Middle school students aren’t known for their long attention spans. But on a gray day in late March, a whirring laser cutter at Carnegie Science Center is holding a group of teens rapt.

 The students from Pittsburgh Schiller STEAM Academy hover over the machine, which is about the size of an office copier, and watch their invention come to life.

Soon, they pull out custom-designed pieces for assembling an airplane glider—their first project inside Carnegie Science Center’s newly renovated and relocated BNY Fab Lab.

After spending the first decade of its existence in a separate building that also housed Highmark SportsWorks®, the Science Center’s digital fabrication laboratory has moved into a former educational theater space on the main building’s third floor.

The new Fab Lab is more than just a fancy makerspace. Staffed by knowledgeable educators who are available to guide anyone who stops in, it’s an incubator for invention. In the center of the room are a dozen computer terminals where anyone can start creating their designs—for everything from jewelry to action figures and drones. Lining the walls are the machines that will turn visitors’ wildest imaginings into reality: laser cutters, vinyl cutters, sticker makers, equipment for soldering and circuitry, and more than a dozen 3D printers housed in a room around the size of a spacious high school classroom.

Science Center leaders hope this move into the main facility will translate to even more visitors—from school groups to teens to senior citizens—stopping in to design and make stuff.

“Part of finding the right path for one’s future is feeling successful at it and feeling like you could do it,” says Jason Brown, Henry Buhl, Jr., Director of Carnegie Science Center, who helped create the Science Center’s original Fab Lab a decade ago. “What the Fab Lab provides is a judgment-free zone where people can experiment and iterate and see what they like, see what they’re good at.”

Visibility Boost

When the Fab Lab opened in 2015, the Science Center intended to make its high-tech tools like 3D printers accessible to everyone.

“This cutting-edge technology was out there, but very few people had access to it,” explains Brown. “We wanted to provide the opportunity to connect people to it, especially kids, so that as the technology grew, they could imagine themselves growing with it.”

Photo: Becky Thurner

At the time, the SportsWorks building seemed like the best location for an experimental concept like the Fab Lab. But as enthusiasm for it grew, Science Center leaders felt it needed a more visible location.

The new location on the third floor is also almost twice as large as its previous digs. The old location and Mobile Fab Labs—which transport the Fab Lab concept to schools, libraries, community centers, and more using two vans—saw thousands of visitors each year, Brown says. But he expects a lot more people to visit the new space.

“We’re going to have many more passersby that I think will hopefully, for lack of a better term, do the impulse buy and say, ‘Oh, I’m going to see what’s in there and go in and try something out,’” Brown says. “Now, literally 500,000 visitors a year will walk right by the door.”

Brown notes that the bulk of the programming in the new space will be defined as “FLASH” workshops—which stands for Fab Lab Art and Science Hangout—with STEM-themed walk-in activities that last anywhere from 10 to 30 minutes and can accommodate up to 30 people.

“It’s going to be much more open and experimental than a set workshop,” Brown explains.

If visitors like the experience, they can buy tickets for more time-intensive workshops or attend certification classes to learn more. The new space will be open during regular Science Center hours and for evening events, such as teen nights and 21+ nights.

And with the move comes a few new additions: a larger laser cutter, more 3D printers, handheld CNC routers, and a sticker printer. They join a roster of existing tech, including computers with design software and even robotics equipment.

Designed for Flexibility

Despite constant advancements in technology, the Fab Lab’s technology still manages to sound straight out of a sci-fi book.

People may be familiar with a 3D printer that layers material upward to create an object, but the new Fab Lab also has a resin printer, a relatively new innovation that shoots lasers into a vat of liquid to create high-definition objects.

“The science is just baked into all of it,” says Jon Doctorick, Science Center director of STEM outreach. “Come on in and try the tech that you’ve only seen on YouTube or whatever. Come and try it and see how it works.”

When Brown and Doctorick worked to create the original Fab Lab, the team innovated to make it fit the Science Center’s goal of being open and accessible to all.

“We had found a really unique path to digital fabrication in that we applied the Science Center model to it, that we made it accessible to everyone, including second, third, fourth graders and, apparently, no one had really done that before,” Doctorick says.

Photo: Becky Thurner

The model worked so well that Doctorick and his team have helped set up Fab Labs elsewhere, including three Mobile Fab Labs at Pennsylvania Cyber Charter School, a permanent one at Da Vinci Science Center in Allentown, Pennsylvania, and a Mobile Fab Lab at the Science Spectrum museum in Texas.

“We roll it out to schools, community centers, other places, and take everything off, set it up in a community space, and then run hands-on activities with whomever is around,” Brown says. “Whether they feel proficient at it or not, they can go and have a really good experience, and then hopefully get their feet wet.”

Relying on a decade of Fab Lab experience, the Science Center designed a space that can change with the times. The new Fab Lab is completely modular, with easily rearrangeable furniture and more electrical outlets than currently needed, allowing them to reconfigure and accommodate technology that may not even exist yet, Doctorick says.

“Some exhibits, when they open that day, they’re baked in that way—any changes can be somewhat difficult,” Doctorick says. “Whereas with the Fab Lab, the very purpose of that space is to change over time. The Fab Lab as it is today is not like the Fab Lab as it was 10 years ago.”

And their knowledge in operating the Fab Lab will only grow with the new space. The open programming and increased foot traffic mean more people will come to the Fab Lab and experiment with the technology.

“It’s my hypothesis that great ideas from the community are going to emerge from this,” Doctorick predicts.

It’s a space designed for the kind of collaboration that the Schiller students naturally initiated during their visit.

Groups of kids leaned over one another’s computer terminals, peeking at designs and occasionally helping by pointing out a flaw in the shape of a wing or asymmetry that threatened the glider’s ability to fly.

The computers are closely lined in rows, making it easy for the kids to collaborate, and the staff encourage discussion by asking visitors questions during workshops. It’s an environment designed to attract everyone from elementary-age kids to seniors.

Photo: Becky Thurner

“The team there is so supportive of people, and they really just want to get them to try things out,” Brown says. “People walk out of there feeling successful, and they walk out of there feeling like they did something fun and new and different.”

That feeling of success could spark the next generation of innovators. The Fab Lab runs the Mentors in the Making program that pairs teens with professionals in STEM fields, who then learn to use the equipment alongside them in weekly sessions over the course of five months.

“We saw the need to provide students with an adult STEM mentor and give them the opportunity to do digital fabrication and help better their community,” Doctorick notes.

As part of the program, the cohort identifies problems in society and then designs machines or devices that address them. Doctorick says one creative young student interested in the water quality of the Ohio River designed an encasing for a device to conduct water quality readings.

It provides them with experience using new-age technology, a place to develop critical thinking, and a mentor who can help them find a place in the STEM field.

