US Department of Commerce Employee Profile
Kent Wang may be an intellectual property technologist at U.S. Department of Commerce
during the week, but during the weekends he enjoys volunteering up to four hours every two weeks to serve visitors from local communities and tourists from abroad. Since 1997, Kent has been a weekend volunteer docent at the National Air and Space Museum (NASM) flagship museum in downtown Washington, D.C., and also at the Udvar-Hazy Center in Dulles, Va.
The NASM is one large museum with two locations. Fat planes, skinny planes, angry planes, pretty planes, planes that fly high and planes that fly low, planes that go fast and planes that go slow--nearly 300 in all sit in the galleries throughout the downtown museum floor and hang dangling from the hangar roof so that visitors can view them in genuine flight poses.
Kent stands on the floor of the museum and moves slowly and surely around the "Spirit of St. Louis," the custom-built single-engine, single-seat monoplane that was flown solo by American aviator and inventor Charles Lindbergh on May 20, 1927, on the first non-stop flight from New York to Paris. Kent points to various spots on the plane and tells small stories about the aircraft, as if it were a living creature, gliding along smoothly, as though a successful flight meant as much to it as to Charles Lindbergh. The "Spirit of St. Louis" and other well-known pieces of history share the museum with their more famous relatives, such icons of flight as the Wright 1903 Flyer, the Bell X-1 Glamorous Glennis, the North American X-15, the Apollo 11 Command Module Columbia, and the rocket-powered SpaceShipOne, the first privately built and piloted vehicle to reach space.
Kent fell in love with both aviation and the Smithsonian Institute since he moved to Washington, D.C., in 1995. He was attracted to the NASM years ago and decided that he could best contribute to the future of aviation by joining the volunteer corps. In 1997, he began working as an Information Specialist at the Smithsonian. Most importantly, Kent was committed to serve as the focal point and personal face for all visitor activities at the museum.
When the Udvar-Hazy Center recruited docents prior to its opening in May 2003, Kent applied. He received an initial training combined with six months of classroom and "in-the-museum" instruction with a six-month apprenticeship led by an experienced docent. In 2004, Kent also received rigorous 13-week training in the downtown museum's artifacts, galleries, and research areas as well as on techniques for conducting effective tours. “The best part of the docent program is working with the always-willing and enthusiastic museum research staff,” said Kent of his training experience. “Opening up the eyes of visitors to the positive and interesting experiences the museums have to offer is illuminating and gratifying when you realize you have caught someone's attention."
Kent is a self-described "airplane nut," but one who knows a lot more than most visitors do about airplanes and has been willing to share that knowledge as a volunteer docent at the Smithsonian's museums. Ask Kent where to find any of the planes on display, and he will tell you exactly where to go, whether you need to go into a gallery at the downtown museum or the hangar at the Udvar-Hazy Center, and even where you'll find the best view.
Kent's method of bringing visitors in for a close look, and backing out for the big picture, mirrors the zoom-lens quality of the entire place. It is airplane overload, a feast for the eyes spread out from the world's largest museum and most modern hangar 28 miles away. "It doesn't matter which way you look, you'll always see something really fascinating here,” Kent says. “It's so much different than the other museums in the world. Whether you're standing up in the Milestone Gallery in the flagship museum downtown, or in the spacious entrance hall at the Udvar-Hazy Center, you can grab the whole picture and get a real good feel for the entire National Air and Space Museum right away."
Volunteers make up an extremely important part of the NASM. All guided-tours at the NASM are conducted by docents. Docents lead visitors toward a deeper understanding of museum artifacts and the history, people, and stories behind them. Over the last several years, Kent has been dedicated to exploring innovative ways to commemorate, educate, and inspire visitors from all over the world, providing visitors with an exciting and engaging experience that gives them a new understanding of the largest collection of historic air and spacecraft in the world.
US Department of Commerce Employee Profile:
Kent Wang, Intellectual Property Technologist and Aviation Enthusiast All in One - ( 10/04/2011)
Visitors are often intrigued when they see the X-35B, the Joint Strike Fighter, because it's not even in service yet.
Kent's tours enable visitors to find delight and understanding in their interaction with hundreds of aircraft, spacecraft, and associated artifacts. The centerpiece of the space hangar is the space shuttle Enterprise.
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