MUSEUMS AS CLASSROOMS: The Howard Hughes Medical Institute, known 
for its support of productive scientists, also offers an 
innovative program aimed at helping to ensure the next 
generation's curiosity and wonderment with science--funding 
education programs developed by local science museums, with an 
emphasis on attracting young women and minorities.

TI   : HHMI Museum Initiative Woos Youngsters To Science
 
 
AU   : RENEE TWOMBLY
 
TY   : NEWS
 
 
PG   : 1
 
 
The Chevy Chase, Md.-based Howard Hughes Medical Institute (HHMI) 
has a longstanding reputation for funding high-profile 
researchers and their important investigations into the crucial 
biomedical issues of the day. But a smaller, though substantial, 
percentage of the Hughes budget goes toward educating the 
researchers of tomorrow.
 
 
 
Amid the prestigious graduate fellowships and university-based 
programs the institute awards is a year-old initiative that 
reaches out to elementary and high school students beyond the 
classroom, students like Johnetta Thomas of North Carolina. Until 
last year, the 16-year-old Thomas was terrified of science. 
Normally shy, she says that having to discuss the evolution of a 
tornado funnel or the properties of light petrified her, until 
she joined an innovative, HHMI-funded program at the North 
Carolina Museum of Life and Science in her hometown of Durham.
 
 
 
Now, Thomas is working as an "explainer" at the museum--
expounding on the principles behind the exhibits to visitors. 
"There is so much neat stuff here to see and do, and I know 
people want to know what's going on," says the soft-spoken high 
school student. "At first it was hard for me to talk to people. 
But then I found out that everyone else is a person, just like 
me, and sharing information is a way to come together." 
 
 
 
Bringing children, especially minorities and young women, into 
science by way of museums and similar science-related 
institutions is the focus of the HHMI program that last year 
granted Thomas's North Carolina museum $175,000 over five years. 
Through the museum's "Biolinks" program, dozens of disadvantaged 
African American students spend up to 10 hours a week at the 
museum, picking up job skills and scientific information by 
guiding the museum's visitors, many of whom are also minorities. 
 
 
 
This year, the HHMI program awarded $4.2 million in five-year 
grants to 22 museums, botanical gardens, aquaria, and zoos large 
and small across the United States. Last year, in its first 
round, it gave $6.4 million to 29 natural history, science, and 
children's museums.
 
 
 
Small Program, Big Goals
Although the museum initiative is one of the smallest of Hughes' 
education programs--which award-ed a total of $51.4 million in 
fiscal year 1993, the majority of which went to graduate, 
postdoctoral, and M.D. students in the form of research 
fellowships, as well as support for undergraduate education 
programs--it rounds out the institute's mandate to improve the 
quality of science education at all levels, from primary school 
to postdoctoral science. It is the largest private effort to 
support educational programs in science museums in the U.S., 
according to HHMI officials. 
 
 
 
The institute started the program to tap youngsters' inherent 
interest in science, says Joseph G. Perpich, HHMI's vice 
president for grants and special programs. "Kids have all the 
natural attributes of scientists. They are full of questions, and 
are very excited by nature. But they seem to lose that in the 
fourth or fifth grade if not stimulated."
 
 
 
But, Perpich adds, the institute wants to do more than fund 
short-lived "gee whiz" exhibits that offer a spark of interest 
that dies the moment kids leave the museum. Their goal, hashed 
out in two years of planning, is to create well-designed 
educational programs, directly connected to teachers and pupils, 
that go beyond the museum walls to have an impact in the 
community. Says Perpich, "We ourselves are not able to master and 
run programs that support local schools. We want to fund the ones 
in the business of exciting kids."
 
 
 
The institute also has a social agenda: to largely steer the 
programs to minority and female children. "In the proposals, we 
paid a lot of attention to how museums were trying to reach out 
to underrepresented groups and to women," he says. "It's a case 
of what the science rich can do for the science poor."
 