Doctorick says one reluctant student in the Mentors in the Making program went on to volunteer at the Fab Lab, then work as a staffer for the Fab Lab’s summer camp program, and eventually pursue computer science in college.

It’s an experience the Science Center hopes to give any and all who wander inside its new digs.

As Doctorick notes, “I want it to be a resource for patrons who are coming in for the first time, and experiencing the world of digital fabrication that they’ve only maybe in passing heard about.”

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In 2016, Carnegie Science Center’s BNY Mellon Fab Lab partnered with e-NABLING the Future, a global community of thousands of volunteers, to make 3D-printed prosthetic hands for people in need. After a few months of training in the Science Center’s maker space, about a dozen area high school students crafted the prosthetic hands. They then led a group of local volunteers in assembling the fully functional limbs, which were sent free of charge to children throughout the world who are missing all or part of their hands due to injuries from violent conflicts or disease.

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From a tech perspective, his job is all about harnessing computer apps to plot the movements of massive gatherings of animated characters. But what makes his animations seem so realistic is how he captures the disparate, individual behaviors that occur within crowds, so that when viewed as a whole the scenes leap off the screen.

“It comes down to good old-fashioned spectacle,” Kanyuk says. “Crowds are just awe-inspiring.”

Back in the late ’90s, the technology that would enable such intricate scenes still seemed like the stuff of science fiction—not an actual job. So, when the now 40-year-old Kanyuk first began picturing what a career as an animator might look like, he saw a blank canvas just waiting to be brought to life at the hands of a talented artist. After all, that’s how those Disney classics, from Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs to The Lion King, were created—one frame at a time, 24 frames per second.

“I just assumed people drew everything by hand,” Kanyuk recalls.

He quickly realized that he had a lot to learn—and much of it was rooted in science and math. Consequently, the self-proclaimed nerd got busy. In 2005, he graduated from the University of Pennsylvania with a bachelor of science in engineering degree in digital media design and minors in fine arts and psychology.

Kanyuk also continues to add animation apps (Maya, Houdini, and RenderMan, to name a few) and computer programming (C/C++/C#, Python, and Lua) to his ever-expanding resume.

“It’s like pulling back the curtain on how these movies are made. So, the next time you see a Pixar movie, you’ll experience it in a different way. You’ll realize how many hundreds of people contributed to it, you’ll understand the complexity of the process, and you’ll appreciate how revolutionary the technology truly is.“

–Jason Brown, Henry Buhl, Jr., Director of the Science Center

Yet he still hasn’t lost his kid-like wonder needed to spark an idea and the brainpower required to transform that idea into movie magic.

The complex science and art behind Pixar’s animations are now on display in The Science Behind Pixar, which opened May 25 at Carnegie Science Center. The exhibition reveals the wizardry—or, more accurately, the STEM (science, technology, engineering, and math) skills that have enabled the making of such modern-day classics as Toy Story,  A Bug’s Life, Monsters, Inc., Finding Nemo (and Dory), The Incredibles, Cars, Brave, Inside Out, and Coco,
to name just a few.

“It’s like pulling back the curtain on how these movies are made,” says Jason Brown, Henry Buhl, Jr., Director of the Science Center and vice president  of Carnegie Museums of Pittsburgh.  “So, the next time you see a Pixar movie, you’ll experience it in a different way. You’ll realize how many hundreds of people contributed to it, you’ll understand the complexity of the process, and you’ll appreciate how revolutionary the technology truly is.”

Stem Skills of Animation

The 14,000-square-foot exhibition features larger-than-life 3D models of Buzz Lightyear, Dory, Mike and Sulley, Edna Mode, and Wall•E—who, by the way, are all available  for selfies.

The exhibition also offers a behind-the-scenes look into Pixar’s creative process. It can take four-plus years to move a project through the nine stages of development—story and art, modeling, rigging, surfaces, sets and cameras, animation, simulation, lighting, and rendering.

“This exhibit offers people a hands-on opportunity to understand how we make our films,” says Pixar President Jim Morris. “We  use science, technology, engineering, art, and math—along with a significant dash of creativity and fun—and this exhibit is truly a great demonstration of how all those ingredients come together in our filmmaking process.”

With more than 50 interactive stations, the exhibition invites visitors to work through the STEM-related challenges Pixar artists and creators often encounter.

The modeling stage, for instance, starts with sketches and clay sculptures. From there, digital modelers make virtual 3D wireframes to define each character’s unique shape. An understanding of anatomy—knowing where bones and muscles are located—is essential for an accurate portrayal.

The sets-and-cameras phase of the process calls for set designers to serve as the architects who build the virtual environments—that includes every pebble, tree, and structure—from the ground up. Camera artists are the cinematographers. For them, physics becomes a part of the equation as they determine the composition, camera movement, and lens type for each frame.

Simulation is where scenes start to come alive and look believable. For example, as characters move, so should their hair and clothing. This is where technical directors using physics-based computer programs come into play. Their job is to create the right balance of effects—too much or too little movement will leave viewers thinking something isn’t quite right.

“The fact that this exhibit even exists shows how much the field has changed,” Kanyuk says. “And I think that’s great. As more people learn, explore, and discover what animation involves, the better able they will be to express themselves through this medium.”

As long as the machines haven’t taken over the world, it’s the humans who are calling the shots. “The Science Behind Pixar helps people understand that what they see on screen doesn’t just happen by computers alone,” Brown says. “It’s a human brain, with the assistance of computers, that’s figuring how to make things happen.”

And that means a lot of trial and error, hit or miss. In other words, the scientific method in practice. You know the drill: Make an observation, form a hypothesis, predict an outcome, conduct an experiment, figure out the results, and repeat until you get it right.

“Think about the character Merida from Brave,” Brown adds. “Think about how the animators applied the principles of gravity so that her very long hair moves naturally. When we watch the movie, it looks seamless. But these moments are only accomplished after tremendous amounts of work—after failing fast and failing often.”

That same philosophy can be applied to the development of the exhibition itself. 

About 10 years ago, Boston’s Museum of Science approached Pixar with the idea of highlighting the science in animation. From concept to completion, the realization of that idea was years in the making. Now, nearly a decade after its debut, the exhibition continues to be popular and relevant, having made stops at nearly 20 museums around the world.

“We want to inspire the next generation of filmmakers,” says Pixar exhibition designer Brianne Moseley. “We want young people to embrace math and science concepts as a creative endeavor and, if they do, then that might lead to more creative exploration and animation in the future.”

Continuing To Push Boundaries

If you think about it, that’s how Pixar got its start. After taking moviegoers on an adventure to a galaxy far, far away, Star Wars director George Lucas returned to Earth and set his sights on exploring the uncharted territory of computer-generated imagery (CGI). To that end, he established the Computer Division of Lucasfilm in 1979.

