Those interested in joining this eye-opening conference can register now, and find more information at usnewsstemsolutions.com.

This is sure to be a “can’t miss” keynote program, presented by Professor Luis Oliveira, Scientific Director of the Museum of Tomorrow, Maria Isabel Garcia, Curator of The Mind Museum, and Sebastian Chan, Director of Digital and Emerging Media at Cooper-Hewitt, National Design Museum.

The project also has two traveling exhibits called Discover Earth: A Century of Change and Discover Tech: Engineers Make a World of Difference, each with accompanying educational programs and activities, plus training programs from librarians.

Interested museums, libraries, and individual professionals can add their information to STAR_Net’s directory, participate in forum discussions, and browse activities, resources, and webinars. Visit www.community.starnetlibraries.org/ for more information.

The National Medal is the nation’s highest honor conferred on museums and libraries for service to the community, and celebrates institutions that make a difference for individuals, families, and communities. Medal winners were selected from nationwide nominations of institutions that demonstrate innovative approaches to public service, exceeding the expected levels of community outreach.

Boston Children’s Museum is one of the oldest and largest children’s museums in the world, pioneering hands-on exhibitions and visitor-focused experiences that put children in charge of their own learning. It first opened its doors in 1913. Today, the museum is partnering across the community to address school achievement gaps that disproportionately affect Boston’s black and Hispanic children and strengthening science, technology, engineering, and math (STEM) programming. Boston Children’s Museum also proudly participates in the Let’s Move! Museums & Gardens Initiative.

“We are thrilled to receive the National Medal, and especially pleased to do so in our Centennial year. As the only Boston museum defined by its audience–children and families–our spaces connect the stories of parents and teachers, grandparents and teens, policymakers and innovators. For 100 years, we have advocated for the enduring value of play, and its link to the mental, physical, and emotional health of children,” said Carole Charnow, president & CEO of the Boston Children’s Museum. “Our multi-faceted exhibits and programs introduce children and families to transformational experiences and new ideas in science and technology, health and wellness, arts and humanities, and global cultures. We are grateful to the IMLS for this distinguished award and look forward to building upon our legacy by continuing to promote the health and education of all children so that they will reach their full potential and contribute to our collective wellbeing.”

Discovery Science Center (DSC) has brought science education to vast audiences over the last 25 years through its Santa Ana facility and a soon to open Los Angeles museum. With a dynamic outreach program and state-of-the-art exhibits, the DSC team has led the way in creating innovative museum exhibitions and classroom programs. By blending hands-on science activities, immersive environments, game design, and role playing, DSC is modernizing how educational content is delivered to families and students. The award-winning Eco Challenge exhibit at DSC utilizes these unique, immersive experiences to encourage environmentally responsible behavior among their community. DSC also proudly participates in the Let’s Move! Museums & Gardens initiative.

Patronage of DSC programs has more than tripled over the last decade and in the last year alone, programs impacted over 739,000 visitors and students throughout the Southern California region. Their outreach program in schools is among the largest in the nation. Its education initiatives are in 650 schools and 27 school districts across Southern California and include 71,000 field trip students who visit the Taco Bell Discovery Science Center every year.

“The National Medal shows that a museum’s impact can go beyond the walls of a single location and bring education to hundreds of thousands of students in classrooms along with satellite locations,” said Joe Adams, president of Discovery Science Center. “This Award celebrates and recognizes the hard work and dedication of our team and community leaders towards delivering a mission that is not measured in dollars, but measured in the hearts, minds, and actions of eager learners. We see this award as a challenge to continue to teach through innovation extending past museum norms, finding partners that align to our mission, and connecting to young minds.”

In addition to Boston Children’s Museum and the Discovery Science Center, this year’s National Medal recipients were: Columbus Museum of Art, Ohio; Delta Blues Museum, Clarksdale, Mississippi; Marshalltown Public Library, Iowa; National Czech & Slovak Museum & Library, Cedar Rapids, Iowa; Pierce County Library System, Tacoma, Washington; Public Library of Cincinnati and Hamilton County, Ohio; Rancho Cucamonga Public Library, California; Waukegan Public Library, Illinois.

