The process of researching colleges, understanding your choices, completing applications, and choosing the best school for you, can be really overwhelming. On Sunday, February 24th, 40 students from the Museum’s Upward Bound Math & Science Program, ranging from 9th to 12th grade, had to chance to take some of those first steps with their friends, Upward Bound staff mentors, and even the Superintendent of Miami-Dade County Public Schools, Alberto Carvalho. They attended the National College Fair at the DoubleTree Hilton Convention Center, sponsored by the National Association of College Admission Counseling and the School Board of Miami-Dade County.

The first person to greet them at the entrance was Superintendent of Miami-Dade County Public Schools Alberto Carvalho and School Board Chair Perla Tabares-Hantman. The students introduced themselves, and Superintendent Carvalho asked them which high schools they represented and congratulated them on their accomplishments in the Upward Bound Program. Then the students had a lot of ground to cover at the Fair. Over 200 colleges from all over the country were present, and students were able to talk to lots of college/university representatives and receive all the admissions information they needed. Students also attended workshops on scholarships and financial aid, college admissions, college prep, SAT/ACT Exam information, and more.

Now there are some informed choices to be made!

From left to right: Oscar, Alex, School Board Chair Perla Tabares-Hantman, Superintendent Alberto Carvalho, Jose, Raymond, Omar, Elizabeth, Claudia

There are lots of different kinds of engineering – electrical, structural, mechanical, civil – and therefore, we need young people with lots of different interests and skills to fill those jobs for the next generation. And we especially want to encourage young women to explore engineering fields! Last Saturday the Museum held an event “engineered” to do just that. During our Engineering Day, activities and speakers showed off the creative and collaborative nature of engineering, and how engineers of all kinds are changing our world. Panels of successful female engineers provided some career awareness and inspiration by sharing their stories and some keys to their success, local engineering organizations and students showcased their innovations, and Museum staff delivered lots of fun hands-on activities and workshops for over 500 visitors.

This event was designed to stimulate the next generation of engineers, and could not have been carried out without the generous support of our current generation of engineers and other professionals. Special thanks goes to one of our newest members of the Miami Science Museum Board of Trustees, Vanessa Grout. As President/CEO of Douglas Elliman Florida, which served as title sponsor for the event, she was a source of unwavering support. And after attending the event, she felt that “the enthusiasm shared by the children as they participated in the learning exercises was inspiring.”

Other organizations that provided speakers, volunteers, and hands-on activities for the event included the National Engineers Week Foundation, IBM, Johnson Controls, Society of Women Engineers chapters from University of Miami and Florida International University, the Tau Beta Pi chapter at FIU, Girls Scouts of Tropical Florida, United States Air Force, and the American Society of Civil Engineers. Additionally, generous financial support from Morgan Energy, Douglas Elliman Real Estate, and the Cuban American Association of Civil Engineers allowed this event to be free of charge for all students, male and female, in grades K-12.

Introduce a Girl to Engineering Day 2001 was the first national call-out to the profession to focus on getting more girls into engineering and technology. The founding partners were the Society of Women Engineers, MentorNet, IBM, the Association for Women in Science, the Women in Engineering ProActive Network, and the National Engineers Week Foundation. The day serves as catalyst and focal point for activism, and each year during Engineers Week, “Introduce a Girl to Engineering Day” encourages thousands of women engineers, with support from their male counterparts, to directly mentor more than one million girls and young women in K-12 with first-hand experiences in engineering.

The Museum’s involvement in the annual national celebration of Engineering Week, as well as “Introduce a Girl to Engineering Day,” started three years ago as a direct result of our leadership role in the Girls RISE National Museum Network project, funded by the National Science Foundation.

You’re invited to a film screening at the Museum! Students in the Museum’s Upward Bound program have been serving as Eco-Ambassadors to south Florida’s unique environments, and with support from a State Farm Youth Advisory Board grant, have created their own Public Service Announcement videos. These videos are meant to bring awareness to the environmental issues in our community, such as water conservation and the exploitation of our natural resources. Check out the flyer below for more information, and we’ll see you there!

It’s important for children – the next generation – to understand that food doesn’t magically appear on grocery store shelves. Growing food takes knowledge and skill, and in an urban environment like Miami, it’s important for our health, as well as the health of the environment, to have locally grown food. Hydroponics, the growing of plants using mineral nutrients and water – without soil – is a sustainable method of food production that provides more opportunties for urban gardening. The Museum has recently built on-site hydroponics exhibits, and now, with grants from the Dunwalke Foundation and the Envionmental Protection Agency, is working to install small hydroponic gardens at local schools.  The Museum’s Sara Tomeo, who is leading the project, is working mostly with 4th and 5th grade students from several area elementary schools, including Barbara Hawkins, North Miami, Miami Springs, Mater Academy East, Southside, and Coconut Grove,  as well as Nature Links, an organization on Virginia Key that specializes in helping young adults with disabilities.

