On January 24, 2012, Cheryl Lani Juárez, the Museum’s Sr. Director of Professional Development, was invited to speak with Univision’s highly popular national radio host Dr. Isabel Gómez-Bassols. The interview focused on the role science centers and museums play in engaging families in science, technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM) during out of school time learning.
Ms. Juarez talked about some of the Miami Science Museum’s educational programs as examples of how science museums can reach learners of all ages in their communities. For example, the Miami Science Museum developed ECHOS (Early Childhood Hands-On Science), a preschool science curriculum and professional development model that is currently being tested with Head Start teachers and children in classrooms throughout Miami-Dade County. The Museum also developed APEX (Afterschool Program Exploring Science) for K-5 students. Dr. Isabel was especially interested in the Museum’s Upward Bound Math and Science program, which has helped prepare over 500 low income, first-generation college bound students for postsecondary study in STEM fields.
Dr. Isabel’s program is part of Univision’s national education campaign, entitled Es el Momento and funded by the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation. Univisión is committed to disseminating educational information through all their media platforms including television, radio and web, to raise general awareness of resources available to address the Latino education crisis in STEM fields.
If you ever wondered what your science teacher does for fun on Saturdays, take a look at these teachers playing with their spinning tops and making salt dance to the music of Pink! Thanks to the GPEX Science Collaborative Curriculum Challenge Grant, funded by the Florida Department of Education, 25 teachers of gifted student programs from five Title-I Miami-Dade County Public elementary schools participated in a professional development event using the Museum’s APEX Sience Curriculum (After-school Program Exploring Science). This professional development provided by the Miami Science Museum took place on two Saturdays in January and February. It was designed to provide teachers with hands-on interaction with the APEX Science curriculum materials as well as address the science content and inquiry-based teaching and learning strategies that accompany the inquiry-based program. The gifted program teachers at each of the GPEX Science target schools will use the knowledge they gained at the museum and will work collaboratively in order to adapt and extend the APEX Curriculum to meet the needs of gifted students. This is the second year that the Museum has collaborated with Miami-Dade County Public Schools to provide science training for talented and gifted program teachers; last year’s cohort of teachers represented ten elementary schools throughout the county.
Want to take a rocket trip back in time? We recently discovered a reel of tape 54 years old, with a faded label reading “Rocket Trip 1958.” At this time, the Miami Science Museum was housed at its old location, the Miami Women’s Club, and this reel is a tape of the planetarium show of the day. This reel, the oldest one found to date, appears to have been created in conjunction with WKAT, which in 1958 was one of the most popular AM radio stations in Miami. The show on this tape was most likely one of the last planetarium shows run at the old Miami Science Museum location. After it was found, the tape was transferred in-house here at the Museum using an Akai reel to reel and processed using Audacity software. The beginning of the show is missing, but have a listen to the show and the old time radio sound effects. It is a trip!
Our Senior Vice President of Education, Dr. Judy Brown, recently had the honor of being invited to serve on the National Advisory Committee for Early Learning in Museums in Washington, DC. Dr. Brown currently leads the Museum’s research and development project Early Childhood Hands-On Science (ECHOS). A collaboration with the University of Miami’s College of Arts and Sciences, the project is funded by the US Department of Education’s Institute of Education Science. ECHOS is a pre-school science early intervention program for Head Start children, and a work force development program for Head Start teachers and teacher assistants. ECHOS brings the Museum’s hands-on learning approach into preschool community centers across Miami-Dade County. The project combines two of Judy’s passions and areas of expertise: informal museum education and early childhood learning. She traveled to Washington to join other leading museum educators and researchers on the advisory committee, in order to share our research as well as to help design an upcoming early childhood space in the American History Museum. Judy will continue to advise the Smithsonian on the upcoming National Symposium on Early Learning in Museums. If you’ve ever wondered who gets to be a part of guiding the national conversation on early learning, we are doing pioneering work right here at our Museum.
Today a group of visitors with the Hialeah Housing Authority were seen enjoying the LEGO table in the Museum and, together, created buildings, houses and other carefully constructed structures.
“When you get to be our age, you have to keep your mind young by learning new things, having new experiences and staying active,” said Sarah Navarro. “We are having so much fun building and creating here. This is my first time at the Museum but I will definitely be back.”
Stop by the Museum and let the kid in you loose! You might even learn a thing or two while you’re having fun.
