Fifteen Glorious Years Under The Arches

FIFTEEN years ago, I became executive director of Pacific Science Center, and keeper of a cultural legacy of the 1962 World's Fair - the former U.S. Science Pavilion. When I arrived, Pacific Science Center had just reached maturity, turning 18 years old and meeting its mission of increasing the public's understanding of science.

Science to many was still met with a sigh. By the third grade, half of all students lose interest in science, and by the eighth grade, 79 percent lose interest, according to a 1981 science curriculum study. I knew we had to extend Pacific Science Center's reach in order to fulfill our crucial role in the Washington community: keeping young students interested in science.

To extend the reach of Pacific Science Center, we were determined to create a dynamic, growing institution with a strong on-site attendance, active membership base and outreach program, which all bring science and kids together. I'm proud to say, we continue to meet this challenge.

Pacific Science Center has more than doubled its annual attendance since 1980 and developed the largest membership base and the most extensive educational outreach program of any science center in the country. The membership base has exploded (from 2,900 to 36,706 households currently). And, through all of this, we've operated with a balanced budget year after year.

We've kept our promise and have faced and met challenges I couldn't have imagined when I first arrived in 1980. This year, we'll top one million visitors on site for the first time since the 1962 World's Fair. Every visitor has a story and now, many of our early visitors are already parents with children starting a new generation of fun at Pacific Science Center.

This year, we celebrate the 10th anniversary of two outstanding education programs - Camp-Ins and Science Celebration. If it takes a slumber party under the dinosaurs after hours at Pacific Science Center and creating science classes across the state to get kids excited about science, we'll do it. Science is fun under the arches.

This tradition did not begin with my tenure; it was the original and ongoing mission of Pacific Science Center. Our much-touted Science on Wheels van program (featuring "Blood and Guts" and "Rock and Roll" among other colorful names and subjects) began in 1973 during the time of the energy crisis. If schools couldn't fuel the buses to come to Pacific Science Center, the Science Center would go to them.

When I arrived, the Science on Wheels program delivered 45 van days to students and teachers in Washington with one traveling science van. In 1993-94, the program delivered 628 van days to more than 205,000 students and teachers in 483 schools in all of Washington's 39 counties, with seven traveling vans.

Skeptics wondered about our ambitious undertaking of CHINA in 1984. That exhibit proved to be our most successful of all time, bringing in 750,000 visitors and providing a flying dragon of a monorail to transport the curious.

Many held their breath when we financed a robotic WHALES. Now, five years later, the exhibit has been seen by more than two million visitors, the loan is paid off and the whales are on a three-year exhibit tour in Australia.

Recently, we animated the Seattle Center Monorail yet again, with life-size raptors scaling its sides to transport PSC visitors to The Dinosaurs of Jurassic Park. We were proud, but not surprised to break attendance figures set for this exhibit across the country - the Northwest supports Pacific Science Center and we're out there looking for ways to further support the community.

In 1993, we created the Mercer Slough Environmental Education Center to better reach children, classes and families on the east side of Lake Washington. In 1994, we opened the remodeled Kiewit Pavilion, featuring the virtual reality exhibit, Tech Zone. What pleased us most about the renovations was the new glass facades on the building. Now people could peer in and see what was new under the arches. The veil of science, in some sense, was lifted.

While we've reached the public in this region with enrichment and teacher programs, we've also reached people across the country and even around the globe with traveling exhibits. WHALES, MAZES, Lasers, Science Carnival, Dinosaurs and Brain Games have traveled throughout the United States.

Pacific Science Center also transformed one of our traveling exhibits into a National Science Center mentoring program. The National Science Foundation funded the Science Carnival Consortium and the Traveling Mini-Science Carnival programs, through which we're serving as a mentor to 15 developing science centers across the nation. The program includes intensive training and permanent or temporary use of interactive exhibitry from Pacific Science Center's traveling Science Carnival exhibit.

Over the past 15 years, the programs Pacific Science Center has developed have brought science and kids together. The children who were in second grade when I came on board hopefully will have graduated from college by now, and perhaps some them are in the science field because of Science Center programs.

Now, we look ahead to the future with Rotary Discovery Labs under development to help our children compete in the 21st century. Through the generous support of the community, these and other ambitious projects are becoming realities.

George Moynihan is executive director of Pacific Science Center. Prior to joining Pacific Science Center, Moynihan was the assistant director of the Lawrence Hall of Science, University of California, Berkeley.