Teachers at partner schools are encouraged to have groups of students help plant the system, and so far, eager students have done much of the work in setting up many of the systems. The goal is to have students learn to grow their own food throughout the school year, learn where some of the food they eat comes from, and see how different plants grow. Additionally, each school will learn how urban gardening can be applied based on the location of each school.  For example, many students in Southside Elementary, located in Brickell, live in high-rise buildings, and this project will teach them that they can have a garden at home - even if they don’t have a yard!

Barbara Hawkins Elementary: Students’ indoor hydroponics system, called “Emily’s Garden System,” sits on a classroom table with an adjustable grow-light to promote growth.

Barbara Hawkins Elementary: Students planted basil, rosemary, lemon balm, a tomato plant, and lettuce. Science teacher Craig Uptgrow has students monitoring growth rate, taking height measurements, and keeping records of what they do with the system.

Sara Tomeo has a background in Environmental Design and has worked as an intern at Disney’s “The Land” pavilion at EPCOT, working in hydroponic greenhouses. Sara has now helped to design and build the hydroponic exhibits at the Museum, and will play a role in the Museum’s plans to build aquaponics systems, which is another kind of sustainable food production system involving aquatic life.

With the help of a State Farm Youth Advisory Board grant and the Museum’s Reclamation Project, students participating in the Museum’s Upward Bound program are serving as Eco-Ambassadors to south Florida’s unique environments. We have all seen the PSAs (public service announcements) that make you stop and think, like NBC’s “The More You Know…” series. Now, our student Eco-Ambassadors are creating their own PSAs in a 5-day One Water Workshop. They’re learning about the whole process of creating a PSA, from scripting to filming to editing, and doing it all themselves in small groups of 4 or 5. The teamwork and creativity brought out in a project like this represents the same kind of effort that we need to apply to involving our communities in environmental conservation. These students are taking a first step towards that goal, by creating their PSAs on topics ranging from natural resource exploitation to restoration to environmental economics. The final films will be finished on January 7, and will be posted to the Miami Science Museum and State Farm Youth Advisory Board websites. So be sure to check back! Because the more you know…

For humans, if your home has a recognizable scent, that may or may not be a good thing. But for bees, it is a necessary part of life, and of finding its way home. Bees find their way to their own hive because of a distinct scent that they can recognize. If you want to see a real beehive up close, and safely, you can even come to the Museum and see our beehive exhibit, made possible by the Junior League of Miami.

Because bees are are so beguiling in many ways, they are the subject of one of the Museum’s Early Childhood Hands-On Science (ECHOS) curriculum units. After receiving training on the materials from Museum education staff, pre-school teachers throughout Miami-Dade County and Head Start schools, lead the children in exploring their world, as well as the bees’ world. The children learned first-hand that bees know which hive is their own only by the scent, by becoming bees themselves. Each was given a cup with a scent, and they had to explore their classroom to find the hive that matched their scent. But they did not want to stop exploring even after they found their hive. One wanted to draw his own beehive based on the ECHOS Busy, Buzzing Bees book, one wanted to see how the beehive model in the classroom compared to photos of real hives, and a couple wanted to match up the scents of all the “hives” in the room. These children in the photos below are true explorers.

A lone mangrove seedling

On Saturday, December 8^th, 60 Upward Bound Eco-Ambassadors joined a group of volunteers from Miami-Dade College in replanting almost 1,000 mangrove propagules at R. Hardy Matheson Preserve. The Preserve is undergoing a major management effort by Miami-Dade County to remove exotic plants, replant native habitats such as mangroves, and create a multi-use protected area for recreational activities.

In all, over 100 volunteers participated in planting mangrove seedlings that had been exhibited on a wall at Miami Science Museum since November 2011, as part of the Museum’s Reclamation Project.  Specifically, they planted young mangrove plants along the banks of the Snapper Creek, a historical waterway. Not only does Snapper Creek have historical significance, as evidenced by a 500 B.C. Tequesta Indian habitation mound, but it is also one of the largest tracts of coastal native habitat in Miami-Dade County. Until recently, the banks of the creek where the volunteers planted were covered in large mounds of landfill which were dumped there as part of periodic dredging of the creek for the purpose of recreational navigation. These mounds were also, until recently, covered in invasive plants such as Australian pine and Brazilian pepper, and devoid of any native vegetation. Thanks to the efforts of these Eco-Ambassadors, this area will once again be covered in mangroves and associated plants which will provide food and shelter for native birds, mammals and reptiles, such as the endangered American crocodile and the West Indian manatee.

This effort is being funded by a State Farm Youth Advisory Board grant to engage local teenagers in restoring local habitat, outdoor learning and telling their own stories about South Florida’s natural areas through film. Click here for more information on the Reclamation Project, the Eco-Ambassadors, and the State Farm Youth Advisory Board.

