It’s generally easy to notice big things, but it’s the small things that often have a profound effect on our lives. As best-selling author Mary Roach points out in the Q&A interview, the things she couldn’t see while traveling recently in India—bacteria and viruses—were much more likely to take her down than the massive elephants she was repeatedly warned about.

In this issue, we take a moment to focus our attention on the smaller institutions or programs among us. Small, but mighty.

The following features focus on the positive power of small. These institutions or programs may have small budgets, small facilities, or no facilities at all, but they have all found ways to embrace—and even capitalize on—being small. From passionate science educators with a vision to start-up museums operating in non-traditional venues to a large museum deploying small trucks, the following features tell compelling stories of pluck, resourcefulness, and vision.