The National Medal will be presented during a celebration in Washington, D.C. on May 8. For more information on the Medal and this year’s winners, visit www.imls.gov/imls_announces_recipients_of_2013_national_medal_for_museum_and_library_service.aspx, and to see a video about the winners produced by HISTORY for IMLS, visit www.youtube.com/watch?v=HHYjZ4sIpUo.

Stephenson is an author of historical and science fiction, a technology consultant, and a video game designer. He is perhaps best known for his novels Cryptonomicon, The Diamond Age, and Snow Crash, which presented compelling, socially and culturally rich visions of human futures while also prefiguring the development of major technologies such as social networking, nanorobotics, and 3D printers. He also penned The Baroque Cycle, a sprawling three-volume work (Quicksilver, The Confusion, and The System of the World) about the history of ideas in 17th and 18th century Europe, and co-created The Mongoliad, a collaborative work of transmedia fiction produced in collaboration with filmmakers, martial artists, computer programmers, and video game designers. His most recent novel, REAMDE, transforms the now-quotidian realm of massively multiplayer online role-playing games (MMORPGs) into a global minefield of criminality, religious extremism, and geopolitical intrigue.

Stephenson will be joined by Ed Finn, founding director of Arizona State University’s Center for Science and the Imagination. Finn is an assistant professor with a joint appointment in the School of Arts, Media and Engineering and the Department of English. His research and teaching explore digital narratives, contemporary culture, and the intersection of the humanities, arts, and sciences. He is currently working on a book about the changing nature of reading in the digital era titled The Social Lives of Books. He completed his PhD in English and American literature at Stanford University in 2011. Before graduate school Ed worked as a journalist at Time, Slate, and Popular Science.

We’re making some changes—like Tuesday’s all-new public Science in the Park Festival (along with Open House Day at the host museums, Big Screen Day, and the Planetarium Demos)—and bringing more of what you love about ASTC’s annual conference, like Monday’s Super Session Day, featuring more concurrent educational sessions than ever before!

Here’s a can’t-miss special offer: Register by May 31 using the code SAVETD2013, and you’ll be eligible for one additional complimentary conference registration AND a free, three-night hotel stay during the conference! But you have to register by May 31 to have a chance!

Register at conference.astc.org and keep up to date with the latest news and information.

Don’t get left in the clouds…join us in Albuquerque!

Local Public Engagement with Science
May 7, 2PM EDT, 1PM CDT, 11AM PDT
This webinar focused on using PES strategies to engage communities on issues of local importance. It featured presentations from Kate Brandes, Science Program Director, The Nurture Nature Center; Jen Kretser, Director of Programs, The Wild Center; and David Sittenfeld, Program Manager (Forum), Museum of Science, Boston, followed by an audience Q&A.

PES CoP Webinar: Local Public Engagement with Science Programs from ASTC Professional Development on Vimeo.

Dan Kahan, Cultural Cognition Project, Yale University
June 4, 3 PM EDT, 2 CDT, 12 PDT

Research on cultural cognition suggests that members of the public process science-related information by assessing its coherence with values and commitments that connect them to important affinity groups. This suggests a two-channel science communication strategy that combines information content with cultural meanings selected to promote open-minded assessment of information across diverse groups. This webinar will provide an opportunity for ISE professionals to hear from and ask questions of Dan Kahan of the Cultural Cognition Project at Yale University.

Dietram Scheufele, University of Wisconsin—Madison
July 9, 3 PM EDT, 2 CDT, 12 PDT

This webinar will focus on scientists’ views on engaging with the public, how younger scientists in particular think about new ways of sharing findings and the ways in which engaging with the public measurably benefits their academic careers.

This is an extended version of an article that appeared in the May/June 2013 issue of

Science center and museum professionals from around the world share their experiences using technology—including smartphones, barcodes, and radio-frequency identification (RFID) tags—to personalize the visitor experience.