“Art is a technological medium,” Lucas once told Cinemablend, an online news forum for film lovers. “So, a lot of it has to do with engineering and trying to figure out how to create what you imagine.”

By 1986, another visionary got in on the action. The once and future Apple CEO Steve Jobs purchased the group, and the company was rechristened Pixar Animation Studios.

For the next few years, Pixar quietly produced short films and television commercials. But in 1991, the company partnered with Disney and took a bold step forward by proclaiming its intent to create the first full-length computer-animated movie.

“This exhibit offers people a hands-on opportunity to understand how we make our films. We use science, technology, engineering, art, and math—along with a significant dash of creativity and fun—and this exhibit is truly a great demonstration of how all those ingredients come together in our filmmaking process.“

–Jim Morris, Pixar President

Four years later, Toy Story hit the big screen, and the world was forever changed. Opening No. 1 at the box office, the movie went on to become the highest-grossing film of 1995, taking in more than $550 million worldwide.

Academy Award® nominations for Best Original Song, Best Original Score, and Best Original Screenplay (the first time an animated film was recognized for screenwriting) followed. In 2006, the Walt Disney Company purchased Pixar.

Today, Pixar is still promising to take moviegoers—and, thanks to exhibitions like The Science Behind Pixar, museumgoers—to infinity and beyond.

“Both this show and the Science Center are talking about STEM,” Brown says. “STEM isn’t just engineering and isn’t just math; it’s a blending of science, aesthetics, and design. It’s critical thinking. It’s problem-solving in the real world. And it’s the perfect embodiment of our mission here at the Science Center. Our goal is to connect people and science and inspire a curiosity that will endure for a lifetime.”

A lifetime of learning can start when you least expect.

“We want people to continue the conversation long after they leave the building,” Brown continues. “We want them to say, ‘Wow, maybe I could do that, maybe that’s a job for me.’ Maybe they’ll go home and look for some free software to see what they can create. Maybe they’ll realize that even if they want to be an artist, mathematics is important.”

That’s something Kanyuk can relate to. “If I knew that math and science would have helped me make beautiful art and imagery, I would have paid more attention when I was young,” he says.

Now he has another reason to appreciate the exhibition. “I just had my first kid, and taking him to the [exhibition] would just be the coolest way to explain to him what his dad does for a living.”

Sponsored by Pepsi and Eat’n Park. The Science Behind Pixar was developed by the Museum of Science, Boston in collaboration with Pixar Animation Studios. © Disney/Pixar. All Rights Reserved. Used Under Authorization. ©Disney/Pixar

The post The STEM of Animation appeared first on Carnegie Museums of Pittsburgh.

“I remember in kindergarten I would make my own books out of a sheet of paper, and it said ‘written and illustrated by Omisa Shah’ decorated with these stick figures,” says Shah, now a 15-year-old sophomore at North Allegheny High School. “But now this has become a reality! And I would not have succeeded without the support of the program and everyone who pushed me to do it.”

Shah was among the 15 teenage STEM Storytellers, a program at Carnegie Science Center to teach science, technology, engineering, and math skills through creative writing. It involved months of twice-weekly after-school trips to the North Shore, where high school students from around the greater Pittsburgh area brainstormed topics and researched, wrote, revised, and illustrated their 30 something-page opuses over the course of six months.

The program was developed by Tina Seidelson, the Science Center’s director of student engagement, and Shannon Gaussa, STEM content manager for Pre-K and elementary, who were searching for alternative ways to teach STEM topics through creative projects.

“The program highlights how STEM is found everywhere and how it can take a cross-curricular approach, allowing students to build various skill sets,” Seidelson says.

Seidelson was inspired by a personal experience she had as a kindergartner in the early 1990s, when she was paired with an eighth grader at her K-8 school on a book project. The assignment involved having the middle schooler interview the younger Seidelson and then produce a book about her as the main character. She recalls the exhilaration at seeing the final product come to fruition.

“I found the project to be very inspiring and it’s something I still remember to this day,” she says. “At that age, I thought of authors as being professional people. I had no idea that anybody, including students, could write and publish.”

“The program highlights how STEM is found everywhere and how it can take a cross-curricular approach, allowing students to build various skill sets.”

–Tina Seidelson, director of student engagement at Carnegie Science Center

In that early-Internet era, not everyone could sell their books through the world’s largest retailer. But today, the gatekeepers to the publishing world have largely faded. After a little research, Gaussa discovered an Amazon-based, self-publishing platform that would allow aspiring writers to sell their creations through the site.

With funding from the machine tooling company Kennametal, these students created and published their ideas through Amazon, and garnered the proceeds from the sales. Additional funding from The Heinz Endowments paid each student a stipend of $1,400 for their efforts. But earning that money would be harder than they expected.

Ashnavi Ghosh chose a topic with PhD-level complexity: genetically modified food. But researching her book,

, wasn’t the hard part; it was simplifying it for a preschool audience.

“I couldn’t write as much as I wanted to,” says Ghosh, a 15-year-old junior at North Allegheny High School. “When I was writing it, I realized I was writing on a middle school level. It was too complicated.”

Her mentor, Krista Bullard (aka Dr. Krista), could relate. A materials chemist, Bullard has presented her research at conferences to audiences without expertise in her field, so she can’t get too technical. Counterintuitively, she says “dumbing down” her research requires the highest level of understanding.

“When you’re in STEM and you’re in research, you need to take a complex idea or topic and be able to sell it or explain it to the masses. That’s how you spread your research in general—with simple ideas,” she says. “You really know the topic if you can explain it to anyone. If you can teach something to preschoolers, you can explain it to anyone.”

After sorting through pages of ideas, Shah settled on a concept that she felt would be relatable: hand-washing. She figured that its relevance during the pandemic would have widespread appeal, a suspicion confirmed when she was babysitting the 3- and 6-year-old kids that live next door.

“One afternoon I randomly asked, ‘Hey, do you know why we wash our hands?’” she recalls asking the 6-year-old child. “And she was like, ‘I need to do it so I can get a snack.’ And I thought, perfect, I found my idea.”

Ash’s Handwashing Adventure tells the story of a young student who refused to wash her hands before snack time at school. “Why do we use soap?” she exclaims. So her teacher, Mrs. Whiskers (all the characters are cats), takes her on an adventure exploring how molecules in soap called “surfactants’’ are the “magic ingredients in soap” that attach themselves to germs and drag them away when hands are rinsed.

Her book employs words sparingly, averaging around one sentence per page, and is colorfully illustrated using a sketching iPad app called “Procreate.” Friends and family have already bought copies of the book—the first sale went to her dad—and submitted plenty of five-star reviews.

But even if her book doesn’t appear on The New York Times Best Seller list, the experience was “invaluable,” says her mother, Anisha Shah.

