.C. campus.
While the Star-Spangled Banner and Lincoln’s top hat are strictly “look, don’t touch,” the Spark!Lab is exactly the opposite. The Spark!Lab is an area where visitors can do their own exploring, inventing and experimenting with material provided by the museum. It is geared toward children ages 6 to 12, but parents are invited to join in, too, Mullen said.
Mullen started work at the nation’s most respected museum complex June 5 after gaining federal security clearance.
The Sioux Falls Lincoln High School graduate took an early interest in history and as a high school student volunteered at the Siouxland Heritage Museum. History education, preferably in a museum setting, was on his career sights when he enrolled at SDSU. So in addition to majoring in history, minoring in political science and playing the alto sax and clarinet in about every possible SDSU music group, Mullen also minored in museum studies.
For the program’s required three-credit internship, Mullen worked at the South Dakota Agricultural Heritage Museum, where education coordinator Sarah Jacobs ’13 said he was a “unicorn,” meaning a unique find because of the extra passion he brought to his work.
“Leo was wonderful to work with. Museums and history are a very big passion of his. You can always tell when someone is passionate about what they are working on. He always really brought a passion to what he did,” Jacobs said.
Researched for ‘Drowning in Dirt’
After he completed his internship, he was hired as a student assistant at the ag museum. Mullen’s major undertaking was doing research for “Drowning in Dirt — Joseph Hutton and the Dust Bowl,” which details the SDSU agronomy professor’s efforts to promote soil conservation before and after the Dust Bowl. Hutton taught at State from 1911 until his death in 1939.
Mullen’s research included matching farmstead photos taken by Hutton with census records to peg the years in which the properties became abandoned.
His connection to the Smithsonian began when he was volunteering with Levitt at the Falls in Sioux Falls. SDSU’s Wokini Initiative partnered with Levitt to bring Innoskate to Pine Ridge Reservation and Sioux Falls in summer 2022. The festival was created by USA Skateboarding and the Smithsonian’s Lemelson Center for the Study of Invention and Innovation, Spark!Lab’s parent organization.
The connections he made with Smithsonian officials at the festival got him thinking about beginning his history education career at the Smithsonian. When there was an opening at the Spark!Lab, he seized the opportunity.
Giving spark to Spark!Lab
His job as Spark!Lab facilitator is to answer questions from visitors, but not solve the problem they are encountering when working on a project to, for example, complete a snap circuit activity.
“It’s been fun so far. It’s interesting watching grown-ups with little kids who get drawn into the kids’ games. There are visitors from across the country and around the world, and family groups who do not speak the same language who are working together trying to solve this marble maze.
“I like working directly with kids who are enthusiastic and witnessing the moments where they come to the solution for whatever activity they’re working on—that lightbulb moment.
“Also, being able to help people who are looking for the Declaration of Independence or Abraham Lincoln’s top hat or the ruby slippers, whatever they’re looking for. ‘Third floor to right for the ruby slippers’ is a unique thing to be in a position to do,” Mullen said.
Mullen added that being able to explore a city filled with history has been a major side benefit for him.
Dave Graves
