PRI Staff Spotlight - Meet Jon Hendricks!
Last updated September 17, 2020
Welcome to our first Staff Spotlight! Today we’d like to introduce you to Jonathan Hendricks, our Director of Science Communication at PRI and the mastermind behind Earth@Home! Jon has been wearing many different hats lately, one being website developer. For the past several months he has been building earthathome.org, the free online toolkit for learning about Earth and it’s 4.5 billion-year history, which was successfully launched in late August.
Aside from fun projects like Earth@Home, Jon’s responsibilities include leading PRI's publication program, managing the Digital Atlas of Ancient Life project, looking after PRI's library and archive collections, managing PRI's blog, assisting with the development of our online and physical exhibits, and conducting paleontological research on fossil snails.
How did he manage to develop an entire website in his “spare time” at PRI you ask? Jon took advantage of the user friendliness of modern website building platforms and “clicked buttons until things looked good,” as he puts it. We consider that a skill! In addition, he pulled from his former experience as an Associate Professor of Geology at San Jose State University, which helped him understand how to organize content and make it engaging for users.
Screenshot of Earth@Home homepage.
Why did he take on Earth@Home? Well, PRI has been a national leader in the development of high-quality educational materials related to Earth science for over 20 years (for example our Teacher Friendly Guides to Earth Science and Climate Change). A lot of that content, however, is currently locked away in print publications or is only available in static PDF files. Jon envisions Earth@Home as an opportunity for PRI to integrate and build upon these resources, as well as to share them with a wider audience.
“The core mission of the Earth@Home project is the same as the core missions of PRI itself: ‘increase knowledge, educate society, and encourage wise stewardship of the Earth,’" he says.
Jon is very excited about the future of Earth@Home, as he is continuously developing it and adding content. “Earth@Home has just begun” he says, “but we've added core components to give people an idea of what we hope it will eventually become.”
He is specifically excited to see the "Here on Earth" component be developed. This resource will eventually allow anyone in the United States to learn about geology where they live. There are a lot of websites out there about geologically charismatic places, for example the Grand Canyon, but PRI wants everyone to learn that the place where they live also has an awesome geologic history, even if there is no rock in sight.