Dennis Wint, president and CEO of the Franklin Institute in Philadelphia, received the ASTC Fellow Award for Outstanding Contribution, ASTC’s highest honor. Six Roy L. Shafer Leading Edge Awards were presented at the conference: the Award for Business Practice to the Saint Louis Science Center, Missouri; the Award for Visitor Experience, Small Science Center, to the National Canal Museum, Easton, Pennsylvania; two Awards for Visitor Experience, Large Science Center, to the Ontario Science Centre, Toronto, and the Virginia Living Museum, Newport News; the Award for New Leadership in the Field to Cynthia Graville-Smith of the Saint Louis Science Center; and the Award for Experienced Leadership in the Field to Ingit Mukhopadhyay of the National Council of Science Museums, India.

Audio recordings of most sessions can be purchased on CD from Convention Recordings International.

About the image: Conference attendees gather in the ASTC Resource Center between sessions. Photo by Christine Ruffo

Jonah Cohen, one of the session organizers, described the mutual benefits of the program, which has been part of the conference line-up for over a decade: “Participants get the chance to see the full program that other centers do, in front of school children, the program’s intended audience. For the presenters, it’s a singular opportunity to get feedback from a huge variety of their peers. Furthermore, the programming is provided free to a local school, usually chosen because it’s in a underserved district, so the kids and teachers benefit, too.”

This year’s programming included two assemblies (The Human Body by the Franklin Institute, Philadelphia, and Weather: Wind, Water, & Temperature by the Museum of Science, Boston) and two hands-on classes (Slime Time by the Maryland Science Center, Baltimore, and Moveable Museum in a mobile paleontology lab from the American Museum of Natural History, New York City).  

About the image: With help from Maryland Science Center outreach educators, second graders at the Friends Select School learn about polymers by experimenting with slime. Photo by Christine Ruffo

Presenters in the session, entitled “Museums and the Mind: Applying Cognitive Neuroscience to Free-Choice Learning,” included Roger Barrett, exhibit designer at the Science Museum of Minnesota, St. Paul; John Falk, professor of science education at Oregon State University in Corvallis; Matthew Wenger, graduate associate at Flandrau: The University of Arizona Science Center in Tucson; and Jennifer Mangels, associate professor of psychology at Baruch College, City University of New York.

The presenters considered how museums can use recent neuroscience research to maximize their educational impact. Barrett discussed examples of ways that exhibition design, including choice of color and materials, can affect visitors’ moods and emotions. Falk presented research showing that when visitors to the exhibition Goose Bumps! The Science of Fear experienced an optimal amount of emotional arousal—not too much or too little—their learning was maximized. Wenger suggested creating flexible exhibitions that can be adapted to serve the needs of different people. Drawing upon neuroscience research, Mangels stated people learn best when they experience an unexpected outcome that provides a great deal of novelty and complexity, but can be viewed as a challenge rather than as a threat. ”Meeting challenges is actually rewarding in and of itself,” she said. “Things should not be too hard or too easy.”

This year’s performers included Woody Sobey, Discovery Center of Idaho, Boise;  Duane Dill and Eric Meyer, Explora, Albuquerque, New Mexico; Jonah Cohen, the Children’s Museum, West Hartford, Connecticut; Mikey Casalaine, the Franklin Institute, Philadelphia; Wanda Rodriguez, Funtastic Science; and Eddie Goldstein, Denver Museum of Nature and Science, Colorado.

About the image: A cinder block is smashed over Wanda Rodriguez as she lies on a bed of thumb tacks. Photo by Christine Ruffo

Providing background for the discussion were Anthony Leiserowitz, director of the Yale Project on Climate Change and principal investigator for Columbia University’s Center for Research on Environmental Decisions; Lynne Cherry, author of the children’s book How We Know What We Know About Our Changing Climate: Scientists and Kids Explore Global Warming; and Philip C. Myrick, urban planner and vice president of Project for Public Spaces.

Citing results of a series of empirical assessments of worldwide public values, attitudes, and behaviors regarding global sustainability, Leiserowitz reported that while awareness of global warming is high in the United States, it is commonly seen as a distant problem. Raising awareness in countries where it is now low, helping to make local connections, and providing the understanding required for informed action are educational challenges science centers can help to address, he said.

Cherry spoke about the power of children to catalyze action among older people and shared stories she has collected of young people engaged in local research and educational activities. Myrick said that science centers should “put the knowledge and power of science into the hands of communities.” Science centers and museums can provide much-needed places where people can come together, make connections, and help each other to move from denial and grief to action, he said.

