Exhibiting the Best of the Smithsonian with Jennifer Collins and Nicole Webster

0:04 Welcome to AMSEcast, coming to you from Oak Ridge, Tennessee, a global leader in science, technology, and innovation. My name is Alan Lowe, director of the American Museum of Science and Energy, and the K-25 History Center. Each episode of AMSEcast presents world-renowned authors, scientists, historians, policymakers, and everyone in between, sharing their insights on a variety of fascinating topics. Welcome to AMSEcast. I’m excited to be recording this episode at one of my favorite museums on the planet, the Smithsonian’s National Museum of Natural History in Washington, DC.

0:45 As I hope you know, AMSE is a proud Smithsonian affiliate. We so appreciate our tremendous partnership and look forward to doing even more with our Smithsonian friends in the future. Joining me today at the National Museum of Natural History are Nicole Webster and Jennifer Collins. Nicole serves as the manager of school and teacher programs at the museum, and Jennifer serves as Learning Experience Manager for exhibits and initiatives. They both bring to their positions a wealth of experience in formal and informal education. So, Nicole and Jennifer, welcome to AMSEcast. Great, thank you. Yeah, thanks for having us. It is awesome to be here. I told Jennifer, while we were downstairs, that when I worked at the National Archives, this was one of my go-to places.

1:27 If I could take a long lunch, or if I could take the afternoon off and act like I was doing something else, [laugh] this is where I would come and go around the exhibits. I can’t wait to dive into them more today. But just to start, can you tell us a bit about when this terrific museum opened, and has it always been in this amazing building here in Washington? So, the building that we are currently sitting in that everyone knows as the National Museum of Natural History opened on March 17th, 1910, as the US National Museum, so not yet the Natural History Museum. So, when the Smithsonian was first founded in 1846 all our collections and research was actually across the National Mall in the Smithsonian Institution building in what we call the Castle now.

2:13 And then, eventually that filled up. We needed more space. We moved next door to what is now called the Arts & Industries Building, and they are collecting things from surveys of the American West and United States exploring expeditions, getting more and more and more. The Arts & Industries building is bursting at the seams, so now we are moving across the mall, and we opened, and they were building, and they moved all the big collections here. But when it first opened as the US National Museum, it had arts, it had history, and it also had science. So, it was all the Smithsonian’s holdings, mostly. All the above. That’s amazing. I will say the affiliates meeting this week has been in the Arts & Industries Building, which I could see is undergoing a renovation right now, so that was kind of cool to be there at one of the original places of the Smithsonian.

3:00 So, a great history here. How many people, typically each year, come to this museum? So, we get over 4 million visitors on site to this museum, and then we get over 10 million accessing us online, as well because we also have our exhibits virtually, and then a suite of, like, resources for everyone. So yeah, 4 million in person, but then over 10 million also visiting us virtually. Wow, I will say AMSE and the K-25 Atomic History Center, we’re popular, but we don’t get quite [laugh] 4 million people a year. We hope, you know? That’s an aspiration for us. Before I forget to ask, where online can people go to get to those resources? So, our website is naturalhistory.si.edu.

3:42 Okay, very good. Now, it’s a very unique institution. Let’s talk a bit about now why that’s the case. A little bit about the collections obviously, a very eclectic set of materials you have here. Perhaps, can you tell us some examples of the holdings, maybe your favorite or some of the most popular things in the collections. One thing that I think most people don’t realize about our collections is, one, they’re huge. We have over 148 million objects in our collection. They don’t all fit here, so we have a suite of conservators, and collections managers, and museum technicians that take care of all these holdings, but they’re both here at the Natural History Museum, but we also—in Maryland—have a museum support center.

4:25 So, it’s a huge operation to take care of all these collections. But a lot of times, when people think about our collections, they think about the amazing things that are on display. They think about Henry, who is the African bush elephant that’s in the rotunda, they think about the Hope Diamond, they think about our dinosaurs, but they don’t realize that our scientists are using these objects to conduct their research. So, that’s a big thing that people think, why do you have all these objects, and it’s for research. But if I were to say my favorite, it would be things from the Education Collection. I think if I had to pick today, [laugh] on this recording— Yes, you do. My favorite would be, we have a polar bear skull in our education collection that is touchable.

