In a year that the Royal Tyrrell Museum has been nominated for provincial and national awards, its executive director is being honoured at his high school.
Andrew Neuman, who has been director of the Royal Tyrrell Museum for the last four years, will be inducted into the Lindsay Thurber Comprehensive High School Hall of Fame.
The ceremony is this Friday at the Red Deer Memorial Centre.
“It is a big honour, it’s a big school and they cranked a lot of students through there,” said Neuman.
This year he will be inducted alongside Keith Pedersen, a music professor at Point Loma Nazarene University in San Diego.
Neuman grew up on a farm near Red Deer and graduated from Lindsay Thurber in 1974. He went on to graduate from Red Deer College and the University of Alberta in 1979. Neuman then continued on to earn his Masters in vertebrae palaeontology from the University of Alberta in 1986, and joined the Royal Tyrrell Museum shortly thereafter.
He was collections manager and curator of fossil fishes until 1998, and then became assistant director and head of collections and preservation. He succeeded Bruce Naylor as director in 2007.
Neuman will be among an esteemed collection of individuals who have excelled in their fields, locally and abroad.
Some of the inductees include former Governor General Roland Michener, world renowned architect Douglas Cardinal, NHL great Brian Sutter, Vice Chief of the Defense Staff Lieutenant-General George MacDonald, author of Why I Hate Canadians and winner of the Stephen Leacock Medal for Humour Will Ferguson.
“Some of the names on there I thought were quite impressive,” said Neuman.
The Lindsay Thurber Comprehensive High School Hall of Fame has existed since 1992.