Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: FRIDAY, July 22, 1994 TAG: 9408120014
SECTION: EDITORIAL PAGE: A8 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE:
DATELINE: LENGTH: Medium
Yet the "permanent" exhibits in its fourth-floor galleries are too permanent: aging, outdated, most of them a decade old. For many museums, this would be unacceptable. For a science and technology museum, it's intolerable.
The institution did well, therefore, to win grants recently for overhauling its exhibits. And our region would do well to support the overhaul, knowing that an even better science museum will prove an even better regional asset.
With the help of local-legislator lobbying, the state appropriated for the 1994-96 biennium not only a respectable $250,000 for museum operations, but also $625,000 in capital support - requiring the museum to find matching funds. A good start has been made on the latter, including a $100,000 grant from the National Science Foundation and $50,000 from the city of Roanoke.
As with most such efforts, a partnership is required.
The state, for its part, isn't being loose with taxpayers' money. As a star in the Center in the Square constellation, the science museum is an economic-development plus for Western Virginia, as well as a contributor to quality of life.
More important, across a broad swath of the state, it has become a major educational resource. In the 1992-93 year, the science museum served students from 47 school districts, a third of the total number in Virginia.
Many schools, especially in rural areas, lack even basic lab materials and other resources for teaching science. Many have come to rely on the museum's science classes, planetarium programs, outreach efforts, workshops, laboratories and nationally touring exhibits to supplement their classroom instruction, and to help science teachers develop professionally.
In this light, the state may see its grants as a relatively cheap way to compensate, if only a little, for funding and programmatic disparities among Virginia school districts - disparities that hit science education particularly hard.
The museum, meantime, is doing its part. Executive director Ken Schutz, hired last year, has aggressively promoted change and growth. The museum's board supported a "benchmark" committee that traveled in search of cutting-edge exhibit ideas. Soon, the museum had won help for revamping its galleries from the Exploratorium, an innovative science museum and resource center in San Francisco.
The upgrade master-plan includes a new physics gallery, scheduled to open next January for the museum's 25th anniversary. It will feature hands-on exhibits from the Exploratorium, among them: "Turbo Flora," "Triple Eye Lightstick," "Visible Effects of the Invisible" and "Strange Attractors." (Don't ask us to explain them.)
The Hopkins Planetarium will get laser and digital technology and other gizmos; the health gallery, an interactive "Body Tech" exhibit. A science lab will be equipped with work tables, an environmental chamber, a microscope and computers. There's even a plan for an applied-technology gallery to help sufferers of technophobia.
Which points to another leg of the partnership stool. The entire region has a stake in the museum's commitment to catch up with the state of the art.
In a technology-driven world, a scientifically illiterate population can't thrive. Leaving aside the diversions and fun this museum offers (take a kid to the reptile and insect exhibit, if you haven't already, and hear squeals of delight), it is one piece of a vitally needed effort, here as elsewhere, to broaden the horizons of science education.
by CNB