The New York Botanical Garden (NYBG) will plan, implement, and evaluate educational programming for its upcoming garden-wide exhibition, "Frida Kahlo's Garden." The programming and interpretation will create an immersive, compelling, interdisciplinary learning experience that merges arts, humanities, and science themes. Programming will celebrate Mexican culture, immersing visitors in the music, dance, food, and fashion that influenced Kahlo and continues to inspire people today. Through the exhibit and programming, visitors will gain insight into the impact of Kahlo's interest in the natural world on her artwork; understand the continuing impact of Mexican nature, nationalism, and intellectual history on arts and culture; and make personal connections between art, nature, and their own lives. The project will also provide a model for other botanical gardens to use to create interdisciplinary exhibitions.
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TEAM MEMBERS:
Karen Daubmann
resourceprojectProfessional Development, Conferences, and Networks
The goals of this workshops project are: (1) to provide collaborative professional development opportunities for 24 early professional social science researchers, and science writers and communicators, and (2) to foster a stronger and durable "community of practice" between the fields of science policy research and science communications for the purposes of helping the general public better understand and become engaged with major issues of science and innovation policy. In addition to the PI and co-PI, involved in the work will be: twelve science policy scholars and twelve science communications professionals (writers, bloggers, museum educators, and others); mentors; editors of major science publications; several guest observers from university writing programs around the country; and graduate students who will help document and video record the activities. Project activities include a suite of opportunities: two, four-day workshops; mentorship support; publication in hard copy and online of their articles in a special edition of Creative Nonfiction magazine; and public engagement experiences at Science Cafes around the country. These workshops and accompanying activities will continue to develop a strong foundation for the establishment of nascent collaborations of science policy scholars, science communicators, and informal science education professionals, whose partnerships should position them better to inform and engage the public on important science policy issues of our times.
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TEAM MEMBERS:
Lee GutkindDavid Guston
resourceprojectProfessional Development, Conferences, and Networks
The Atomic Heritage Foundation is conducting a two-day conference in Washington, D.C. that brings together scholars, researchers and informal science education professionals to explore new approaches to engage the public in issues at the interface of science and society. The conference will consider recent scholarship about the legacy of the Manhattan Project during and post WWII and address how questions about science and society raised by the development of the atomic bomb can inform and be integrated with contemporary issues. Also attending the conference will be representatives from the American Science and Energy Museum in Oak Ridge, TN, the Los Alamos Historical Society in Los Alamos, NM, the National Museum of Nuclear Science and History in Albuquerque, NM, and the Columbia River Exhibition on Science, History and Technology in Richland, WA. This exploratory workshop is intended both to advance the inter-disciplinary scholarship and to generate innovative ideas and recommendations for the development of exhibits, programs and media about this topic and its relevance to the 21st Century. The focus is not about presenting the underlying science of nuclear fission or energy, for example, but speaks to the greater challenges that emerge when presenting issues raised by science in the broader context of history, society and culture. Given the goals and inter-disciplinary nature of the topic and the diversity of the expertise of participating professionals, the workshop is being supported by the Informal Science Education program in the Directorate for Education and Human Resources (EHR) and the Science, Technology and Society Program in the Directorate for Social, Behavioral and Economic Sciences (SBE).
Currently, many museums present histories of science and technology, but very few are integrating scientific activity--observation, measurement, experimentation-with the time- and place-specific narratives that characterize history-learning experiences. For the Prairie Science project, Conner Prairie is combining proven science center-style activities, developed by the Science Museum of Minnesota, with family-engagement strategies developed through extensive research and testing with audiences in historical settings. The goal of this integration is to create guest experiences that are rich in both STEM and historical content and encourage family learning. One key deliverable of this project is the Create.Connect gallery, which is currently installed at Conner Prairie. Create.Connect allows the project team to evaluate and research hands-on activities, facilitation strategies and historic settings to understand how these elements combine to encourage family conversations and learning around historical narratives and STEM content. For example, in one exhibit area families can experiment with creating their own efficient wind turbine designs while learning about the innovations of the Flint & Walling windmill manufacturing company from Indiana. The activity is facilitated by a historic interpreter portraying a windmill salesman from 1900. The interpreter not only guides the family though the process of scientific inquiry, but shares his historic perspective on wind power as well. Two other exhibit areas invite hands-on exploration of electrical circuits and forces in motion as they connect to stories from Indiana history. Evaluation and research findings from the Create.Connect exhibit will be used to develop a model that can guide other history institutions that want to incorporate STEM content and thinking into their exhibits and interpretation. By partnering with the Science Museum of Minnesota, we will combine the experience of science center professionals and history museum professionals to find the best practices for incorporating science activities into historic settings. To ensure that this dissemination model is informed from many perspectives, Conner Prairie has invited the participation of four history museums: The Museum of America and the Sea, Mystic, Connecticut; the California State Railroad Museum, Sacramento, California; the Wabash County Historical Society, Wabash, Indiana; and the Oliver H. Kelley Farm, Elk River, Minnesota. Each of the four participants will install history-STEM exhibit components which will be connected to location-specific historic narratives. Drawing on the staff experience and talents of participant museums, this project will develop realistic solutions to an array of anticipated barriers. These issues and the resulting approaches will become part of a stronger, more adaptable dissemination model that will support history museums in creating STEM-based guest experiences.