“By taking this nontraditional approach to teaching STEM and emphasizing the creative process to tackle difficult topics … the kids can see that STEM is not one-size-fits-all,” she says. “There can be so much variety in both teaching and learning it. [Omisa] learned so much from this process.”

The post Storytelling through STEM appeared first on Carnegie Museums of Pittsburgh.

Photo: John Schisler

As the mechatronics engineer at Carnegie Science Center, Doug DeHaven is a in-house Mr. Fix-It, as well as the creative mind behind many of its popular interactive exhibits. He built what is likely the world’s largest binary flip clock using commonplace items like IKEA shelf brackets and fire alarm boxes. He created the world’s biggest sound-activated Button Wall, where kids hit 200 different buttons to produce sounds, requiring 5,740 wire terminations that he installed by hand. 

A 20-year veteran at the ripe old age of 40, DeHaven set his sights on the Science Center early in his career, first as a volunteer—always high-energy, with an infectious excitement about his work. “I love science and technology,” he says. “I’m passionate about this crazy stuff. And that’s what inspires me to create new exhibits here.”   

Q: How did you come up with the binary flip clock?

A: They wanted art for this wall and an artist would be really expensive, so they tasked me to come up with something. We did the engineering on it and we figured it out. 

The fun part was I had to write a custom algorithm for it. If all the clock flips over, all digits at midnight, it would overload the power supply. So each tile has a slight delay to the start of the flip. The result is an undulating wave up the wall as all the tiles flip in sequence.

Q: What did it take to get a job like this?  

A: My background started in my senior year robotics class at North Hills High School. They had a little mobile robot I started playing around with. Apparently, I was coming up with really good ideas for it. When the owners of the company were servicing it, they wanted to know if I wanted a job. I got hired right out of high school. But I decided I wanted to go to school and learn more. I went for one year of college and could not stand it. I realized I’m a hands-on learner and I decided I would take jobs to learn everything I wanted to know.

Q: From working jobs in engineering, manufacturing, and robotics, the Science Center caught your eye. How did that develop into your dream job?  

A: I applied and they had no positions available, so I worked as a volunteer for a year. They loved me so much as a volunteer they hired me on as a full-time presenter. Then I got hired into the tech department. Finally, I worked as an specialist. Then I was into the development of roboworld® as eventual head of robotics. After doing that, I started developing exhibits in other areas and helping make previous exhibits better, so they wanted me in the design department. I ended up creating my own dream position of mechatronics working in [computer-aided design]mechanical engineering, software development, and electronics—allowing me to leverage all my experience from many of my previous jobs. 

Q: Kids can be tough on equipment. How have you learned to keep interactives operating correctly?

A: Kids are the best product testers. If it’s meant to be pushed, they’ll twist it. If it’s meant to be twisted, they’ll push it. They will literally break steel from just repeated touching. Material science has really become our world. We have to figure out how it is going to hold up to kids. Is it going to be safe if it does fail? We have to look at other industries. The joysticks we use, for example. We were buying arcade ones and kids were breaking them. Now, we’re buying ones made for industrial cranes, and those hold up better.  

Q: The basketball robot has been a big challenge over the years. What happened to the first one? 

A: The original was created in partnership with the Science Center in 1996 by Henry Thorne, the entrepreneur who went on to create 4moms baby products. He was the owner of the robot company that hired me out of high school. He programmed the basketball robot. It had developed flaky memory chips and had no hard drive in it. Anytime there was a big power outage it would lose everything, including the operating system. You had to load nine floppy disks’ worth of software back into the memory. You had to reconfigure everything back by hand. It was an adventure. 

It survived for only one more year after that. Its memory got so bad it would forget where it was. When a robot weighs 6,000 pounds, you don’t want it to forget where it is. It would be moving and then it would slam into the floor and leave a giant hole. One day we had a call from presenters who were freaking out: “The robot is throwing the floor!” as a large chunk of floor was being dragged about. At that point, we knew it was time for a new robot.

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Perry teachers say that many of their students have never visited the Science Center. North Side families have a lot of other competing opportunities for how to spend their time, they say, and Perry staff don’t necessarily have the resources to figure out how to tap into all that the Science Center has to offer.

But that’s changing. Rather than rely on Perry students to come to the Science Center, the Science Center is going to Perry. 

“For so long, as museums, we’ve seen ourselves as the people holding the information that we then disseminate to the schools or visitors coming to see us,” says Shannon Gaussa, workforce and community readiness program coordinator at the Science Center. “Now museums are rethinking all of this. We see that our communities have different needs, they have different knowledge bases. They have so many strengths that we can build on.”

An ambitious effort led by educational advocate A+ Schools is working to transform Perry into one of the city’s top high schools by partnering with community organizations like the Science Center. The effort was born out of the One Northside initiative, which is supported by the Buhl Foundation and being guided by a steering committee of partners from Pittsburgh Public Schools, the Pittsburgh Federation of Teachers, and the Pittsburgh Promise.

“For so long, as museums, we’ve seen ourselves as the people holding the information that we then disseminate to the schools or visitors coming to see us. Now museums are rethinking all of this. We see that our communities have different needs, they have different knowledge bases. They have so many strengths that we can build on.”

–Shannon Gaussa, Workforce And Community Readiness Program Coordinator At Carnegie Science Center

The Science Center is one of four North Side community partners that have been meeting biweekly with Perry staff over the past year to figure out how best to incorporate STEAM—Science, Technology, Engineering, Arts, and Math—learning into lessons for 9th and 10th grade students at Perry, while introducing potential career paths to students who may have never considered them. Dozens more organizations partner with Perry to offer mentoring and other educational programs.

The path that this partnership has taken has been neither straight nor easy. It involves years of preparation and planning sessions with at least three dozen people, not to mention plenty of surprises and setbacks, including keeping the ball rolling through a pandemic. But it is an initiative that Perry teachers, Science Center educators, and other partner institutions hope will bring them, inch by inch, to the peak of academic success.

“We’re trying to keep it positive and make sure the kids are living up to the best of their abilities and see the potential that they have,” says Ashley Simpson, a Perry Biology teacher, one of 18 Perry educators involved. “Sometimes that’s a struggle, but you try to get the kids to see that they can succeed and you try to increase their confidence and that growth mindset in order to get to where they need to be.”

Partnering On Steam

Teacher participation in the Perry Initiative is voluntary. Simpson jumped at the opportunity.

She joined planning meetings at the end of the last school year and worked with the Manchester Craftsmen’s Guild on a weeklong mini-unit taught in September. Using detailed templates custom-designed by a digital teaching artist at Manchester, students created their own original biomes and a creature suited to living there. The unit concluded with a trip to the Guild’s offices, where students used Adobe software to create playing cards of their creatures.

Simpson doesn’t expect it will inspire all her students to go into gaming design; she just wants to get the kids engaged in the outcomes of STEAM learning, such as the ability to problem-solve and work in teams.