ASTC has already put a number of initiatives into motion, including a coordinated day of National Conversation on Climate Action, the Albedo Project, and the recently funded project Communicating Climate Change. Conversations among those participating in today’s session will continue online, led by a task force that includes Sheila Grinell of Phoenix, Arizona; Charlie Trautmann of Sciencenter, Ithaca, New York; Emlyn Koster of the Liberty Science Center, Jersey City, New Jersey; and Kim Cavendish of the Museum of Discovery and Science, Fort Lauderdale, Florida.

What role should science centers play in addressing complex ethical issues in the biomedical and life sciences, such as embryonic stem cell research, cloning, global warming, genetically modified foods, and vaccine safety? In the session “Why Don’t They Understand? Public Perception of Controversy in Science” on October 18 at the ASTC Annual Conference, Arthur Caplan, director of the Center for Bioethics at the University of Pennsylvania in Philadelphia, urged science centers to engage the public in ethical issues directly, particularly in exhibitions.

Caplan asserted that the public must understand science and bioethics in order to vote on controversial issues, manage their own health, and remain competitive in their jobs. Yet science centers tend to address ethics at the very end of exhibitions, if it all, according to Caplan. “Ethics and values should be the leading issue to hook people into the exhibition,” he said. “Ethical issues are at the core of what the public needs to know about science.”

Caplan reminded exhibition designers not to assume that the public knows what science is or understands the scientific method. He also encouraged science centers to treat religious points of view with respect when discussing controversial issues. “It’s time to end the increasingly toxic stand-off between secular arrogance about religion and religious know-nothingness about science,” he said.

About the image: Arthur Caplan discusses science centers’ role in addressing ethical issues. Photo by Christine Ruffo

Johnson encouraged science centers to take several lessons from this story. First, he stressed the importance of not framing science as a “steady march upward,” but instead making the effort to “look at the history of mistakes,” such as miasma. He also encouraged science centers to pursue a way of thinking that he called “the long zoom,” which involves thinking across different scales. For example, he said that Snow looked at the epidemic on every scale “from microbe to metropolis.” Johnson also suggested that science centers can fill a role as places where new ideas like Snow’s can develop. “As a society, we have to recognize the importance of cultivating hunches,” he said. ”The history of ideas is filled with hunches that had leisure time to develop.”

About the image: Steven Berlin Johnson delivers the keynote address at the 2008 ASTC Annual Conference in Philadelphia. Photo by Christine Ruffo

Prior to his work at the Franklin Institute, Wint served as president of the Saint Louis Science Center, Missouri; director of the Cranbrook Institute of Science, Bloomfield Hills, Michigan; and vice president of Philadelphia’s Academy of Natural Sciences. He is an active member of ASTC and has served the organization in a variety of capacities, including as co-chair of the Governance Committee, co-chair of the International Advisory Board, member of the Board of Directors, and president.

“ASTC is a far better, far stronger organization because of Dennis’ leadership and involvement over the years,” said ASTC executive director Bonnie VanDorn. “Dennis has always found a way to make sure that his institutions, ASTC, and the science center field as a whole stayed true to our roots and our mission. In many ways, I think of him as this organization’s ‘compass.’ If we start to lose our way, we can always turn to Dennis to get us pointed in the right direction again. We owe him a lot.”

The ASTC Fellow Award for Outstanding Contribution, first presented in 1974, is bestowed upon individuals who merit special recognition for their significant contributions to the advancement of public understanding and appreciation of science and technology or of ASTC itself.

About the image: Dennis Wint accepts the ASTC Fellow Award. Photo by Christine Ruffo

Anthony Leiserowitz, director of the Yale Project on Climate Change, discussed his research center’s in-depth polling on public perceptions of climate change in the United States. He noted that while most respondents perceived climate change as a problem, they ranked it as a low priority. “Americans still think,” explained Leiserowitz, “that climate change is going to happen somewhere very far away—a small island far away, but not here, not in my home.”

IGLO also formally unveiled a new National Science Foundation-funded project. Communicating Climate Change pairs 12 U.S. science centers with 12 research institutions across the country to survey public attitudes toward climate change, conduct public education, and foster participation by citizen scientists in real climate research. The project is headed by a collaborative effort between the Yale Climate Project and the Cornell Laboratory of Ornithology.

The workshop ended with a lively question-and-answer session where participants and presenters considered new media strategies for educating the public about climate change. Members of the audience were particularly interested in a planned tool of the Communicating Climate Change project, a web-based interactive map that will allow IGLO members and other science organizations to enter data on climate change in their own localities.

About the image: By videoconference, Mary Ann Hitt of Appalachian Voices details how her organization has used the Google Earth application to inform Internet users about mountain top removal. Photo by Christine Ruffo

This afternoon, attendees are invited to join a “museum crawl,” organized by host museum the Franklin Institute, to local historical science museums—the Mütter Museum, Wagner Free Institute of Science, and Academy of Natural Sciences.