This award addresses the archaeological issues surrounding the ancestral Pueblo people and their Neolithic revolution or disappearance from the Mesa Verde region of southwestern US. The research describes the people, their living conditions and the environment, their impact on the region and the reason for their exodus to form new societies such as the Tewa-Pueblo society. The research and its results are significant, from both an archaeological and socio-cultural standpoint. An exhibit is planned, to explain and inform the public, in the History Colorado Center in Denver, Colorado, that will transfer this cultural knowledge to the under-served public including Native American and numerous rural residents. The effort is a collaborative endeavor involving the Crow Canyon Archaeological Center in Cortez, Colorado and the new History Colorado Center. The exhibit will feature a typical living area, a scientific area with discussion of tree rings, and an area for discussion with scientific experts. In addition, the deliverable will include a website for further discussion with scientist and for accessing the latest research efforts. The evaluation of this project is extensive starting from an overall evaluation of the museum itself and how to make this exhibit a significant part of the museum, pleasing to the audiences and how to improve its impact once the exhibit is open.
The ScienceMakers: African Americans and Scientific Innovation is a three-year project designed to increase awareness of the contributions of African American scientists, raise awareness of STEM careers, and increase understanding of STEM concepts through the creation of education, media, and career resources. The project team is supplemented with an extensive advisory board of STEM education, museum, and community professionals, as well as representatives from partnering science centers. Project partners include the St. Louis Science Center, Liberty Science Center, New York Hall of Science, Pacific Science Center, Franklin Institute, COSI Columbus, Lawrence Hall of Science, SciWorks, Detroit Science Center, and MOSI Chicago. Additional collaborators include middle and high schools with high minority populations. Project deliverables include a fully accessible multi-media archive of video oral histories of 180 African American scientists and web resources and contests utilizing Web 2.0 and 3.0 applications such as social networking tools that foster engagement and build community around the ScienceMakers. Public programs for youth and adults at science museums, after-school programs, and community organizations highlight African American contributors, and encourage interest in science and science careers and the ScienceMakers DVD Toolkit expand the reach of this innovative project. Intended impacts for youth and adults consist of increased awareness of STEM concepts and career options, exposure to African American scientists, awareness of the contributions of minority scientists, and 21st century skills. Intended impacts on professional audiences include increased awareness and understanding of STEM careers and workforce diversity, 21st century skills, and STEM career options. The project evaluation, conducted by Knight-Williams Research Communications, utilizes a mixed-methods approach. The evaluation assesses the impact of the oral history archive, public programs, and other deliverables on public and professional audiences' knowledge, interest, and awareness of the contributions of African American scientists, STEM concepts, and STEM careers. The evaluation also includes an ethnography which examines factors that contribute to success in STEM careers by African-American scientists. The ScienceMakers significantly expands the world\'s largest searchable oral history archive and may have an enduring impact on research and practice in the field of informal science education. The project has the potential to enrich programs and exhibits, while raising awareness of the contributions of African-American scientists among informal science education professionals and the general public.
This Full-Scale Informal Science Education award focuses on the physical and social science surrounding the extraction of natural gas from the Marcellus shale formation beneath the surface in north central and western Pennsylvania. The project targets the adult residents of the impacted or soon-to-be-impacted areas of Pennsylvania. This is a complex project involving the disciplines of geology, engineering, chemistry, social science, performance, and land management. Further, the project team includes a mix of physical scientists, educators, theater arts faculty, social scientists and engineers from Pennsylvania State University, the Pennsylvania State Cooperative Extension Service, and Juniata College. The project addresses several potential barriers to communication of science to the public. The proposal team provides four entry points for citizens of rural Pennsylvania to engage in learning about energy, its needs in the Nation, the economics behind these needs, the geology of the shale deposit and how to have productive discussions and make decisions using science-based evidence. The project will engage a multitude of communication mechanisms such as forums, community meetings, theater performances, data centers, blogs and workshops. The Pennsylvania State Extension will play a central role in working at the local level. The project is a complex effort wherein the residents of north central and western Pennsylvania will learn about the science and policies of natural gas extraction and how to derive and use scientific information for decision making. The proposal team will learn how to work and communicate with rural citizens. Further, the team will derive a variety of models from these activities that are likely to be adaptable for use in other areas of the Nation that have natural gas deposits.