 
 
Yvonne Merrill, education director of the Imaginarium, a science 
museum in Anchorage, Alaska, has already seen a payoff. After 
receiving a $225,000 HHMI grant last year, the small, six-year-
old museum set out to reach rural Alaskans in "roadless 
communities." In September a small group from the museum flew in 
a cargo plane to Barrow, on the Arctic coast, the first of nine 
far-flung destinations, carrying an array of insects from around 
the world. They trained local teachers in the biology of the 
insects, and the use of interactive props such as models, 
puzzles, and audio devices that support the presentation. And 
then they left the exhibit for three weeks in the village's 
community room for everyone to see.
 
 
 
"In Alaska there are a large number of insects, but only a few 
species, and they are dull, not showy," says Merrill. "Many of 
the insects brought to Barrow were from the rain forest. The 
whole tropical story was mind-boggling to the students."
 
 
 
In Memphis, Tenn., the goal of the Pink Palace Museum is to reach 
youths in two of the city's most impoverished communities, the 
Foote and Cleaborn Homes public housing projects. The "Memphis 
Science Alliance" initiative, funded by a $200,000 HHMI grant, is 
a series of programs that follows students from fourth through 
eighth grade.
 
 
 
One part of the program is Science Saturdays, a six-week program 
of highly interactive activities offered at a church in the heart 
of the projects. The Saturday program uses hands-on 
experimentation, such as building terrariums and aquariums out of 
plastic bottles and biological materials. Another component is a 
labs program offered four to six times a year in schools serving 
project residents. The program offers an earth sciences lab, for 
example, where students test for such things as the physical 
properties of minerals.
 
 
Long-Term Commitment
"Most museum programming is a one-shot visit. It is a most 
gratifying experience to reach a child in the community that has 
never gotten a chance to come here, and to maintain consistent 
contact," says Joyce Godfrey, the museum's programming director. 
Godfrey, Merrill, and other program directors say that the 
hallmark of the HHMI grants is its five-year funding--an unusual 
com- mitment for museums, which often struggle year to year for 
donations. "In the current economic climate, it 
 
 
 
is hard to raise money for anything but a highly visible, neat 
project that may last only one year," says Bonnie Van Dorn, 
executive director of the Association of Science-Technology 
Centers, which has almost 300 science museum members in the U.S. 
"The HHMI approach to sustained funding for five years is a real 
breath of fresh air. It gives museums time to develop serious 
projects, and to get the bugs out."
 
 
 
Van Dorn adds that member museums were surprised that such an 
august foundation for biomedical research as HHMI "now wants to 
focus on education in the public arena for young kids," she says. 
"They gave a lot of careful attention to equity, to understanding 
what quality teacher education is. We are delighted."
 
 
 
Teachers are equally grateful to be given some help, says Wendell 
Mohling, retiring president of the National Science Teachers 
Association. "Classrooms are generally poor. Some only get $25 a 
year for lab materials," he says. "The HHMI program will make 
sure that museums will not just give the kids a `yah-ha' field 
trip, but will reinforce what they learn in the classrooms." 
 
 
 
In Durham, an evolving connection between the museum and local 
schools and universities may succeed in providing an enriching 
boost to students from kindergarten through college and beyond. 
Program director Georgiana Searles is talking with Duke 
University and with HHMI investigators at its medical center to 
ensure that young students who thrive at the museum will have a 
shot at other Hughes initiatives, such as its precollege, 
undergraduate, and postgraduate pro- grams.
 
 
 
As desirable as that would be, Perpich wants the goals of HHMI's 
museum initiative to be reachable. He says the final outcome of 
the funding is not to funnel kids into a lifelong commitment to a 
science profession, but to keep their enthusiasm for life's 
wonders alive. "No matter what careers the kids ultimately 
choose," he says, "we just want them to know more about science 
and nature."
 
 
Renee Twombly is a freelance writer based in Durham, N.C.
 
 
(The Scientist, Vol:7, #21, November 1, 1993)
(Copyright, The Scientist, Inc.)