The National Museum of Mathematics (MoMath) opened in New York City in December 2012. From the beginning, founder Glen Whitney had a strong vision of bringing math to the masses in a new way, but critical to that vision was the ability to tailor the experience for individuals in ways that would be meaningful to each person. And that meant customization—at many levels.

Static signage found in most museums was set aside, replaced with “smart” electronic kiosks. Using RFID tags, exhibits “recognize” visitors, displaying information in their language and at their desired level and depth of mathematical content. The first stop at a kiosk allows data entry; from that point on, visitors are addressed in a way that makes sense to them.

The electronic signage has additional benefits. Content managers have the ability to modify signage on the spot, incorporating great ideas from visitors or even correcting errors. What better way to customize a visitor experience than for a visitor to see his or her feedback incorporated immediately into the fabric of the museum?

The concept is in its infancy, and there are still kinks to be worked out. RFID antennae need to be exposed or repositioned for some exhibits, and visitors need to be oriented to a new way of interacting with information. But after two months of experience, MoMath remains committed and energized.

Cindy Lawrence, associate director and chief of operations
National Museum of Mathematics, New York City

At NorthernLight in Amsterdam, the Netherlands, we often design a virtual online “layer” that connects to every part of an exhibition, including exhibits, objects, and labels. Visitors can use this digital layer to create personalized online environments, customized to their personal demands, interests, social contexts, and knowledge level.

Even before visiting a science center or museum, the prospective visitor can use an app or website to connect to this digital layer and customize a planned visit. Inside the science center or museum, visitors can work with the digital layer in one of two ways. The first is through a personal (or borrowed/rented) device, such as a smartphone, which can scan tags or use a global positioning system (GPS) to establish a location-based experience. The second option is to let visitors identify themselves at each exhibit with a biometric identifier (e.g. fingerprints or irises) or a personalized tag (e.g., radio-frequency identification (RFID)). After their visit, visitors can retrieve and edit their personalized results on the internet and share their creations through social media platforms, such as Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest, and Tumblr.

Here are a few examples of some of our personalized experiences:

• With the app we are currently developing for the Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam (reopening in April 2013), visitors can choose their own preferred route or receive a fully customized route based on a “Love It or Lose It” quiz to determine their personal preferences.

• Our web-app developed for the Innovation Gallery at Amsterdam’s Science Center NEMO allows visitors to retrieve information by scanning Quick Response (QR) codes at exhibits with their smartphones. The web-app includes questionnaires where users can explore their sustainable lifestyle choices.

• For the Centre of New Enlightenment (TCoNE) at Kelvingrove Museum, Glasgow, Scotland, United Kingdom, we have developed a digital adventure quest. Students ages 10 to 14 use a smartphone on a journey through the museum to discover their own strengths. Evaluation showed that the experience increased students’ awareness of their traits. As they exit, students watch a movie personalized to their group, incorporating their results and photos taken as they were participating in the experience.

• We are now exploring ways to use in-classroom technology to personalize field trip preparation. Most Dutch classrooms are now equipped with digiboards. Connecting interactive digiboards to the virtual environment of the science center could allow teachers to make use of orientation programs and arrange field trip logistics. In addition, students could be invited to ask their own questions, prepare their own reports, and design their own plans for exploring the science center. Our trial of such a digiboard application is showing promising first results.

Esther Hamstra, content manager
NorthernLight, the Experience Company, Amsterdam, the Netherlands

In the 8,070-square-foot (750-square-meter) traveling exhibition Imitation, exhibits range from robots that imitate human behavior to counterfeit objects to spare parts for humans. The exhibition is a co-production of Museon, the Hague, the Netherlands; VilVite, Bergen, Norway; Expology, Oslo, Norway; and Technopolis, the Flemish Science Centre, Mechelen, Belgium.