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TEAM MEMBERS:
Michael ArthurDouglas MillerJo BrasierRenae Youngs
Soundprint Media Center, Inc. and RLPaul Productions, produced a cross-media package that includes a website (capecosmos.org), radio programs, and museum-based family events related to the 50th anniversary of the Space Program. The project, Out of This World (OOTW), is a program that sought to stimulate interest in science by presenting the little known stories of African-Americans and women who contributed to the U.S. Space program, and to provide historical context for the scope and reach of the nascent aerospace science program. Through radio documentaries and collaborations with science centers and museums, including the Smithsonian's National Air and Space Museum (NASM), OOTW broke new ground in developing an integrated media project that reached different audiences. The deliverables included: three radio documentaries (; an educational DVD package with 20 video mini-documentaries, curator interviews with space research pioneers and a learning guide; an interactive website that recreates a space mission circa 1961, and a series of live two-way video conferences between NASM and some 14 partner museums and science centers. OOTW used the power of investigative journalism and the reach of public radio and local science museums to connect with adults and school-age children, to cut across demographic categories, and to include a significant number of minority and at-risk children.
THE POWER TO HEAL (working title) is a 90-minute documentary on the dramatic yet largely untold story of how American hospitals were desegregated in the mid-1960s. With the active help of the civil rights movement and using Medicare as the lever, the U.S. government successfully desegregated thousands of hospitals in just a few months. Through eyewitness narratives, historians, scholars, photos, films and other period materials, we follow inspectors into the field, black and white doctors and nurses providing care and filing discrimination complaints, and senior federal officials charged with carrying out LBJ’s explicit policies. The film honors the 50th anniversaries of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and the 1965 legislation creating Medicare, and draws on significant humanities perspectives in American, civil rights, and health care history with particular focus on the legacy of Lyndon Johnson and the work still being done to achieve equality in health care.
In collaboration with the libraries of Oklahoma State University (OSU) and Mount Holyoke College, the American Library Association proposes a traveling exhibit and public programs for 40 libraries examining the history and legacy of the Dust Bowl. The project spotlights Ken Burns' film "The Dust Bowl," and brings to public view two little known Dust Bowl archives: online oral history interviews of Dust Bowl survivors at OSU, and letters and essays of Caroline Henderson, a Mount Holyoke alumna who farmed in Oklahoma throughout the Dust Bowl. Libraries will display the exhibit for 6 weeks and present at least 3 public humanities programs from a list provided. The project humanities themes include the interaction between humans and nature; the different ways human beings respond to adversity; and how people living in the Dust Bowl tried to understand their social, economic, and ecological environment.
The Pratt Museum will design and fabricate exhibits in its new museum facility in Homer, Alaska. This region is home to culturally diverse coastal communities which make their living predominantly from the sea. The exhibits will awaken a sense of connectedness between people and place and provide a variety of avenues for visitors to experience the stories of the Kachemak Bay region of South Central Alaska. The overall objectives of the exhibition are to present a personal perspective, a sense of place, and a responsibility to self and community. A balance of presentation will accomplish these goals. This grant will help fund: 1) workshops for the staff planning team, evaluator, and the design team, 2) design of the exhibition, 3) fabrication and installation in the Museum’s Main Gallery and adjacent spaces, and 4) gallery guides for selected themes.
This project will design an ambitious multi-partner, multi-format, multi-venue project focused on the Arizona-Sonora borderlands. The project combines experienced co-directors and leading borderland scholars with more than a dozen Historical and Cultural Organizations (HCOs) in small and mid-sized communities to explore and interpret the unique cultures, history, and physical landscapes of the region. The project aims to foster historical perspectives on the international border, cross-cultural understanding, and a deeper sense of place among the region’s residents and visitors. A suite of interrelated physical and digital products will elaborate five themes: the border through time; bridging cultures across borders; nature and history—ties that bind; shared identity amid social diversity; and a storied landscape. Formats include an interpretive website and digital archive; a traveling exhibit co-hosted/produced with our HCO partners; and community sponsored public programs.