Coworkers of Joseph Peterson, instructor of the Introduction to Oceanography class that was attacked Thursday, reacted to their friend’s injury and the tragedy at NIU.

Peterson, a graduate student working towards his doctorate at NIU, works at Rockford’s Burpee Museum of Natural History as a research assistant and does work with the museum in Montana. Peterson was a member of the excavation team from the Burpee who excavated Jane, the juvenile dinosaur T-rex, which is the most complete adolescent T-rex skeleton found to date.

Scott Williams, Burpee’s collections manager, said he had just e-mailed Peterson about the museum’s Paleofest event that morning to have his students come to Rockford for the event.

When news about NIU first reached Williams, he expressed concern for his coworkers.

“Everyone associated with the lab goes down [to NIU],” Williams said.

On Friday morning, Williams said Peterson was in good condition and laying low to compose himself with regard to what happened. Williams said major television networks were at Peterson’s home until 3 a.m.

“The media was right on him,” said Williams.

Peterson started as a volunteer at Burpee in junior high school.

“He was a kid that got interested in dinosaurs and never really left here,” Williams said.

In high school, Peterson raised money to go on a dig with Robert T. Bakker, a famous paleontologist, Williams said. Peterson was hired by Burpee to clean and prepare fossils as an undergraduate, and he graduated from Southern Illinois University Carbondale with a degree in geology.

Mike Henderson, curator of Earth Sciences at Burpee, along with fellow employees – Mindy Householder, senior anthropology and biological sciences double, and Katie Tremaine, junior environmental geology major at NIU – were on campus Thursday. Tremaine and Henderson had just arrived, while Householder was in Cole Hall when the shooting began.

Williams and Tremaine said they were worried about Henderson, who was also on campus to instruct a geology course. Tremaine said she had heard it was a geology class attacked and that it was a class taught in Cole Hall, so she knew it was Peterson’s course.

Henderson said he arrived on campus around 3:15 p.m. and saw police and fire trucks arriving on campus.

“I thought, ‘What the heck is going on?'” he said. Henderson said a student told him that someone was shot in a class.

Henderson said the staff at the geology office initially thought Peterson was killed.

“Everybody was real concerned for Joe” he said.

Williams said he had heard conflicting reports that Peterson was dead, had been shot and injured or was fine.

“There was about three hours of limbo as to what happened to Joe and his condition,” Henderson said.

Burpee employees confirmed Peterson’s status when they read the Chicago Sun-Times online interview with Peterson.

Peterson was discharged Thursday night from the hospital.

Tremaine said she was on the side of the parking garage facing Cole Hall speaking with a supervisor at another job when she heard the news of the attack. She said she saw students running from Cole Hall and flagging down a Huskie bus. She said she spent the night active on Facebook and e-mail.

Williams said the Burpee paleontology lab employees placed a few black ribbons around the museum and he plans to place a donation box near the front desk.

Henderson is still conflicted about the shooting.

“Why would [the shooter] drive all the way from Champaign to do this?” Henderson asked. “This is a terrible tragedy nobody should have to go through.”