Visitors taking part in the exhibition receive a wristband with unique RFID chip. The first time the wristband is used to activate an exhibit, visitors choose a language and type in their name, age, gender, and email address. From then on, each RFID-equipped exhibit recognizes the visitor. (In some past exhibitions, we used wristbands with a unique barcode to personalize the experience. For Imitation, we chose to work with RFID wristbands because they are a lot easier to scan.)

Visitors can keep track of their results in various experiments and activities and compare them with those of other visitors; this challenges them to do their best. Some exhibits encourage visitors to be creative and to produce their own images, sounds, and videos. Those are stored on a personal webpage that enables people to continue their experience at home and share their results with friends (e.g, through Facebook and Twitter). This sharing also generates free publicity for the exhibition.

An added advantage of the personalization is that we can track visitors to determine how many people took part in each exhibit, the average dwell time, and how these factors correlate to age and gender.

We strongly believe personalization is an added value for the visitor as well as for the science center and, although it is quite an investment, we intend to expand its use in our exhibitions.

Patricia Verheyden, experience director
Technopolis, the Flemish Science Centre, Mechelen, Belgium

The Natural History Museum of Utah, located along a popular hiking trail in the foothills of Salt Lake City, is a place where awe-inspiring views of the city’s built environment, the Wasatch Mountains, and the Great Salt Lake converge. The physical setting, as well as metaphorical ideas about trails, permeated our thinking during architectural design and exhibit development. We created an overarching trajectory through the building and exhibits, but we also offer myriad byways that invite audiences to choose their own trails each time they visit.

To enhance this personalized experience, we developed a set of digital tools that come together as the Trailhead to Utah—an award-winning smartphone guide that enriches experiences inside the museum, links to a personal portal on the museum’s website, and offers connections beyond the museum’s doors to sites throughout the state.

We opened the museum in November 2011 with four thematic “trails” in the system, to which visitors can link as they move through the museum. Each theme includes nearly 20 stops across all 10 permanent galleries and other public spaces. Early audience testing showed that the majority of users enjoyed the personalized experience and liked using their own devices. However, because the smartphone guide is nonlinear, the notion of “trails” inside the museum can be confusing. When visitors understand the broader Trailhead to Utah concept—an invitation and information to guide exploration throughout the region—enthusiasm is high. We believe the Trailhead has enormous potential for rich and authentic personal connections, and our evaluation and remediation is ongoing.

Becky Menlove, director of exhibits and public programs
Natural History Museum of Utah, Salt Lake City

Upon entering the 2,500-square-foot (230-square-meter) traveling exhibition Black Holes: Space Warps & Time Twists, visitors are prompted to create their own Black Hole Explorer’s Card. This system is intended to enhance visitor motivation and learning by promoting active engagement, increasing the personal significance of the material, and supporting continued learning beyond the museum visit. The exhibition was developed by the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics in Cambridge, Massachusetts.

Each visitor selects a nickname, such as Galactic Seeker or Techno Genius, from a list of 12 first names and 12 second names. As they move through the exhibition, visitors scan their cards to collect and record images, movies, and their own predictions and conclusions, via barcode technology. They also see their nickname and an avatar or their own photo at each networked station. An automated web-content authoring system creates a personalized online journal of their experience that they can access at home.

The Explorer’s Card system also facilitates evaluation by capturing the duration and depth of visitors’ participation at each station and a database of artifacts that visitors have created. In addition, the first and last interactive exhibits present visitors with a single, random, multiple-choice survey question from a bank of 25 items, thereby providing a source of pre- and post-visit responses.

Here are a few of our results, compiled both from the traditional summative evaluation and from our ongoing analysis of the visitor database:

• Visitors who use an Explorer’s Card spend nearly twice as much time exploring the exhibition as non-card users and show evidence of significantly higher enjoyment and learning outcomes.

• Visitors who self-identified with the nicknames Boy or Girl consistently spent significantly less time exploring the exhibition, while those who self-identified with the nicknames Eco, Techno, or Seeker consistently exhibited well-above-average dwell times. In addition, students who are given preprinted Explorer’s Cards with preselected nicknames and images demonstrate significantly less engagement compared with those who personally choose their own identity.