“You can never stop learning. The opportunity to learn new things is all around us,” said Raquel Alonso. “Learning keeps the mind sharp.”
Just a couple hour drive north of the Miami Science Museum is one of the most iconic places in the U.S. Space Program – NASA’s Kennedy Space Center, where shuttles and rockets have been launched into space since the 1960s. Just down the road from the KSC Visitor Center is the Astronaut Hall of Fame, which celebrates the men and women who have ventured into the frontiers of space. Recently, staff from the Museum’s Center for Interactive Learning visited Kennedy Space Center and the Astronaut Hall of Fame to meet with their informal science education team and contract partners from Delaware North, in order to explore possibilities for collaborating on the development of educational programs and interactive exhibits. The Museum has already been the recipient of two recent NASA grants, including Youth EXPO: Youth Exploring the Potential of Virtual Worlds, funded by the Competitive Program for Science Museums and Planetariums; and EarthLab Miami, a NASA Summer of Innovation Capacity Building grant. What an awesome potential opportunity to combine forces!
Museum staff Ted Myers, Lindsay Bartholomew, and Isabel Leeder at the Astronaut Hall of Fame
On Saturday February 4 we kicked off the spring Digital Wave Saturday Design Studio. This semester, groups will develop 3D virtual world exhibits of south Florida’s waterways, from the Kissimmee River and the Upper Chain of Lakes, through Lake Okeechobee, the Everglades, mangrove coasts, and out to sea and the coral reefs. The class will focus on how these systems are connected, and how climate change might impact them in the future. This week, we started off by creating models of aquifers, which are natural underground water reservoirs. We learned that the Biscayne Aquifer in south Florida is an example of an unconfined aquifer – the top portion is the water table and it merges with Biscayne Bay and the Atlantic Ocean. This means that the water supply can be easily contaminated. It also means that the more water we use, and the higher the sea levels rise, the more salt water will intrude into the wells which provide us with fresh water. So who’s on board with us to conserve water?
The Museum’s Upward Bound program is all about helping underprivileged youth aspire to great levels of achievement in education and in the workplace. Thanks to a generous grant and four-year partnership with the AT&T ASPIRE program, the Museum was able to double the number of 9th and 10th graders enrolled in its Upward Bound Math & Science program. Over the four years, the awarded grant of $398,214 has allowed the Museum to hire up to four mentors each year as well as a full-time staff member whose focus is college counseling, in order to improve the participants’ ability to compete for entry into college.
“This program reached out to me and gave me the support and confidence to become the person I am today, which is a strong African American girl that knows where her path lies. My path lies down the road of success, achievements and accomplishment,” said Jessica Joseph, Upward Bound Math & Science participant class of 2011.
From Left to Right: Steve Solomon and Elise Dubois from AT&T; Joshua Reid, Upward Bound student; Gillian Thomas, Museum President and CEO; and Amy Rubinson, Director of Youth Development
AT&T’s ASPIRE program is a $100 million initiative that addresses high school success as well as college and workforce readiness. It is the company’s most significant education initiative to date and one of the largest corporate commitments ever to address high school success and workforce readiness. The program is centered on four key components:
Awarding grants to school districts, school district foundations and nonprofit organizations focused on preparing students for college and/or the workforce.
Providing job-shadowing opportunities for 100,000 students, in conjunction with Junior Achievement Worldwide, giving students the chance to see firsthand the job skills needed to be successful in the future.
Commissioning the next chapter of major research on the high school dropout issue and solutions by directly engaging educational practitioners; and underwriting 100 community dropout-prevention summits, organized by America’s Promise Alliance, to engage education experts and community leaders across all 50 states around the high school dropout crisis and ways to address it.
During the school year, Upward Bound Math & Science students participate in Saturday workshops at the Museum covering a wide variety of topics including hands-on science activities, tutoring and homework help, college preparation, computer lab access and internship experiences. In the summertime, students participate in an intensive six-week field research experience that allowed them to deepen their science, research, and technology skills. All of these components were designed increase the students’ belief in their abilities and motivate them to stay on track to get into, and finish, college.
“In the past two years, 100% of our students have graduated from high school and all of our current senior class students have met the requirements for graduation in 2012.” said Amy Rubinson, Director of Youth Development at the Museum. “We are so proud of the students’ many accomplishments, including several scholarship awards from the prestigious Dell Scholarships to Gates Millennium Scholarships. We greatly appreciate philanthropic organizations like AT&T for providing us the opportunity to keep this important program going.”
