Kudos Affiliates!! December 2019
Congratulations to these Affiliates on their recent accomplishments! Do you have kudos to share? Please send potential entries to Aaron Glavas, GlavasC@si.edu.
FUNDING
The Mercer Museum (Doylestown, PA) is the recipient of a $230,000 Pew Center for Arts & Heritage grant. The two and half year grant will support a major initiative called Plus Ultra: Awakening the Mercer Museum Core. The project will reinvent two empty rooms located in the original historic core of the Fonthill Castle into “community-centric, intimate spaces designed for meaningful and active learning through the power of objects.”
The Friends of the North Carolina Museum of Natural Sciences (Raleigh, NC) received a $6,000 grant from the Commercial Waste Reduction Grant Program. The funding will be used to support the Compost and Recycling Education Series, which will divert waste generated at two museum cafes and educate museum staff and visitors about recycling and composting.
As part of a $250,000 grant from The Edward and Mary Lord Foundation of Norwich, Denison Pequotsepos Nature Center will help fund interpretive signs and tours at the Mystic Seaport Museum (Mystic, CT).
Strategic Air Command & Aerospace Museum (Ashland, NE) was awarded a $17,000 grant from the Iowa West Foundation to develop an after school science, technology, engineering, and math (STEM) enrichment program.
Eight Affiliates will receive sub-awards to collaborate with the Smithsonian on the Universe of Learning educational project next year. Congratulations to the Anchorage Museum (Anchorage, AK); Cape Fear Museum (Wilmington, NC); Cerritos Library (Cerritos, CA); Cosmosphere (Hutchinson, KS); Evergreen Aviation and Space Museum McMinnville, OR); International Museum of Art and Science (McAllen, TX); Schiele Museum (Gastonia, NC); and the Tellus Science Museum (Cartersville, GA).
AWARDS & RECOGNITION
Chris Newell, education supervisor at the Mashantucket Pequot Museum and Research Center (Mashantucket, CT) received an Excellence Award from the New England Museum Association for his museum work as well as being a co-founder of Akomawt Educational Initiative.
American Museum of Science & Energy (Oak Ridge, TN) has been selected to receive a Secretary of Energy Honor Award. The Secretary’s Honor Awards are the Department of Energy’s highest form of internal employee recognition. The museum also received the first Leading Edge Overcomer Award from the Association of Science and Technology Centers, that celebrates an ASTC-member science center or museum that has successfully surmounted a significant and specific challenge. The museum moved from its original facility into a new, 18,000-square-foot new space, with state-of-the-art new exhibits. To engage its community in the move, the museum developed extensive new collaborations and partnerships that melded a science-rich local history, civic pride, culture, and enthusiasm for STEM engagement into something uniquely Oak Ridge
