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In the above episode of Get Tech Smart, Flo Nicholas sits down with Shana Hawrylchak, Executive Director, and Peter Gustafson, Deputy Director at the SEE Science Center. The center has engaged visitors of all ages for more than 30 years with interactive exhibits on light, electricity, sound, and more.
Flo Nicholas:
I’m really excited to have you guys here. This is your chance to put a spotlight on what’s going on at the SEE Science Center, why everyone in New Hampshire should be aware of what you guys offer, and why they need to stop by.
Shana Hawrylchak:
I feel like the Science Center is one of those hidden gems of Manchester. Folks might not know about us, but we’re one of the few hands-on science centers in New Hampshire, and we serve Manchester, Nashua, and all those surrounding towns and counties. We have over 90 hands-on exhibits for families to play with, we do demonstration programs, birthday parties, you name it. It’s a fun place for families to get together and spend time together as a family.
Peter Gustafson:
The exhibit topics range from space, to forces in motion, to dinosaurs. We have exhibits on properties of light bubbles, we have exhibits that focus on the human genome, biology, simple machines, electricity, and magnetism. Those are your typical exhibit topics for a hands-on science museum – mostly physics. And then we have the LEGOⓇ Millyard Project, which is a Guinness-record holding exhibit. It’s the largest permanent Lego exhibit at minifigure scale in the world, and it’s a model of the Millyard in Manchester. It has running trains, more than 3 million Lego bricks, more than 6000 Lego Mini Figures. We get a similar reaction from kids and adults, it’s a big wow-factor.
Flo Nicholas:
Besides walking around and looking at exhibits, what are the hands-on STEM projects kids can work on?
Shana Hawrylchak:
We pride ourselves in that all of our exhibits are hands-on. We really try to make components friendly for kids and families to come and experiment with so you’re not just walking around looking at displays, you’re actually interacting with those phenomena and getting to see how they work. We also do all sorts of live demonstrations where our program staff come out and you can use our Van de Graaff generator to make your hair stick up, or blow air out of an air cannon. We also have tons of hands-on programs for schools, which we specialize to the different age groups that come through and the types of things that will excite them to get involved in STEM.
Peter Gustafson:
We also have a mobile version of our programs, so we can go do chemistry in a classroom or do a LEGO engineering and problem-solving class with hands-on activities. We can go to classrooms and run the programs there.
Flo Nicholas:
It’s April, so parents are already starting to look for ways to get the kids out of the house this summer. What are some of the programs that you guys will be running?
Shana Hawrylchak:
We run our own camps, but we also feature educators from other nonprofits. We have a spy camp which is really fun, the kids get to solve a mystery using their STEM skills. We also feature camps from the UNH STEM lab. Media Power Youth does a camp where kids get to debunk science theory and make their own movie. And then starting this year, we’ve been working with ARMI, the Advanced Regenerative Manufacturing Institute, to bring a biotech camp to the Science Center. Two more camps with great partners include Animation with LEGO Camp, where they design their own animation movies using Lego figures, and then a camp we partner with FIRST Robotics on where they get to do their own robotics.
Peter Gustafson:
They use a LEGO robot cube and program that robot to fulfill certain tasks, and each year the tasks change. It’s a little bit of coding and a lot of problem-solving and teamwork. It’s the first step into the FIRST programs that rise up through their robotics competitions.
Flo Nicholas:
Let’s talk about what’s just going on in STEM, globally and locally. It’s constantly new innovation, new technology, just so many new things coming out. How are you guys managing to keep up with this ever changing STEM world and make sure your exhibits are up to date with all this evolving technology we see?
Shana Hawrylchak:
I think a big part of that is working with our partners. For example, we’ve been partnering with the New Hampshire Tech Alliance quite a bit recently to showcase their products of the year, because we want to showcase a lot of these amazing inventions that are happening right here in New Hampshire. A lot of folks don’t think of New Hampshire as a tech hub, but we have tons of amazing tech companies out here and we’ve been partnering with them to showcase that each year. And then we’ve been partnering with different companies for our programs we do for schools as well. So for example, we partner with ARMI to develop some STEM programs for middle school aged kids to let them know that these careers will be a potential in the future. A lot of kids get out of high school and think, I’ve got to go to Boston. And they don’t, they can stay local and contribute to the amazing things that are happening in our local area.
Peter Gustafson:
Those field trips with ARMI are introducing kids to bioengineering and the concepts related to it. We met yesterday with a fellow from Rockwell Automation, and they’re bringing automation to the car industry or the food industry, and now perhaps the bioengineering industry. Those kinds of opportunities are there for high school graduates, college graduates, PhDs – there’s opportunities for all kinds of people, and we’re so excited to tell kids about it.
Flo Nicholas:
There is this concept that nothing is happening here – in order to do STEM, we’ve got to go to Massachusetts or Maine or Vermont. So it’s really important for me to shine the spotlight on organizations like you that are doing amazing things. I want kids to have this exposure so that they’re like, I can go into tech or do science or engineering. That exposure is very critical early on.
Shana Hawrylchak:
I think you bring up a good point. A lot of times kids look at the sciences like the subject matter they take in school, and those aren’t the jobs out there, the cool opportunities. So having that opportunity to really have the kids see what some actual jobs are, helps open their eyes to all of the little nooks and crannies that they didn’t even know existed.
Peter Gustafson:
Another one of our summer camps is called Camp Summer Science, and one of the modules in that camp is reverse engineering. The kids bring something from home and take it apart, so they learn how to use basic tools, then they can see what’s inside a VCR or CD player or something like that, and it’s really eye-opening for them. You want to be able to use the tools, disassemble something, and find out what the parts are inside and how they work together. Another module from that camp is prototyping, where they come up with an exhibit idea for the Science Center and build a prototype. It was very interesting to see what kinds of exhibit topics kids will come up with. Being creative is important to tech and science, a lot of what we do is to get people and kids to be creative, to have fun, to pursue their interests.
Shana Hawrylchak:
And I think a big one we always talk about is being okay with failing. Failure is a beautiful thing that we should all celebrate more than we do, because failure is where you learn. So getting kids used to tinkering, if it doesn’t work out, it’s okay. You can try again, and you learn something.
Flo Nicolas is an attorney, co-founder and COO of DEI Directive, a Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion technology firm that provides a comprehensive DEI Intelligence Platform. She also produces Get Tech Smart and Get Resource Smart, which she shares with partners in The Granite State News Collaborative
