MSCOPEUniversity - Museum Collaboration

Grad Student Trainship Program – Informal presentation of science

MSCOPEOne year Internship program (since

2001)

•We bring together graduate students from both the Physical and the Social Sciences

•We work closely with museum professionals who guide us through the process of exhibit/project design.

•Develop new exhibits and demos, reach out to public with (university) science

Collaboration

•SciTech Hands-On Museum

•Museum of Science and Industry

•Adler Planetarium

•The University of Chicago

• The first few months are spent learning about museum practices (interpretation, evaluations, delivering demonstrations)

• The rest of the year we work on developing our own science demos and exhibits.

What do we do?

We spend a lot of time learning from the

museums & try to help them out, labels evals

demos

And then we have to develop our own projects…

Challenges:• Interaction challenge: Balancing the needs of the museums, with our abilities & interests, finding common language, social science/phys sci/museum professional

• University Challenge: Convincing experts to reach out to the public first, utilizing social science students,Presenting advanced topics in an accessible and fun way

Sometimes it works, other times we fail, we learn from mistakes• Importance of research is self evident for scientists, demos to advanced & dry• The opposite: dumb down everything confine to only basic science, rehash already done things

Two examples:Self-Assembly & Supernovae

Mention: • Basic setup of demo and audience• Reduce the basic idea• Connections to university science• Particular difficulties:• Higher expectations from public (experts deeply involved)• Get non-experts excited & informed• Reduce the basic idea of demo• Find fun way for presentation• Sell it to the museums

Two examples:

Two examples:

Thank you&

People involved in MSCOPE:Leo Kadanoff (PI)Morrie Fred (co-PI)Brenda Lopez SilvaPanos Oikonomou

MSI:Bryan Wunar (co-PI)Brett NicholasBridget BastaErinErinTod Gieske

SciTech:Ronen MirShawn CarlsonCarinaTed

Adler:Mark SKaren

Previous years:

Jim SweitzerDebby MirAnshu DubeyLeo Irakliotis

Our Interns:

FIN

To do

•Show labels/evaluations

•Self-Assembly pictures (eval)

•Astro (Meet Nathan for snapshots)

•One more pic of Jim

•Pictures Adler

•Bryan Brett, MSI peeps

Labels

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