• Overall, 10% of Explorer’s Card users visit their personal web journal, a high “take-up rate” among projects similar to this, but a rate that does prompt questions about better linking the physical exhibition to later reflection.

When exhibitions use technology both for personalization and for research data collection, these two goals can sometimes compete with each other. My two cents: err on the side of promoting visitor experience goals in your design decisions.

Mary Dussault, science education project manager
Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics, Cambridge, Massachusetts

Heart Smart, a 1,500-square-foot (140-square-meter) exhibition, focuses on common risk factors associated with cardiovascular health. It includes opportunities for visitors to measure their blood pressure, take their waist circumference, calculate their body mass index (BMI), and take a lifestyle quiz. Other components explore heart-healthy behaviors, including stress management and physical activity. The exhibition was developed by the Miami Science Museum in Florida, working with the University of Miami and Jeff Kennedy Associates.

At a check-in station, visitors anonymously enter their own gender, age, and ethnicity/race information. Each visitor then receives a card with a unique barcode to activate each interconnected interactive station. They also construct a personal nickname like “Happy Girl” that identifies the unique user at each station.

Tailored personalized health feedback is a distinctive feature of this exhibition. Each of the four health interactive stations provides visitors with brief health risk appraisals, constructed using algorithms based on gender and age. The visitor is able to view personal results and feedback immediately or later on via our website by entering a coded number from their card.

The personal health risk appraisals make results salient for each visitor. Research shows that combining tailored feedback with health risk appraisals may influence one’s decision to make a behavior change. In a two-year follow-up, 86% of high school students who visited Heart Smart reported that the visit prompted them to think about making or actually make a lifestyle change. Fifty-five percent of students reported making at least one healthy lifestyle change because of their visit to the Heart Smart exhibition.

Sean Duran, vice president of exhibitions and design
Miami Science Museum, Florida

At the grand opening of VilVite in Bergen, Norway, in 2007, we could already invite our visitors to personalize their experiences. Based on a system platform developed with Expology of Oslo, Norway, visitors can use an RFID card to register, get a unique visitor ID, initiate experiments, and retrieve the experience on the VilVite website after the visit. The information is also available on terminals in the exhibition area. Video clips, pictures, and other data generated by the visitor are thus available after the visit for educational purposes or for sharing on social media.

Use of the personalization is optional in many of our approximately 40 educational programs. In our oil field exhibit, you can use the system to identify your own oilfield under the sea bed, exploit it by drilling, and then check out production costs and the value of the oil produced. Making your own weather forecast and watching the video clip afterwards is another popular exhibit using the system.

In one school program about energy production, students pedal a bicycle in order to produce the power needed to pump water through a turbine. The mechanical energy from the cycling is transformed into electrical energy. Both types of energy are measured and presented on a screen in real time as well as on a personal webpage. The students use the data to solve both physics and math problems back at school after the museum visit. All teachers surveyed gave the postvisit activities a score of 5 or better, on a scale of 1 to 6.

Svein Anders Dahl, managing director
VilVite, Bergen, Norway

Image courtesy the National Museum of Mathematics

“It was a case of professional schizophrenia—but a very useful one,” laughs Ilan Chabay about his varied career path. He has dabbled in the natural sciences, exhibition design, museum administration, and higher education. Currently professor and senior fellow at the Institute for Advanced Sustainability Studies in Potsdam, Germany, Chabay advocates taking a similarly multidimensional approach to addressing global change. Here he advises on how science centers and museums can become key partners in transdisciplinary research for sustainability, as he’ll discuss at the 2013 ASTC Annual Conference in Albuquerque this October.

Read the full transcript, or listen to the podcast.

This is an extended discussion of the question that appeared in the Viewpoints department of the May/June 2013 issue of Dimensions magazine.

