John Carroll University, Cleveland's International Women's Air and Space Museum and Cleveland Public Schools are partnering in a three-year project to provide a cross-age, collaborative exhibit development experience to increase young peoples' science understanding and interest in science and teaching careers. The program exposes 120+ high school and undergraduate women to the skills of educational program planning and implementation. Content includes science, technology, engineering and math related to flight, and the history and role of women in flight related careers. The project proposes a highly supportive learning environment with museum, science and education experts working alongside students at secondary and undergraduate levels to design exhibits that will meet the interest and needs of the museum, and the young children and families from Cleveland schools who visit. Through qualitative and quantitative methods, the evaluation will measure change in participant career interests, content understanding and perception of science, technology, engineering and math subjects, and skill development in presenting these concepts to public audience members. Public and professional audience experiences will also be evaluated. More than nine hundred local elementary school age children, their families and 15,000 general public audience members will participate in student-designed, museum-based exhibits and programs. Deliverables include a model for university/museum partnerships in providing exhibit development and science learning experiences, three team-developed permanent exhibits about flight and women in science, a set of biographies about women and flight in DVD format and three annual museum based community events. The model program will be informed by national advisors from museum/university partners across the United States who will attend workshops in connection with the projects public presentations in years one and two. These meetings will both provide opportunities to reflect on the program progress and to develop new strategies in the evolution of the program design. Workshop participants will develop plans to implement similar programs in their home locations, impacting another layer of public audiences. The transferability of the model to these new sites will be measured in year three of the proposal. An additional 25,000 participants are expected to be impacted in the five years following the grant period. Beyond the implementation sites, the model's impact will be disseminated by the PI and participants in the program through peer reviewed journals and presentations at national conferences.
This study was conducted as part of the formative evaluation of the NISE Network forum Privacy. Civil Liberties. Nanotechnology. The purpose of the forum was to bring members of the public together to discuss whether nanotechnology applications that could impact privacy should be used. During the course of the forum, participants learned about nanotechnology from expert speakers, learned about the societal and ethical implications of nanotechnology through the play Let Alone, had a chance to ask questions of the experts, participated in a small group discussion where they talked about the pros
Voyage of Discovery is a comprehensive and innovative project designed to provide K-12 youth in Baltimore City with an introduction to mathematics, engineering, technology, environmental science, and computer and information science, as it relates to the maritime and aerospace industries. The Sankofa Institute, in partnership with the Living Classrooms Foundation and a host of marine, informal science, community, and educational organizations, collaborate to make science relevant for inner-city youth by infusing science across the curriculum and by addressing aspects of history and culture. Youth are introduced to historical, current, and future innovations in shipbuilding as a means to learn the science, mathematics, and history associated with navigation, transportation, environmental science, and shipping. Activities will take place at the Frederick Douglass-Isaac Myers Maritime Park and Museum where students participate in intensive afterschool, Saturday, and summer sessions. Families are invited for pre-session orientation meetings and again at the end of each session to observe student progress. This project will provide over 3,900 K-12 youth with the opportunity to learn mathematics (algebra, geometry, and trigonometry), physics (gravity, density, mechanics), design, and estuarine biology while participating in hands-on sessions. Project deliverables include a 26-foot wooden boat, a working model of a dirigible, a submarine model, and pilot control panel models, all constructed by students and subsequently incorporated into exhibits at the USS Constellation Museum. The project also results in the production of two curricula--one each on celestial navigation and propulsion. Voyage of Discovery informs the literature on inquiry-based informal science education programs and strategies to engage minority and low-income youth in learning science and technology.
The Conservation Trust of Puerto Rico, Cornell Laboratory of Ornithology, the Interdisciplinary Center for Coastal Studies, New York Botanical Garden, Puerto Rico Youth at Risk, Boy Scouts, and others implemented a citizen science program for age 12 and older. This project targeted local residents, visitors to Hacienda La Esperanza Reserve, and members of community environmental projects on topics including archeology and human impacts on local ecosystems; conservation and restoration of wetlands; and shoreline and costal processes.
This two-hour documentary, John Muir in the New World [working title], shot on high definition for PBS' American Masters, will follow the life of the Scottish-American naturalist and place his writing, his beliefs, and his activism in the context of late 19th and 20th century American history. We will show how, through his writings and associations, Muir became an early and influential spokesman for the conservation movement of the United States. Visually, this film will be strongly rooted in the locations of Muir's life, from Scotland to California, which were the prime influences on his thinking and writing. While preparing this documentary, we will look specifically at the emergent field of environmental history and the new scholarship on the definition of wilderness.
