Presenting the Capacity Building for Youth Civic Leadership for Issues in Science and Society (CYCLIST) toolkit! Here on the CYCLIST leadership team, it is our hope that this toolkit will help educators incorporate civic engagement into their programming.
CYCLIST’S leadership organizations include the New England Aquarium, The Wild Center, and Action for the Climate Emergency (ACE). Partner organizations include the Mote Marine Laboratory and Aquarium, the Audubon Nature Institute, the Saint Louis Zoo, and the Woodland Park Zoo. This diverse group of organizations collaborated to provide
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
The Marine Discovery Center, a new, interactive 16,000 sq. ft. exhibition space will replace Feiro Marine Life Center’s existing 40-year-old facility. The planning of this accessible exhibition experience will prioritize engaging visitor connections to the ocean environment by improving scientific literacy skills, increasing awareness of historical and recent regional Tribal knowledge, encouraging stewardship actions in the marine environment, and developing deeper understandings of important local species. The Marine Discovery Center is a joint venture of Feiro Marine Life Center, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA)’s Olympic Coast National Marine Sanctuary, and Olympic Coast National Marine Sanctuary Foundation.
Monroe County’s Seneca Park Zoo will modernize the guest experience in the zoo’s Animal Hospital to increase accessibility and promote visitor engagement. The project will address existing barriers to visitor participation and engagement by updating the educational graphics and incorporating new technology into the exhibit to create a multisensory experience that engages visitors of all education levels, interests, and abilities. The modernized Animal Hospital will benefit the zoo’s 400,000 annual visitors and help accomplish its strategic goals of compelling storytelling and providing exceptional educational experiences to inspire conservation action.
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.
With funding from the Institute of Museum and Library Services’ (IMLS) Museums for America program, the Cincinnati Zoo & Botanical Garden (Zoo) undertook a process of improving the interpretive experience of its Wings of the World exhibit, which concluded in summer 2018. The updated exhibition sought to enhance families’ connections to nature and inspire them to become better bird neighbors, in direct alignment with the Zoo’s strategic planning.
In collaboration with the Zoo, the Lifelong Learning Group (LLG) conducted formative and summative evaluation in spring and summer 2018. The
With funding from the Institute of Museum and Library Services’ (IMLS) Museums for America program, the Cincinnati Zoo & Botanical Garden (Zoo) undertook a process of improving the interpretive experience of its Wings of the World exhibit. This effort seeks to enhance families’ connections to nature and inspire them to become better bird neighbors, which is in direct alignment with the Zoo’s strategic planning.
In collaboration with the Zoo, the Lifelong Learning Group (LLG) conducted a formative evaluation. Formative evaluation was framed by an overarching question: does Wings of the World
The Cincinnati Zoo & Botanical Garden has placed a strategic focus on becoming more guest-focused, which includes tailoring interpretive exhibits to engage families, our primary audience. The Wings of the World exhibit building was reinterpreted to create meaningful experiences that connect families to nature through birds and inspire them to become better bird neighbors. As guests navigate the building, which reopened in April 2018, they observe more than 50 bird species from across the globe while making connections to local birds.
Over three years, Zoo guests participated in development and design through focus groups, prototyping, observations, interviews, and exit questionnaires to shape and assess the final interpretive design. Innovative opportunities to promote family interaction include an immersive, interpretive space where guests role play as a flock of migratory birds facing challenges along their journey, such as avoiding collisions with glass and finding suitable habitat. Each challenge teaches guests how they can make this journey easier for birds by addressing that particular issue in their own home. Guests can also practice their local bird identification skills by playing “Guess Who? Name that Cincinnati Bird.” And they are invited to pledge to take action on behalf of birds.
Results from evaluation conducted by Lifelong Learning Group suggest that Wings of the World successfully engages family groups. Guests took away a strong understanding of the general messages of the exhibit space, with enough specificity to articulate key conservation actions they could take to become better bird neighbors. The strongest successes in messaging were those that were cross-cutting and visible throughout the whole space: improving awareness related to bird diversity, encouraging visitors to pay closer attention to birds around them, and inspiring a connection to nature.
Since 2005, the IMLS Office of Museum Services has funded research projects under the auspices of the National Leadership Grant program. These grants support projects that ‘raise the bar’ in museum research and practice. Funded projects have national impact and generate findings that, through broad dissemination, move the field forward. This project was funded in the program’s inaugural round. Why Zoos and Aquariums Matter: Working with Community Perceptions to Achieve Your Goals draws on the illuminating research conducted as part of the IMLS-funded study. Its findings provide useful
Federal support for museums through the Institute for Museum and Library Services (IMLS) is based on the premise that museums are valuable community organizations providing rich opportunities for learning and civic engagement. Yet, until recently, there has been a paucity of systematic and evidence-based research on the public impact of museums. Therefore, since 2005, the IMLS Office of Museum Services has funded research projects under the auspices of the National Leadership Grant program. These grants support projects that ‘raise the bar’ in museum research and practice. Funded projects have
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TEAM MEMBERS:
John H FalkKerry BronnenkantCynthia VernonJoseph Heimlich
Poet’s House, a preeminent poetry library in New York City, will collaborate with ten public libraries and zoos across the United States to support library-zoo partnerships in five cities. The project teams will install exhibitions that use poetry as an interpretive tool to deepen visitor thinking about wildlife and conservation in each zoo. This project follows a year-long planning grant funded by IMLS and extends the success of an IMLS-funded partnership in New York City between Poets House and the Wildlife Conservation Society’s Central Park Zoo, which pioneered the installation of poetry in the zoo. The new project will create a set of models and tools for developing strong collaborations and exhibits by carefully documenting the process of building these partnerships and evaluating their impact on visitors, the community, and professional audiences.
Lincoln Park Zoo will upgrade and make freely available ZooMonitor, a scientific data collection tool, which currently exists in a pilot version, for monitoring the behavior of animals in zoos and aquariums, . ZooMonitor will contain modules for tracking animal behavior and body condition and for conducting data analysis. The zoo will also integrate a platform for securely storing an institution's data. With these modifications, ZooMonitor will be rigorously tested by industry partners, translated for both Apple and Android devices, and made available for free public download. ZooMonitor will enable any zoo or aquarium, regardless of collection size, budget, or number of staff, to develop a routine monitoring program—improving the lives of hundreds of thousands of animals across the country and around the world.