ENID, Okla. — The Cherokee Strip Regional Heritage Center has hired Dr. Neal Matherne as their new Education Director. Matherne is a heritage professional with a passion for helping museums and communities better understand each other. At the Field Museum of Natural History, Matherne cofacilitated outreach to the Chicagoland Filipinx community, linking them to the museum’s collection of 10,000 objects from the early twentieth-century Philippines. He comes to the Cherokee Strip Regional Heritage Center from Skidmore College in Saratoga Springs, New York. Under a grant from the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, Matherne conducted a two-year study on the relationship between Skidmore’s Tang Teaching Museum and Scribner Library through the use of primary source collections. He is also an ethnomusicologist with an interest in the Philippines and popular musics of the United States. He previously taught at the University of the Philippines Diliman, the University of Alabama at Birmingham and the University of California, Riverside.

“I am thrilled to have Neal join our team at the Heritage Center,” said Heritage Center Director, Jake Krumwiede. “He is a consummate professional, with a wealth of knowledge and experience in both traditional education and museums. We want the Heritage Center to be a community hub…a place where the community gathers, and learns more about our shared history in new and creative ways. I think Neal is just the person to help us achieve those goals.”

Matherne begins work at the Heritage Center on Tuesday, November 17.

The Cherokee Strip Regional Heritage Center is located a 507 S. Fourth St. in Enid. The Heritage Center and Humphrey Heritage Village are open Tuesday through Saturday, 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. The Cherokee Strip Regional Heritage Center is a division of the Oklahoma Historical Society. For more information, please call 580-237-1907 or visit www.csrhc.org.