Educators at Carnegie Science Center’s Center for STEM Education and Career Development (STEM means Science, Technology, Engineering, and Math) say they’re hoping to help students build lifelong problem-solving skills and curiosity.

“This partnership is a success if we see that they’re grasping STEM skills that can be applied to all areas of life—practicing failing and trying again, getting curious,” says Gaussa, who spearheaded the partnership with Perry. “We’re also focused on developing an awareness of the many STEM careers out there and the diverse paths to getting into those careers.”

STEM education is an interdisciplinary teaching philosophy heavily focused on real-world problem-solving. It’s an approach that has been promoted by educational experts to prepare younger generations for careers in an increasingly complicated and technical world. Informal science education like that offered at the Science Center has an important role to play, according to the National Research Council.

STEM concepts have long been part of the Science Center’s programming. Science Center educators develop resources for classroom teachers and host early childhood education classes on-site, public workshops, summer camp programming, and community events. Their “spiraled approach” is to instill basic STEM concepts in children before they reach kindergarten, and then build on those experiences as they get older.

But STEM education at the Science Center also happens out in the community, such as the partnership with Perry. 

For the past few years, Perry has been working with A+ Schools on a multi-pronged school improvement program. The initiative includes partnerships with North Side organizations on STEAM education that could introduce students to potential career paths. The COVID-19 pandemic and leadership changes at Perry slowed progress, but by fall 2021, the program was finally ready to bring these neighborhood organizations on board.

“Once you put students in this hands-on and real-world experience, they are fully engaged,” says Amie White, chief operating officer of A+ Schools. “That’s what this is all about. Not just trying to box students into one way of learning, or one way of exploring what career options they want to have.”

Building Trust

Building relationships within communities requires trust, and trust doesn’t come quickly.

February 2022 was the first time the Science Center could engage with Perry students in person. That’s when the plan on paper met the realities of the classroom.

Gaussa and a Science Center colleague planned a weeklong introduction to STEM for ninth grade students. Attendance and engagement were lower than they expected; only 25 of the 40 students expected showed up, and then just three students overall knew what the STEM acronym meant. After a few days, Gaussa pivoted to focusing on getting to know the students more personally.

The school facility itself, an imposing century-old Classical Revival style building, is well kept and the classrooms are outfitted with large touch-screen monitors, lab equipment, and other technology useful for STEM lessons. The teachers and tools were there, but challenges remained. 

All of Perry’s nearly 400 students qualify for free lunch, a measure of poverty, according to the National Center for Education Statistics. And Pennsylvania Department of Education data shows that Perry’s performance measures are below other high schools in Pittsburgh and across the state. In the 2020-21 academic year, just 6.7 percent of students were considered proficient or advanced in mathematics, compared to 37.3 percent statewide. Only 27.7 percent of Perry students attended classes regularly. The statewide average is 85.8 percent.

“Once you put students in this hands-on and real-world experience, they are fully engaged. That’s what this is all about. Not just trying to box students into one way of learning, or one way of exploring what career options they want to have.”

–Amie White, Chief Operating Officer Of A+ Schools

On a typical day, Perry geometry teacher Kay Ramgopal says she’ll get two-thirds of students on her roster. And those who do attend regularly are often exhausted due to responsibilities outside of school, such as holding down a night job or caring for siblings, adding to the challenges of focusing on academics during the day. 

“I look at them and say, ‘How do you do it?’” Ramgopal marvels.

Supporting and engaging with teachers like Ramgopal will be key to meeting these challenges, Gaussa says.

“One of the big strengths I see in the Perry community is the teachers, the relationships they have with their students, and the trust that they have,” says Gaussa. 

Instead of offering prepackaged lessons, the Science Center and other community partners are working directly with teachers to custom-fit STEM lessons to the specific circumstances of each classroom.

Ramgopal first met Gaussa and Luci Finucan, a STEM educator at the Science Center, in July to workshop ideas for lessons.

Cartesian coordinates—a grid of two intersecting lines, with a horizontal x-axis and vertical y-axis—is an essential concept that Ramgopal needs to teach to her 10th- grade geometry students. Finucan had an idea to teach the concept through games of Twister and Battleship. Ramgopal agreed to go forward with it.

Ramgopal recalls Finucan’s excitement about working with coordinates in a new way. “That was when we were looking at my syllabus to see where everything would fit in.”

Having received the thumbs up from Ramgopal, Finucan and Gaussa then fleshed out the lesson, hammering out specifics with Ramgopal over Zoom a week before. By late September, they were ready. 

Coordinated Fun

The day of the lesson was unseasonably warm, in the mid-80s, so the windows were open. As students filed in for their final block of the day, they sat along the perimeter in search of a cool breeze.

Eight students were present when class began—less than half of those on the roster. Ramgopal says the composition of the class changes regularly. She calls home for students who she hasn’t seen in a while.

These sophomores are of the same cohort that Science Center staff visited back in February when they were ninth graders. Still, it was the first time that Finucan and her Science Center colleague Maggie Fonner, who would be co-teaching the lesson, were meeting them.

Sensing a post-lunch lull, Finucan and Fonner made quick introductions and jumped right into the games.

First was Twister. Three students who volunteered went to their separate coordinate grids, which were laid out on the floor with masking tape. As Fonner spun a wheel and called out the coordinates—“Left foot, X on five!” “Right foot, Y, two!”—each student stretched across the floor to reach it. 

Gradually, the rest of the students began to engage, watching the action in the center of the floor. One group of boys cheered on a classmate, a wiry boy just a shade over 5 feet tall, as he reached a right arm between pretzel-twisted legs to become the eventual winner. His prize—a science-themed sticker of his choice. 

Battleship proved more involved. Using the same grids taped to the floor, the class went about playing the classic Milton Bradley war strategy game, with Post-it notes stuck along coordinates like the “pegs” of the ships.

The class was split into two teams, with one team going into a separate room to set up their “game board.” They used hand-held radios to call in strikes on their opponent. 

Rounds of back and forth followed before the Twister winner, on the advice of two teammates making an informed guess based on their previous misses, called in “three, negative one.”

“That’s a hit!” came the reply over the radio.

They began “seeing the board,” with each called-in coordinate finding its target. Good- natured trash talking ensued. After about a half-hour, a clear winner was emerging. But then time ran out. Class was over.

Before leaving, the students had one final task—to indicate their feelings about the lesson. Each student was given a colored magnet and asked to plot their response on a grid by the door. Along the x-axis was “I know a lot about coordinates.” The y-axis was “I’m having fun at school today!”

The responses along the x-axis were all over the place, but along the y-axis, the magnets were concentrated at the top—they had fun.

It Takes Time

Science Center educators taught the coordinates lesson to four more groups over two days. It represented two months of work for a single 80-minute lesson. Ramgopal considers it a success.