Miami Science Museum’s Upward Bound Math & Science program engages under-represented youth in the sciences by encouraging them to stay in school and pursue post-secondary education in science and math. Since the program’s inception, 98% of students enrolled have graduated from high school and over 90% have pursued a college education, compared to 54% graduation rates and 65% college enrollment rates at the Program’s target schools. Currently, Miami Science Museum is the only museum in the country operating an Upward Bound Math & Science Center. All others are university-based. The Museum’s program has received many accolades, including National Award for Museum Service for Excellence in Youth Programming in 2001, and the coveted NSF Presidential Award for Excellence in Science, Mathematics and Engineering Mentoring in 2005.
What does conservation mean to you? Does it mean taking action to save an endangered species? Protecting a threatened environment? Recycling? Visiting a local National Park to learn about your environment? Turning off the water while you brush your teeth? It can mean all of these things, and the Miami Science Museum’s “Wild Evening” was held to open people’s eyes to amazing people and programs with the goal of conservation.
The evening kicked off with Wild Carpathia, a documentary about Romania’s Carpathian Mountains, home to Europe’s largest area of pristine forests and largest populations of brown bears, lynxes, and wolves. Sadly, the region is currently under threat of developers and other destructive factors. So documentarian Paul Lister set about making the film to “put the record straight about Romania and to show the world something that needs to be protected.” Paul is the founder of The European Nature Trust (TENT), which funded the film, and also helps protect and restore wilderness areas all throughout Europe, in part by working with rural communities to promote youth education, tourism and local industry. You can “visit” Wild Carpathia too by watching the documentary here:
Another film highlighted at the Museum’s “Wild Evening” event was an upcoming feature-length film called BEARTREK, produced by Wildlife Media and ecologist Chris Morgan. Chris is no stranger to adventure. Over the last 20 years, he has worked as a wildlife researcher specializing in bears, a wilderness guide, a television host for PBS Nature, National Geographic, and the BBC, an also as an environmental educator on every continent where bears exist. His mantra? “What’s good for bears is good for people.” The BEARTREK film and campaign follows Chris’s global adventure to fund and film critical bear conservation projects in Alaska, Peru, Borneo and the Arctic. Chris’s personal mission is to make conservation a part of everyday life for all individuals by inspiring people to appreciate wildlife and wild places, and creating solutions that intertwine human welfare with the health of our planet. He says: “We’re all in this together. If we can’t get it right, we’re in trouble.” You can follow the BEARTREK and see an exclusive clip of the film here:
Paul and Chris are working hard to raise awareness all over the world about nature and wildlife conservation. Now you are aware too! We can all do our part, and a little drop of help from each of us can create an ocean of difference for the Earth.
James Herring with Miami Science Museum President and CEO Gillian Thomas
Miami Science Museum’s Exhibit Designer and Tour Manager James Herring also happens to be a skilled ceramic artist, practicing his craft for over 35 years. In addition to his exhibit design work at the Museum, he serves as the president of the Ceramic League of Miami, a nonprofit organization dedicated to educating members and the general public in all aspects of ceramics. Recently, James was successful in winning a Knight Arts Challenge Grant from the John S. and James L. Knight Foundation, to expand the facilities and programs of the Ceramic League.
The League currently offers classes, lectures and workshops to members as well as nonmembers. The facility is already equipped with studios, wheels, a slab roller, an extruder, electric and gas kilns, including two raku kilns, and a fully stocked glaze formulation area.
The grant will further strengthen the ceramic arts in South Florida by providing “complete facilities for ceramics enthusiasts and professionals,” said James. The grant will equip the center with a new custom-built ‘soda kiln’, and to host a series of workshops, lectures and classes to raise public awareness about the broad appeal and varied styles of the ceramic arts, and introduce students and young artists to the possibilities of working with clay.
“The thing about clay is that it’s immediate. You don’t need tools. You can just use your hands and it becomes an extension of yourself,” said James.
A Miami native, James first started studying ceramics in high school and eventually earned a BFA in Visual Arts from Florida International University with an emphasis on ceramics. He was an artist in residence at the Penland School in North Carolina for several years before returning to Miami to work as the Visual Arts Director for Ground Level, an alternative gallery at Art Center South Florida on Miami Beach.