Scitech has been running adults-only nights twice a year since 2009, the year we turned 21. We started doing these evenings as we realized that there must be an increasing number of young people who had experienced Scitech as children, but most likely hadn’t returned as they were either not yet parents, or felt that the center was just for kids, and they wouldn’t feel comfortable visiting during normal opening hours where they would be bumping shoulders with 5- to 12-year-olds. These nights have been a marked success with an average of 800 people visiting during the Saturday night opening from 6 to 10 p.m., and with regular inquiries about the date of the next event. Even though families with young children will continue to be our primary target market, we believe it’s still valuable to engage young adults at our center, as it helps foster an increasing appreciation of the value and impact of science, technology, engineering, and math (STEM) in the Western Australian community, regardless of whether these young people work in a STEM field.

Kate Elder, director of communications and marketing
Scitech, Perth, Australia

There’s nothing wrong with science centers that focus on children—we need more children to feel competent and be interested in science. However, adults view science museums as reliable sources of science information, and it would be a shame to ignore the needs and interests of adults who, as citizens and voters, are asked to make decisions that increasingly involve complex science. Science centers that don’t focus exclusively on children should make an effort to provide science exhibits and programs relevant to adults who visit with or without children. Science centers suffer from a public perception problem; they are seen as “for” children, much more so than natural history museums. Perhaps a concerted, “industry-wide” effort on the part of science centers to prioritize, even temporarily, adult-oriented programming and exhibits could combat this perception and invite adults to view science centers as valuable community resources for lifelong science learning.

Winifred Kehl, Museo Collective Museum Consulting
Seattle, Washington

How do we evaluate Return On Investment (ROI) for adult programs in science centers? Certainly not by numbers of participants or by revenue. So why struggle to develop new formats that do not appeal to our “core” visitors at a time of economic crisis? Is it the need to respond to changes in society? Is it to meet the challenge to be a major player in public discourse? Is it the opportunity to be more relevant in our community?

When we talk about adult-oriented programs, we need to be more specific. Which public are we aiming for? Young adults? Mothers? People in mid-career? Retired people? All of the above? We believe these are still open questions and we are still in the development phase, an experimental arena for issues of science in society.

Maya Halevy, director, and Dea Brokman, deputy director
Bloomfield Science Museum Jerusalem

The American Museum of Natural History (AMNH) has a long history of producing lectures, classes, and events marketed to adult audiences with great success, with a monthly series of Science Cafés being among the most recent popular additions. A recent survey of AMNH’s adult members and public program attendees found that demand for adult education opportunities is high, with the overwhelming majority of respondents indicating their interest in taking an adult learning class at AMNH and/or in becoming more scientifically literate.

The challenge for this institution and perhaps for the field at this point is how to produce programming that is more intentional in learning goals for adults, tied to the critical issues of the day that impact our society and our world. To this end, AMNH is instituting adult learning classes in a series of scientific disciplines and across modes—on-site, online, one-day to multi-week. Some even have homework!

Samara Rubinstein, senior manager, Sackler Educational Laboratory for Comparative Genomics and Human Origins
American Museum of Natural History, New York City

I think that the dissemination mission of science museums can be especially effective when applied to one particular segment of the adult population: professional scientists. Nowadays, many scientists work daily on extremely specific scientific issues. There are many aspects of science that they do not know, and this situation may hinder them. Science museums can help them understand science as a broad and continuously growing discipline.

Guillermo Fernández, science museums consultant, science museology professor
IDEC Universitat Pompeu Fabra, Barcelona, Spain

Children’s exhibits within science centers have been addressing the challenge of effectively reaching their adult audiences for years. Many of us have seen a rise in visitation of families with young children who see museums as a great place for their kids to learn, but not necessarily as a learning opportunity for themselves. Many children’s exhibits have successfully engaged this “lost audience” in scientific thinking by integrating adult-centered programming, signage, and exhibits about the science of child development alongside exhibits for younger visitors. By using the science of how children learn as a vehicle to engage this captive adult audience in scientific inquiry, we meet our educational mission and impact the family members who will ultimately decide whether or not they will become repeat visitors.