5:09 So, visitors and students can actually, like, interact with this animal and look at it, and it’s just this awe inspiring collection that we’re really lucky to have that’s touchable to inspire people. So, I think that’s actually my favorite thing. I don’t know how Jen feels, what your favorite is. Yeah, please. What are yours? Yeah. So, a couple of my favorites are actually in the research collections, in invertebrate zoology. So, probably most people are familiar with the little pill bugs or roly-polys. They’re isopods, and we have in our collection these giant isopods from the deep sea that are about the size of a football, and they are spectacular. So, I think that’s one of my favorites. We also have one of the only—if not the only—giant squid eye that is preserved in our invertebrate zoology collection, and that is the size of a dinner plate.

5:59 And they are not easy to find. I’m sure. You just don’t go out and say, “Hey, I want a giant squid eye,” right? No, I can attest to the coolness of the giant squid eye. I have many a teacher that has selfies with the giant squid eye— Yes. Yes, yes. —that they like to take back and show their students because it’s such a rare thing to have, and so impressive to see in person. Well, you mentioned the scientific staff learning from utilizing these collections. How big is that staff? What are the kind of disciplines represented? So, we have over 350 people that are working in this museum. The bulk of them are science staff, but then, like I mentioned before, there’s also people in exhibits, communication, you know, people that just keep the building running.

6:43 So, it’s a pretty big staff of around 400. And we have different research departments. And let me see, I think I can do this off the top of my head. Correct me if I’m wrong. So, we have anthropology, botany, paleobiology, vertebrate zoology, invertebrate zoology, entomology— Mineral science. Mineral science. Oh, apologies to mineral science. But we also have various laboratories, too. Very good. Yeah, and our vertebrate zoology department is broken up into mammals, birds, fish, and then amphibians and reptiles. So, it’s kind of an enormous department. Well, just the name alone, Natural History, you have a lot under that title, so it’s pretty impressive you can do it with just 400 people.

7:26 That’s really amazing. And of course, one way you present that information are through some stunning, truly exceptional exhibits. Can you tell us a bit about how those exhibits are put together, the themes, and so forth, of how those are chosen and how they’re presented. Sure. Depending on how you count exhibits, we have almost 20 different exhibits, and they’re both permanent ones, which means they’re not likely to go away, and then temporary ones that usually are designed to stay here between two and eight years, maybe. The way that they’re designed is actually by team. And on this team, you have exhibit staff, so you have a program manager, you have writers, designers, and developers.

8:09 There’s always an educator on each design team, in addition to relevant curators. And so, the exhibits, to come to fruition, it can take anywhere from two years to over ten years to develop an exhibit. They start in a number of ways. Sometimes it’s—we had an outbreak exhibit that left and is now traveling. That was very topical, and so we collaborated with folks like NIH to put that on. Sometimes our curators will bring an exhibit. One of our most recent ones to open is Cellphone: Unseen Connections, and this was really the inspiration of one of our anthropologists who has expertise in this area.

8:53 They all kind of are focused, obviously, on natural history and elevating people’s connections to natural history. Sometimes our exhibits are launched as a collaboration. So, the ocean hall that we have here is a strong collaboration with NOAA that opened over ten years ago, and we just recently opened an exhibit—temporary exhibit—called the earth information center that was a collaboration with NASA. So, it really varies. Yeah. So, I can’t wait to go and see all the new things since I’ve last been here. But as I noted in the introduction, you’re both engaged in education here. So, let’s dive into education initiatives.

9:33 How many students—of those 4 million people a year, how many students do you typically serve here every year? So, we serve a variety of people, from families, adults, general visitors, the community, but then students; of course, my favorite audience. One of the tricky things about being big free museum is that while we do audience research, we don’t know exactly how many students come through our doors if they’re not doing one of our registered programs. And hopefully in the future, we’ll be able to have a little more information about that. But as far as the programs that we design for students and our museum educators lead, we have the capacity to serve up to 25,000 a year, both on site and virtual.