“The coordinates are one particular skill, which is like the base in geometry. If you don’t know how to plot points, then you’re not going into polygons, you’re not going to be able to draw shapes, you’re not going to know areas,” Ramgopal says. “It just rolls over into other places.”

The creative lesson plan also served as a foundation from which the relationship between the Science Center and the Perry community can grow. Science Center educators are coming back for another weeklong mini-unit with the current Perry ninth graders in the spring, just as they did the previous school year.

The hope is to have Science Center educators return each semester and interact with students throughout their high school experience, following ninth graders through their graduation, and maybe beyond. Each interaction deepens the relationship.

Progress is incremental. White is quick to point out that efforts to turn Perry into a top-performing school began five years ago when the initiative was first funded by the Buhl Foundation. 

“It’s been slow and steady progress because we want to set it up for success,” White says. “I think that’s where things go south really quickly for program implementation in schools, because people want to do something, they fund it for a year or two, and they say, ‘OK, what did you accomplish?’ And it’s not that easy.”

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When he was a preteen, Matt Creegan’s father took him and his brother on outings to play ball and ride roller coasters, but decades later it’s the trio’s adventures at Carnegie Science Center that truly stand out. “My dad thought it was great for us to learn and grow through our own experiences, and not only in classrooms,” says Matt, a Penn Hills native. “That sticks with me, not just as fond memories with my dad, but as an adult it reminds me how important those experiences are for kids’ education.”

For Matt, now a technology leader in pharmaceutical research, it’s how he discovered the Buhl Planetarium, where, as a kid, he could “bring the stars in the night sky closer” and spend hours entranced by space travel. “I know I wouldn’t have found that experience anywhere else, school included,” he says. “At the Science Center, kids are encouraged to discover things on their own and explore what interests them. Because it was so much fun, my brother and I never really thought about the fact that we were also learning.”

That’s at the core of why Matt and his wife, Joanna, are committed to expanding the number of young people the Science Center reaches by doing what it does best: spark informal, hands-on, and think-outside-the-box learning.

The couple is also eager to make a difference in the place they’re proud to call home. Over the past five years, they’ve steadily increased their philanthropic support of Carnegie Museums, becoming Patrons Circle members and making significant gifts to the recently renovated Buhl Planetarium and for ongoing maintenance of the popular Miniature Railroad & Village® upon its 100th birthday. At the same time, they’re rolling up their sleeves as active volunteers with the Carnegie Museums Engagement Committee and the Science Center’s STEM Catalysts—two key groups of advocates who tap into their own networks to help amplify the work of the museums.

“I’ve made most of my career developing technology products,” says Matt. “You can build the coolest thing, and if nobody knows about it, it doesn’t do any good. With the Engagement Committee, for instance, it’s a mechanism to help get people to the museum, to let them know there are offerings at the museum that they might not know about that would genuinely interest them.”

Last year, the pair also served on the host committee for the first Carnegie Science Awards ceremony to be held virtually, due to the pandemic. Hearing directly from the youngest winners, says Joanna and Matt, reinforced their decision to pour their time and resources into the Science Center.

Joanna, a Beaver County native who works on the education and training side of pharmaceutical research, found the number of female winners, particularly among school-age awardees, to be especially inspiring. “I’m in the software industry, and while it’s no longer the traditional idea that science is for boys, you do see the division of mostly women in operations while the designers and product people are men. So, it’s really encouraging to see this next generation of girls coming up—they’ll be designing and building.”

Adds Matt, “Listening to the amazing things these kids are doing fuels me to want to get even more kids involved in the programs at the Science Center.”

As part of their gift to the Miniature Railroad campaign, the couple was able to memorialize Joanna’s father and Matt’s grandmother by having tiny figures created in their likenesses and added to the display for 10 years. Joanna’s father, a big sports fan, is positioned outside of Forbes Field. Matt’s grandmother, who was an electrician in the Marines during WWII and was, as Joanna describes her, “a tiny, feisty redhead who is a great representation of that blue-collar Pittsburgh tough person,” is standing in front of Klavon’s Pharmacy—a spectator to the women’s suffrage parade.

Says Joanna, “We appreciate that so many of the experiences at the museums were in place when we were growing up, and the educational opportunities they afforded us. We hope they can be even better and more widely used by even more kids.”

To learn more about giving opportunities at Carnegie Museums, contact Beth Brown at brownb@carnegiemuseums.org or 412.622.8859.

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“I’d be playing with my toys in the living room, and I’d hear her saying, ‘Yes, Roy, dear,’ or ‘Yes, Thurgood, darling, there’s something I need you to do,’” recalls her grandson Earl Childs, who lived one floor above with his parents. “She had such a soft and endearing voice. It wasn’t until much later in life that I realized she was talking to important men like [civil rights leader] Roy Wilkins or [Supreme Court Justice] Thurgood Marshall on that phone. Of course, I was so young that I had no concept of her being ‘Daisy Lampkin.’ To me, she was just grandma; my best buddy and playmate.”

Born on August 9, 1883, in Reading, Pennsylvania, Daisy Elizabeth Adams moved to Pittsburgh in 1909, and married William Lampkin three years later. It was the height of the women’s suffrage movement, and Daisy became a passionate advocate for the rights of all Black Americans, particularly those of Black women, and her impromptu speeches on the sidewalks around the Hill stopped people in their tracks.

“She was such a lovely force of nature,” recalls Charlene Foggie-Barnett, community archivist for the Teenie Harris Archive at Carnegie Museum of Art and a Hill District native who was a childhood friend of Childs’. “I think of her from the perspective of being a ‘shero’ of not only Black Pittsburgh but all girls and women of color. It’s women like her that made it possible for us to vote, have certain jobs, and to be in the room.”

Late last year, the staff of Carnegie Science Center added a tiny likeness of Lampkin to its popular Miniature Railroad & Village®. Standing outside a replica of the three-story, red brick apartment building that she and her husband owned and called home on Webster Avenue, she’s wearing a yellow and white dress—colors favored by suffragists—with a matching hat, her signature accessory.

“We were looking for a way to represent the 100th anniversary of women’s suffrage and the 19th amendment,” says Patty Everly, the Science Center’s curator of historic exhibits. “We wanted 2020 to be the year of the woman, and Daisy was the perfect fit.”

By 1915, Lampkin had gained notoriety for the suffragist meetings she held in her home, which were springboards to leadership positions both locally and nationally, including in the National Association of Colored Women, Negro Voters League of Pennsylvania, and Colored Voters Division of the Republican National Committee. After spearheading an effort to boost subscriptions for the floundering Pittsburgh Courier, she became vice president and part owner. She blazed the way for female leadership, establishing the first Red Cross chapter among Black women and local chapters of the Urban League and the National Association of the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) in Pittsburgh.