Marta Biarnes, professional development associate, National Living Lab
Museum of Science, Boston

Prioritize? No. However, programming for adults should be a part of every science center’s public program schedule. Science centers exist to communicate science and technology to the population regardless of age, culture, or education. Having some form of programming for adults—be they just over 18, parents of school-age children, or grandparents—results in a community that is more aware of and more likely to discuss issues of science and technology.

Our Science Time program for children ages 3 to 6 is designed just as much for the attending adults. It is all about influencing the influencers. The aim is to create a household comfortable with science where a child who talks about studying science in high school and university is encouraged and engaged rather than misunderstood and ignored.

Jared Wilkins, visitor programs manager
Questacon—The National Science and Technology Centre, Canberra, Australia

As cultural repositories of learning, it is not only the role of the science center, but also its moral obligation, to educate the adult public with science, for the lives of future generations depend on it. We are living in an era of seismic change—weather patterns are more erratic, the ice caps are melting, and biodiversity is dwindling.

In a culture of limitless distractions, the real challenge is to capture the attention of adults. Adults model behavior for their children and ultimately create future science center visitors, so it is their patronage that is essential.

Science centers need to incorporate programs of interest to adults like digital media labs, cultural mash-ups, young entrepreneur centers, games for social change, and legible cities projects. The challenge for science centers will be to develop these new models without losing their existing audience and while leveraging their current assets.

Eli Kuslansky, founding partner and chief strategist
Unified Field, New York City

The Koshland Science Museum’s mission is to help teens and adults use science to solve problems. Our exhibits and programs are based on the work of the (U.S.) National Academy of Sciences and National Research Council. We were intentional about selecting our audience and felt that we could help fulfill an unmet need. Over time, our core audience of educated adults between the ages of 20 and 30 has increased, with many repeat visitors to programs and events. Benefits of this approach include the length of engagement and the quality of conversation. Our audience often spends a few hours or more participating in substantive discussions and in-depth workshops. Challenges include facilitating discussions about complex issues, such as climate change, to foster critical thinking and decision making.

Amy Shaw, community relations manager
Marian Koshland Science Museum of the National Academy of Sciences, Washington, D.C.

Science centers should absolutely prioritize adult-oriented programming. The evidence lies in changing visitor demographics! This is an opportunity to cultivate interest and relationships with new audiences.

Adult programs can generate significant revenue efficiently, in a three-hour block in the evening, for example. Having local businesses as guest experts and experience providers furthers relationships with community partners.

It can be challenging, particularly in a smaller community, to predict audience participation. We’ve enjoyed success by ensuring visitor “buy-in” with popular topics, and by getting to the root of what people want from their experience. Sustaining that interest is also key to successful adult programming.

Our recent findings show that adults of all ages want more opportunities to enjoy an intellectual evening out with friends embedded within a social environment. An adult evening at a science center provides a dynamic and new dimension to visitor experiences.

Lora Clausen, staff scientist
Science North, Sudbury, Ontario, Canada

Many adults feel that science centers are just for children. When we hold cool events for adults, where kids aren’t allowed, we send a strong message that says we want grown-ups to feel welcome too.

In today’s world, adults need to nurture their own curiosity, creativity, and critical thinking skills as much as kids do. Adult programming, designed just for them, keeps them actively engaged in figuring out how they like playing with science, developing a passion for it, and discovering science’s purpose in their lives—with the option to have a beer while they do!

At the Museum of Life and Science, we love these programs because we’ve discovered an entirely new audience of people who are hungry to reconnect with us after forming fond memories of museum experiences as children. We’ve also discovered a new source of revenue. In our most recent adult-oriented program, Museum After Hours: The Science of Eats, we sold over 700 tickets and grossed over $10,000. Everybody wins!

Adrienne Testa, master teacher, and Troy Livingston, vice president for innovation and learning
Museum of Life and Science, Durham, North Carolina

The above statements represent the opinions of the individual contributors and not necessarily the views of their institutions or of ASTC.

About the image: Visitors enjoy a Scitech After Dark adults-only event in Perth, Australia, in connection with the exhibition Rescue. Photo courtesy Scitech