10:20 So, we do on-site programs for our students where they come to our education center, get to experience collections-based science learning like our scientists do, but we also have virtual programs for them to be able to engage in our content, see our collections, even if they can’t physically walk through the doors of our museum. Sounds like what we do on a much larger-scale. We have in-person and virtual; outreach educators going out in the classrooms as well. I wondered, as you said that, you have so many different audiences coming here. As you craft those educational programs, how do you say—I know they have diverse backgrounds, diverse interests coming in these school groups in particular, it’s looking at those that you know, how do you address that?

11:04 How do you make sure that your programs fit their needs? Yeah. For schools, that’s a good question because we want to make sure that we are authentically serving their needs, but then also being authentic to the mission of the museum. So, when I look at developing programs, we look at three main things. So, it is that it’s tied to natural history content. The Smithsonian has other science-serving institutions, so we’re not going to have a program on aerospace because the Aerospace Museum is going to be able to much better serve that audience. So, looking within the work that our scientists are doing, we are aligning to next generation science standards to be able to hit as many students as we can and help teachers with alignment.

11:47 And we’re also talking to local teachers, science curriculum heads to see, what is their need? What are the trends they see? What are the subjects that they need the most help with this year? Is it Earth science? Is it life science? So, when we’re designing new things, we want to make sure we’re being responsive to the needs of their audiences. The goal is not that every student that walks through the our doors is going to become a scientist. We want them to have a positive association with science, we want them to have a positive association with the museum. We’re increasing something that I focus a lot on, called their science capital, which is a little bit of everything. It spans the discipline of scientific literacy, what you know, who you know, just kind of how you fit within that science ecosystem as a learner.

12:34 And it’s really, I want them to come out having had a great day, learn something, but in the end, wanting to learn more about science or wanting to come back to the museum is my big goals. And I’ll just elaborate just a tiny bit. So, in the exhibit spaces, we have a lot of different types of programs. Our audience, because of the volume that we get, and people come here and think, “Oh, I’m going to visit the Smithsonian,” and don’t realize that it’s many different museums across the mall, so we have very limited time with them, often. We really design our in-exhibit experiences around objects, and giving people direct connection with those objects, but also to our experts.

13:16 So, we have a lot of programs where we bring the scientists, or post-docs, or visiting scientists into the exhibit halls and engage in two-way conversations and explorations. We train our volunteers and our staff to, kind of, foster two way dialog and try to assess a person’s interest, kind of, as quickly as possible so that they can help steer the conversation in the way that’s going to be most impactful for the audience member. That’s terrific. And you mentioned the multiple experiences here in Washington, with the Smithsonian. At the affiliates meeting, we had great presentations from folks representing the future women’s history, and Latino history museum.

13:58 So, it’ll be even more that you can do in the future, when you can come to Washington, DC, and experience the Smithsonian. So, with the scientific staff and their engagement in that, I saw something online, the science liaison program. What is that? We have a science liaison program that comes out of our education department, and what we have is one educator who is aligned with one of the science departments. So, we have seven liaisons, seven departments, plus another liaison that works with our lab staff, and the whole goal of this group is to foster communication and collaboration between education and science, to the benefit of our audiences.

14:42 And so, we work with them to develop programs, we offer them the science department’s audience engagement training, and help them craft conversations that they can bring out into the exhibits. All the work we do in education too, all of the content is vetted by our scientists, so that’s another way we kind of collaborate and communicate. We work with them on their broader impacts for research grants, so that we can help them fulfill their interests and needs when it comes to education and outreach. Interesting. Wow. You’re giving me all kinds of ideas I’m going to take back to Oak Ridge— [laugh] . So, thank you for that.

15:23 So, what about interns? Do you work with a lot with interns here? We do. We have interns in our science departments, but also in education. And I think one of the things that’s really strong across this museum is the way that we work with interns. It truly is about giving the interns an experience that’s going to be beneficial for them. So, they come to us with their ideas, their objectives, and it really is our role as mentors to help them fulfill those and to make connections, and to build their networks, their skills. It’s not a matter of, okay, we get extra help, and we’re going to put them to work doing things that we need.

16:07 Yeah, make these copies, or whatever. [unintelligible] the old days. Yeah. So, an immense amount of time is put into fostering those experiences. And we really have a tremendous staff, I think, across the board, who take it really seriously. Yeah, and it’s part of our museum strategic plan right now. So, it’s a big initiative to think about not just the current scientists, but who the next generation of scientists are going to be. So, as part of our strategic plan, we have the Inclusive Science Initiative, so that is making sure we have these well rounded opportunities, but also moving forward to only having paid opportunities, so our internships are more accessible to a broader population of people.