“Both Thurgood Marshall and Roy Wilkins called her ‘Aunt Daisy.’ She was a genteel lady and was charming. A steel hammer in a velvet glove.”
– Earl Childs on his grandmother, Daisy Lampkin

In 1924, she was invited to the White House to meet with President Calvin Coolidge, the only woman in a roomful of men discussing racial discrimination. In 1930, the NAACP’s executive secretary, Walter White, recruited Daisy as the group’s first field secretary, and not long after, she became its national field secretary.

“She didn’t deal with these men in a rough and tough way,” says Childs, a local dentist. “Both Thurgood Marshall and Roy Wilkins called her ‘Aunt Daisy.’ She was a genteel lady and was charming. A steel hammer in a velvet glove.”

Still, her persona never consumed her. She doted on her only grandchild, whom she affectionately called “Little Earl.”

“At the time, there were very few Black students who attended Falk School, and, at first, they didn’t want to let me in,” Childs recalls. “Supposedly, grandma went to the school. Keep in mind, at that point, she was ‘Daisy Lampkin.’ Soon, I was attending junior kindergarten there. There were no marches. She didn’t have to make a big stink about things. She just enforced what was right and fair.”

Lampkin suffered a stroke while attending a NAACP meeting in Camden, New Jersey, and died on March 10, 1965, at age 81. A Pennsylvania state historical marker stands outside her former home on Webster Avenue, which Childs now owns.

Of being immortalized in a historic exhibit that appeals to all ages, Childs believes his grandmother would be very proud. “She would say, ‘Well, that’s very nice, thank you so much,’ and then she’d get back to work.”

Above: Charles “Teenie” Harris, Portrait of Daisy Lampkin, posed possibly in Harris Studio, c. 1940-1960, Carnegie Museum of Art; Heinz Family Fund

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From its first home on Pittsburgh’s North Side to its current location at Carnegie Science Center, the planetarium has inspired generations to look up and see both the future and the past, the intimacy and the vastness that can only be found in the cosmos.

“Astronomy and space exploration resonate on such an emotional level,” says Mike Hennessy, seasoned science educator and manager of the planetarium and digital media at the Science Center. “Whether you become a scientist or just a scientifically engaged citizen, there’s nothing quite like the stars to fire people up.”

But in this era of unparalleled access to the internet, images of far-off galaxies that were once the exclusive domain of planetariums are now readily available on any smartphone. How can a planetarium stand out?

Thanks to $1 million gifts from both The Buhl Foundation and Bob and Joan Peirce, the Buhl is keeping those wonder-fueled fires burning by adding some serious sizzle to its 140-seat theater.

“We’ve given the universe an upgrade,” Hennessy says. “We’ve taken the Buhl to the next level. It’s now one of the most technologically advanced planetariums in North America.”

Adds Diana Bucco, president of The Buhl Foundation, “Our roots, as well as our name, are in the Science Center, and we’re proud that the planetarium continues to be a destination to dream big and be inspired. The Science Center is a leader in cutting-edge technology, and these upgrades will make the experiences it offers more accessible and more awe-inspiring.”

In order to reach the highest levels of tech, every one of the 197 panels in the dome’s 50-foot ceiling required personal, hands-on attention. Each was individually molded, cut, painted, and installed to ensure it would meet exact curvature and reflectivity specifications. Collectively, they form the canvas on which the Buhl’s 10 new projectors create a seamless high-resolution True8K image—a remarkable 52 million pixels projected on the dome, or roughly 25 times the pixels of one HDTV. It’s all in service of showcasing the most complete, accurate 3D digital atlas of the universe.

The experience promises to be more—more immersive, more realistic, more awe-inspiring. “Visitors will see a deeper, richer black night sky than ever before, with brighter, finer white stars,” Hennessy says.

Thanks to the Hubble Space Telescope and Digistar 7 software, the Orion Nebula never looked so spectacular.

“We’ve given the universe an upgrade. We’ve taken the Buhl to the next level. It’s now one of the most technologically advanced planetariums in North America.”
– Mike Hennessy, Buhl Planetarium and Digital Media Manager

But the view is not limited to the here and now. Planetarium guests can travel back in time to see, for example, the sky over Italy the very evenings Galileo noticed four pinpricks of light moving around Jupiter. Realizing they weren’t stars at all, but rather moons, he forever changed our relationship to the universe.

And that relationship continues to evolve—daily. The Buhl is regularly downloading and aggregating the latest data sets from NASA satellites, as well as from ground-based telescopes stationed around the world. It’s precisely this never-ending stream of information that allows visitors to go where they’ve never gone before.

For select shows, Hennessy says, “We can lift off from Earth’s surface and ‘live fly’ over the canyons and mountains of Mars, the rings of Saturn, take journeys exploring the colorful geology and atmospheres of other worlds or the ice plains of Pluto, all using real NASA data. It’s all a completely new experience for visitors.”

For the most part, these adventures are piloted by a staff presenter, but in some instances audience members can now navigate the ship by way of an Xbox controller, and vote on specific destinations via handheld, wireless devices, all made possible by the installation of Evans & Sutherland Digistar, the world’s leading digital planetarium system.

Also for the first time, thanks to a $32,000 grant from the Allegheny Regional Asset District (RAD), handheld tactile domes are available for visually impaired visitors. These star globes feature dotted outlines, with thicker dots indicating the North Star and the brighter stars of the Big Dipper, Orion, and other northern hemisphere constellations. And for hearing- impaired visitors, the planetarium now provides assistive listening devices, as well as captioning glasses that convert speech to scrolling text.

Fly Me to the Moon

All the while, significant funding from NASA and the Institute of Museum and Library Services (IMLS) is fueling the Buhl’s plans to develop new planetarium shows that will take advantage of all the new bells, whistles, and top-notch tech. Although not yet off the ground, Cosmic Cookbook, for one, will give planetariums the option of using shows that combine live theater and science education in its entirety, or use only parts of the show and then add their own context—“seasoning it to taste,” as Hennessy says.

But not every journey is about traveling beyond the outer reaches of the universe. Mission to Planet Earth, one of the trio of Cosmic Cookbook shows in development by the Buhl team, will use the same advanced technology and NASA-driven data to explore what’s happening in this world.

“This show will focus on our home planet and highlight the unsung work of NASA’s Earth science missions,” Hennessy says. “It will offer a global perspective—zooming in on coral reefs, Pennsylvania forests, and glaciers—and help us understand how the information gathered from space guides our conservation efforts here on Earth.

Scenes from planetarium shows: the Saturn V launch from Fly Me to the Moon and the newest Mars Rover and the surface of Pluto from Expedition: Solar System. Photos: Home Run Pictures

“Our goal is to connect environmental research to people’s lives,” he continues. “Science is a tool that we as human beings can use to make life better for us and the world around us.”