The eco-ambassadors gather to start the day

The group wades into the water to replant mangroves

In recent times, it seems more and more difficult for humans to avoid negatively impacting nature. But that does not mean that we can’t make a positive impact. The Museum’s eco-art Reclamation Project works to help restore our coastal environments. You can see these efforts every day, on an exterior wall by the Museum’s Wildlife Center. More than 1,100 mangrove seedlings are lined up in biodegradable cups, waiting to be replanted at several restoration sites scattered throughout Miami. Each year, when all the seedlings are taken to be planted, 1,100 more seedlings are brought in to replace the ones that were taken out. This year, as part of a grant from State Farm Youth Advisory Board, students from the Miami Science Museum’s Upward Bound Math and Science program replaced the 1,100 red mangrove seedlings on the wall with new ones they had collected in September from Bear Cut Preserve on Key Biscayne and Matheson Hammock County Park. The seedlings taken down off the wall will be replanted by the Upward Bound students over the next couple weeks at R. Hardy Matheson Preserve, a Miami-Dade County Park, and on Virginia Key. As part of the same grant, students also visited a restoration site at  Oleta River State Park that is currently covered in invasive species. In the spring, students will help restore the site by replanting 1.5 acres. Through these activities, students begin to have a first-hand understand of the importance of nature – because humans and animals need nature in order to survive, and nature certainly needs our help to survive as well.

The Smithsonian is a name recognized all over the world. Internationally, if people know one Museum in the US, it’s most likely the Smithsonian. But through Smithsonian Affiliations, museums all over the country can partner in efforts to share science, art, and history with everyone. The Miami Science Museum is a proud Affiliate member, and recently has taken advantage of several unique opportunities made available by the Smithsonian.

One of these opportunities was sponsored by Smithsonian Magazine’s Museum Day Live, and it allowed our Museum to open its doors for free and allow even more of our community to come here and get up close to science activities and exhibits, planetarium shows, and even live animals like starfish and turtles. We had a special visitor that day, 3 month old Colton, who came to the Museum for the first time with his family – just like his mom did when she was a child. Colton’s mom wrote a gracious email to the Museum telling us all about Colton’s adventure, and how much he enjoyed his first Museum visit. Click here to see more of Colton’s day and read his family’s letter to the Museum.

Colton and his mom Tracy

For the Smithsonian’s National Youth Summit, the Museum was able to invite local youth to participate in a national conversation about environmental stewardship. Students previewed clips from Ken Burns’ documentary “The Dust Bowl,” which shows the very real cause-and-effect relationship that humans can have with nature, and focuses on the 1930s, when the wheat farming boom caused a large-scale, decade-long drought. Miami students participated in a nationwide videoconference with students from around the country, and then in a “town hall” meeting with local experts. Because of this event, these students now know more about being responsible for their environment. Click here to find out more about this event.

Students and local experts at our “town hall” meeting

In yet another amazing opportunity, the Museum applied for and received a grant from Smithsonian Affiliations to involve students in astronomy and astrophotography through the Youth Capture the Colorful Cosmos program. Students were able to remotely operate NASA MicroObservatory telescopes, request their own images, and then process their images using real astronomy imaging software. Students were given complete creative freedom, and the result was a new exhibition at the Museum showcasing their work, which illustrates the spectacular detail and amazing structures in our Universe. At the exhibition’s opening weekend, students were present to show their work to visitors, and lead hands-on activities related to color, light, and telescopes. Click here to see more of the students’ images of our colorful cosmos.

Raymond and Giselle at their exhibition

What’s next? We can’t wait to see!

The Miami Science Museum is one of only 10 museums nationwide that was selected to participate in the Smithsonian’s National Youth Summit on October 17th.  The focus of this summit was contemporary environmental issues and the legacy (as well as lessons learned) from the Dust Bowl period in the 1930s. During this time, the boom of wheat farming (sometimes called the “great plow-up”) brought on a 10 year drought, showing that human activities can cause large scale environmental effects. Students from around the country participated in the summit via video/web conferencing, and had the opportunity to view clips from Ken Burns’ recently released “The Dust Bowl” documentary. They discussed what they learned from the Dust Bowl and shared ideas on how they can be protectors of their environments.  The overarching theme of the event was to explore how to better understand the complexity of environmental issues and to learn what people can do today to avoid (or lessen) other environmental crises.

Each of the 10 selected museum sites also hosted a local town hall discussion with these themes in mind, but in the context of their own local environmental issues, especially as it relates to how humans can impact their environment and what the youth can do to help.  The Miami Science Museum’s town hall focused on climate and conservation in South Florida environments. Local experts were invited to talk with local students for the event. These included Dawn Shireffs of the National Parks Conservation Association, Dr. Benjamin Kirtman of the University of Miami’s Rosenstiel School of Marine and Atmospheric Science, Dr. Jayantha Obeysekera of the South Florida Water Management District, and Maria Beotegui of Biscayne National Park. Over 100 students from Centennial Middle School and Riviera Middle School that were present for the event now have some idea of how they can have a positive effect on their own environment.

Students filled the Museum theater for the town hall meeting to talk to local environmental experts