Funded by the Institute of Museum and Library Services, the Access from the Ground Up project at the Palo Alto Junior Museum & Zoo (JMZ) seeks to better serve children with disabilities through a combination of partnerships with community, staff professional development and training, and the development of accessible STEM-focused exhibits and resources at the new JMZ facility, which opened in November 2021. This summative evaluation report seeks to answer the following evaluation questions:
To what extent does the Access from the Ground Up project build or strengthen relationships with
As it embarks on opening a new facility, the Palo Alto Junior Museum and Zoo will launch the "Access From the Ground Up" project to make the new facility and exhibitions accessible to everyone, and provide science learning opportunities to children with physical and developmental disabilities. The museum and zoo will build relationships with the Inclusion Collaborative of the Santa Clara County Office of Education and other partner organizations that serve visitors with disabilities; provide seven intensive training and professional development opportunities for staff members and volunteers to heighten their knowledge about contemporary access issues; and prototype, test, build, and remediate 27 new permanent exhibitions. The project will address the lack of quality STEM experiences for the growing number of children with a variety of disabilities, and is intended to serve as a national model for inclusion for museums and zoos of all types and sizes.
This research proposed a revised theory of how collective environmental identity is associated with engagement with the advancement of pro‐environmental behaviors. The research comprised three activities that examined the experiences of three groups of people who claim zoo visiting as an important part of their life‐story: conservation biologists who describe zoo experiences as having significant formative role in their childhood development of environmental values; parents who prioritize zoo visits as an important cultural experiences for their children; and active zoo volunteers. This
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TEAM MEMBERS:
Wildlife Conservation SocietyJohn Fraser
The University of Washington’s Museology Program, in partnership with the Woodland Park Zoo and the Learning in Informal and Formal Environments Research Center is developing a model of university-community collaboration where students work with client museums, zoos and aquaria to evaluate exhibits and programs under the guidance of a research mentor. Students will gain experience in audience research and evaluation, as well as in project management, collaboration, and leadership. Staff at participating museums will advance their personal knowledge about visitors and the field of museum evaluation. The project will prepare a new generation of evaluators and museum practitioners through an innovative apprentice-styled laboratory that integrates the strengths of mentoring, fieldwork, academics, and client-centered experiences. Project Advisors include John Falk, Julie Johnson, Randi Korn, Marjorie Schwarzer, and Patterson Williams. Project started January, 2009 with 24 graduate students in the first cadre.
Today, there exists a greater need to connect people to nature. Stemming from exploratory work into useful nature exhibit practices, the Wildlife Conservation Society aims to develop a new family exhibit–Safari Adventure–along with related programs and institutional practices, to better connect the families in our urban community to nature. This Logic Model outlines the impacts, activities, outputs, outcomes, and impacts for future development of this project, based on our exploratory investigation that included benchmarking trips, advisor and local educator workshops, community focus groups
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TEAM MEMBERS:
Wildlife Conservation SocietyLee Patrick
Supported by a grant from the Institute of Museum and Library Services (IMLS), the Safari Adventure Advisory Committee Workshop was held on March 11, 2013 at the Bronx Zoo, with the following experts and educators in the fields of children and nature education, hands-on and place-based learning, and digital learning: Professor Louise Chawla, educator David T. Sobel, Urban Assembly high school principal Mark Ossenheimer, researcher Ingrid Erickson, and noted author and environmentalist Richard Louv. Through this workshop, we obtained scholarly input for the purpose of assessing the conceptual
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TEAM MEMBERS:
Wildlife Conservation SocietyLee Patrick