16:49 We’re not being exclusionary. Last fiscal year, we had over a hundred interns in the museum, but then also two hundred fellows, and these spread across all the different departments, including education. We have a research experience for undergrads that’s funded by NSF, called Natural History Research Experiences. We have a Summer Institute for Museum Anthropology for graduate students. So, we think about these different opportunities to serve people at different portions of their educational journey, so getting people in throughout a long process. And then also, especially—Jen does a lot of this work—we also have our Peter Buck Fellows, which are those that have obtained their doctorate degree, and then are coming into the museum.

17:35 And she does a lot of that work with training and working with them to—yeah. So, I assume all those fellows, internships, those programs on the website. Is that how people—is that the gateway to learn how to apply for those things? Yeah, you can look there, but also, if anyone’s interested in just broader Smithsonian internships as well, the Smithsonian has an Office of Academic Appointments and Internships, abbreviated OAAI. So, if you search for them, you’re going to be able to see all of the opportunities across the Smithsonian. Because you may not even know, necessarily, what the Smithsonian [unintelligible] you’re interested in. Because we also have—even if you’re interested in science, like I spoke about before, there is Natural History, but there’s also the Air and Space Museum, there’s also the Environmental Research Center out in Edgewater, Maryland.

18:23 So, there’s just a lot of offerings that maybe people don’t know about, and they can be exposed to through internships or other opportunities. Very good. And you mentioned volunteers earlier. Our volunteers are key to what we do at AMSE and K-25. Tell me about how volunteers are utilized here at the museum. Yeah, we have hundreds of volunteers, and we have two different types of those that are—ones that are public facing, and then those that are behind the scenes. So, the behind-the-scenes ones, they work in the science departments, and they help in a number of ways, doing collections, helping with data sets, you know, it really runs the gamut, depending on the research they’re aligned with.

19:05 And then our public-facing volunteers, we have a couple of different types. One type are our info desk volunteers, and they really help us foster a great experience for visitors who come in, so answering questions, those types of things, and then we have a cohort of volunteers that are aligned with specific exhibits. So, we don’t have volunteers in every exhibit, but they go through a rigorous training, and support system with our educators, so that they are excited and prepared to engage our millions of visitors in conversations and explorations. I’ve got to say my—and all Smithsonians, whenever I encounter a volunteer, they are extraordinarily well prepared and— Yes [laugh] . —terrific at what they do.

19:51 They really are. Lifelong learners. Yeah, that’s true. That’s true. So, I can’t thank you enough for joining us here and hosting us here at this amazing museum. Thank you for what you do, and thanks for being on AMSEcast. Yes, thank you. Thank you. Thank you for joining us on this episode of AMSEcast. For more information on this topic or any others, you can always visit us at AMSE.org or find, like, and follow us on Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter. I invite you to visit the American Museum of Science and Energy and the K-25 History Center in person. You can also shop at our online store and become a member at AMSE.org.

20:33 Thanks to our production team with Matt Mullins, plus our supportive colleagues at the Department of Energy’s Office of Science, Office of Environmental Management, and Office of Legacy Management, as well as Oak Ridge National Laboratory, the Y-12 National Security Complex, NNSA, and the AMSE Foundation. And of course, thanks to our wonderful guests today, and to all of you for listening. I hope you’ll join us for the next episode of AMSEcast. If you’ve enjoyed this podcast, I would like to ask that you consider becoming a member of the 117 Society, the newest membership opportunity offered by the American Museum of Science and Energy Foundation. By joining the 117 Society, you will help us continue this podcast and our other innovative programming.

21:19 You will support the expansion of our vitally important educational outreach, including virtual classes, and you will help ensure that both the American Museum of Science and Energy and the K-25 History Center can continue to provide world-class exhibits to our community and to the world. Benefits of membership includes special access to video and audio content, and 117 Society merchandise, as well as all the benefits of our Atom Splitter Membership Level. To learn more, go to AMSE.org. The 117 Society is vital to the future of AMSE and the K-25 History Center. I hope you will consider joining, and thank you very much.