Science, and the contributions of Pittsburghers, is celebrated in Fly Me to the Moon, a Buhl-produced show created to commemorate the 50th anniversary of the 1969 moon landing. History tells the story of the three Apollo 11 astronauts, Neil Armstrong, Buzz Aldrin, and Michael Collins, but the locals connected to the mission have often been left behind.

Take, for example, the late Alex Valentine, who was born in Braddock. His job as a lunar cartographer was to help pick the best parking spot on the Sea of Tranquility for the Eagle module. (If only he could have saved it with a chair.) And there was Elayne Arrington. She was the first African American woman to earn an engineering degree from the University of Pittsburgh, who then went on to become the first woman aerospace engineer to work in the foreign technology division of Wright-Patterson Air Force Base. Her job was to keep tabs on Russia.

Pittsburghers are still part of space, and for many their journey was initially ignited by a field trip to the Buhl. As most locals will tell you, boarding a yellow school bus bound for the planetarium was not only a rite of passage but also sure to be one of the best outings of the year, if not an entire lifetime.

Stay Curious, Pittsburghers

So, it’s not too surprising that some of the students who once upon a time settled into the theater’s comfy chairs have gone on to forge their own interstellar path.

Since 1991, Emsworth native Mike Fincke’s job title has been astronaut. And although NASA doesn’t yet offer a frequent flier program, Fincke would no doubt be eligible for some perks, having logged nearly 382 days in orbit during his three space missions.

With his feet still firmly planted on the ground, Anthony Vareha has taken a different route to NASA. After graduating from Gateway High School in 2002 and earning degrees in engineering physics and systems engineering, he landed a flight controller job at the Johnson Space Center in Houston. Recently, he was promoted to flight controller—the person in charge of the ground team supporting the operations and ever-changing crew onboard the International Space Station.

“There’s always been something special about gathering under this cosmic cathedral, this grand planetarium dome, and sharing the stars, sharing that joy and wonder.”
– Mike Hennessy, Buhl Planetarium and Digital Media Manager

For the past 10-plus years, Vareha has been working with real-time data from real people living in a real spaceship. But he still remembers his trips to the Buhl with the same enthusiasm he must have felt as a kid growing up in Monroeville.

“There was this one show where they flew us out to the stars and then flew us back over Pittsburgh, an early ’90s CGI [computer-generated imagery] version of Pittsburgh,” he recalls. “It was amazing!

“I was always a space geek, and now I’m one of the lucky ones—I get to spend my time thinking about the world outside the world,” he adds. “Some of that began at the Buhl. No doubt.”

The planetarium doesn’t exist in a vacuum. In fact, some 90,000 people a year make the star trek. And, according to Hennessy, it’s that sense of community that can propel someone to imagine a future full of possibilities.

“There’s always been something special about gathering under this cosmic cathedral, this grand planetarium dome, and sharing the stars, sharing that joy and wonder,” he says.

Still, to turn those possibilities into realities requires a certain leap of faith. Vareha’s advice: “Stay curious, keep learning, and never stop asking good questions.”

The post The Retooling of Pittsburgh’s Cosmic Cathedral appeared first on Carnegie Museums of Pittsburgh.

The program has a catch: the mentors, who all come from STEM (science, technology, engineering, and math) fields, have no real knowledge of digital fabrication technologies like 3D printing, electronics, and laser cutting. Which is the point. Mentors in the Making is designed so that the learning is two-directional. Mentor and mentee figure it out together, giving mentees a firsthand look at how adults in STEM fields go about troubleshooting, failing, learning, adapting, and trying again.

“When I started, I had no idea how to do any of this stuff,” admits PPG chemist Amanda Shay, who began mentoring a year and a half ago after receiving an email at work about the program. For the 2019–2020 session, she’s paired with Kayleigh Wilson-Reilly, a sophomore at Nazareth Prep. “Kayleigh knows pretty well that I’m not afraid to say, ‘Nope, I have no idea what the answer is.’ It’s nice; it shows that I might be older and working in a career, but this is different from what I do on a day-to-day basis, so I’m learning with her as I go. I’m more of a peer to her than a superior.”

“Being at the Fab Lab … changed the way I think. Now, when I see woodwork or a computer program, I compare it to the work I’ve done and I usually say, ‘I can do that,’ or ‘I wonder how they made that?’”
– Nazareth Prep student Destany Best

In the final weeks of this year’s spring session, the program shifted to virtual learning in the wake of the pandemic. Normally, pairs meet in person for 2 1/2 hours once a week for 16 weeks after participating in a “get to know you” onboarding session led by The Mentoring Partnership of Southwestern Pennsylvania. Mentors and mentees meet for a total of about 40 hours of instruction, the fusion of an after-school/work program. Students are provided with transportation to and from the Science Center, served dinner alongside their mentors, and given all the necessary materials for the hands-on instruction. At the conclusion of the program, mentees are given a laptop computer so they can continue honing their design skills.

Kayleigh’s favorite project involved learning how to solder. “It had to be very precise and focused,” she says. “You had to shut everything else out. It felt calming. I was proud that I learned a skill most teenagers haven’t learned.”

Now in its third year, the latest Mentors in the Making class has 18 pairs collaborating on four complex design projects while also earning their certification on the CNC machines. Once complete, they shift the focus to a capstone project, which includes a human-centered design element to encourage the creation of something that positively impacts their community.

For Amanda and Kayleigh, their capstone project consisted of designing a large-scale molecular set. “Kayleigh wanted to make it to give to her chemistry teacher, so it would be easier for her to show things in front of the class,” Amanda explains. “It was very sweet and a great idea, the fact that she applied the project to her everyday life and thought of something that would be very relevant for everyone.”

“Helping others is important to our world,” says Kayleigh.

Mentors in the Making had such a meaningful impact on Destany Best, now a senior at Nazareth Prep, that she returned as a teen volunteer for the program. “I love educating and learning about STEM and how it can change the world,” she says. Following graduation, she plans on attending a liberal arts college with the goal of owning a biodigestion company that will turn human and food waste into clean, renewable energy.

“Being at the Fab Lab constantly sparked my interest in mechatronics, mechanical engineering, soldering, and becoming a maker. … It changed the way I think,” says Destany. “Now, when I see woodwork or a computer program, I compare it to the work I’ve done and I usually say, ‘I can do that,’ or ‘I wonder how they made that?’ All in all, participating in the program definitely changed my life and my future for the better.”

That transformation does not stop with the students. For professionals like Amanda, seeing their mentees morph from introverts to actively engaging in conversation with adults and mastering new technologies that they had no prior knowledge of was inspiring.

“It’s pretty rewarding to watch them grow,” she says.

Mentors in the Making is made possible thanks to support from The Grable Foundation and Cognizant’s Making the Future program.

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