The Oakland Museum of California (OMCA) seeks support to complete the reinstallation of its 25,800 square-foot permanent Gallery of California History and to develop and implement accompanying educational programs. OMCA’s history collections contain the largest, finest, and most comprehensive collection of California material culture anywhere. The Gallery of California History was originally created in the 1960s and 70s, and it has been more than 20 years since it has been updated. The new installation of the gallery will include approximately 2,200 historical artifacts, works of art, ethnographic materials, and original photographs. This reinstallation is part of a major transformation of the entire museum that will realize the institution’s deep and continuing commitment to telling the full story of California and its people. The opening of the new Gallery of California History is planned for early 2010.
This project will reinterpret a significant property owned by Historic Hudson Valley (HHV). Using as a focusing device the experiences of four women who shaped this country estate during its 200-year history, the new interpretation will illustrate important turning points in American attitudes toward nature and landscape. As it forges a more integrated, effective way for house museums to interpret the built and natural environments, HHV will strive to help visitors understand how American points of view about landscape and nature have changed over time and why those shifts matter. Project formats include an interpretive tour of the nearly 400-acre site; web-based programs and blog; and publications. The story of Montgomery Place reflects many of the ideas and values that have shaped America’s land and people. The project addresses how cultural attitudes toward the natural world determine human actions, and how these actions in turn affect people’s environments.
Today's Brooklyn Navy Yard is a rarity: a 19th-century citadel of the Industrial Revolution reincarnated as a model of clean industrial re-use in the 21st century. A historic national icon, the Yard has long been a mystery to its neighbors. Now, for the first time since 1801, BNYDC is inviting the public in and offering a unique and remarkable venue where the Yard can tell its many stories, most for the first time. On September 7, 2011 (Labor Day), BNYDC will open the Brooklyn Navy Yard Center at Building 92, a visitor center and home of a new exhibition, The Brooklyn Navy Yard: Past, Present, and Future.
The Friends of the C&TSRR, a non-profit 50l(c)(3) dedicated to preserving and interpreting the Cumbres & Toltec Scenic Railroad (C&TSRR), will advance its interpretive programs to complete the schematic design phase of a permanent exhibition planned for a proposed Railroad Visitor Center in Chama, NM; and to acquire the humanities expertise necessary to further develop and implement interpretive content and planning for this and other key sites along the C&TSRR's 64-mile route winding through the San Juan Mountains of Northern NM and Southern CO. The C&TSRR is a designated National Park Service National Historic Site. The C&TSRR, successor to the original Denver & Rio Grande Railroad-San Juan Extension built in 1880, operates today as a 64-mile "living museum" - a coal-fired, steam-powered narrow gauge railroad between Chama, NM and Antonito, CO.
The Adirondack Museum at Blue Mountain Lake, New York will develop Mining in the Adirondacks, a multi-faceted project that will include a 29,000 square foot permanent exhibit, an interactive web site module, curriculum development, and public programming. The exhibition will feature approximately 300 objects from the Adirondack Museum collection, including a tuyere plate, miners’ safety gear, picks and drills, historic photographs, an ore cart, maps, iron pigs, garnet jewelry, household items and audio recordings. A mining tunnel, open pit and mine village landscape will be incorporated to provide an immersive experience for visitors. The Mining in the Adirondacks project seeks to interpret the history of mining in the Adirondack wilderness grounded in current scholarship, best museum practice, visitor studies research, and understanding of varied learning styles. Four humanities scholars will work with museum staff.
The Chicago Architecture Foundation will produce "One Nation, Under Construction," a weekly web and radio broadcast program that engages people in learning the stories behind the building – conceptual and physical – of America’s spaces, places, and structures. Each week, the show will address a humanities theme through exploration of architecture, infrastructure, urban history, planning, and landscape. While drawing on the latest scholarship, each 60-minute broadcast will surprise, engage, and move viewers as it investigates the link between the ways of building and the values of the builders. The innovative power of this project derives from its approach –featuring the everyday voices and stories that illuminate humanities themes discussed by featured scholars and experts – combined with an internet-based strategy linked to a national scholarly network and the Chicago Architecture Foundation's extensive programming.
The Rochester Museum & Science Center (RMSC) requests funding to complete initial plans for Innovation Place (working title), a major new 10,000 sq. ft. exhibition in RMSC’s third floor galleries that promotes understanding of Rochester’s technological history and its culture of invention and innovation. Collections objects, immersive environments, multimedia presentations, and interactives will be used to tell stories of invention and innovation from Rochester’s beginnings as the nation’s first boomtown after the opening of the Erie Canal to its current rank among the top knowledge-based economies in the world. By combining the sciences and the humanities into a single exhibition, this project will critically frame and interpret new questions about Rochester as a laboratory of significant technologies – on the local, national, and global levels – and the changes in regional culture and economics that both inspire, and result from, their invention.