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Hill House
and Carnegie Museums plan to take a successful outreach effort—Mission Discovery—and
make it even better.
Mission On The Hill
By Leslie vincen
Darlene Moore doesn’t need quantitative stats to confirm
what she knows to be fact: “Mission Discovery was a lifesaver
for my daughter,” Moore says.
Three years ago, Mareena
Woodbury-Moore was among the first group of 30 middle-school
students to take part in Mission Discovery, an after-school and summer program based at Pittsburgh’s
Hill House and run by Carnegie Science Center. The program
set out to provide two basic services to middle-school students
attending public school in the Hill District: offer a safe
and stimulating place to go after school, and make science
and math learning fun and accessible for kids who typically
don’t excel in those subjects.
Darlene Moore says Mission Discovery has done both—and
so much more.
“
Mission Discovery provided a great foundation
for my daughter,” Moore
says. “It helped to define her identity, her skills,
and her talents. It gave her a sense of self-confidence
and provided an environment that promoted care and affection
as
well as education and exploration.”
Feedback like
this has been music to the ear for Evan Frazier, president
and CEO of the Hill House Association, a community
service agency that has been an integral part of life in
the city’s Hill District for more than 40
years, serving some 70,000 people a year. “Mission Discovery fits
perfectly with our strategic vision for Hill House,” Frazier
says. “We’re dealing with young mothers who
lack parenting skills, children who lack literacy skills,
noncustodial
fathers trying to unify their families or find employment.
We understand the important regional role we play by reaching
out in progressive ways.”
The clear success of Mission Discovery—which, as part
of its enrollment criteria, requires that parents or guardians
of participating kids volunteer with the program and, therefore,
get more involved in their kids’ education—inspired
Frazier to apply for grants that would fund its expansion
to include a wider range of subjects and reach out to kids
of
all ages, in grades K-12. To make it happen, he turned
to Carnegie Science Center parent, Carnegie Museums of
Pittsburgh.
In October 2005, Hill House and Carnegie Museums
announced they had received $400,000 from The Grable Foundation
and
another $175,000 from the DSF Foundation for the future
of Mission Discovery—a future that would include programming
from all four Carnegie Museums, including Carnegie Museum
of Art,
Carnegie Museum of Natural History, The Andy Warhol Museum,
and more from the Science Center.
“
This partnership with Carnegie Museums of Pittsburgh is
vital to our development of comprehensive youth services,” Frazier
says. In fact, he feels Mission Discovery could and should
serve as a national model. “There are real national
implications for how other communities use cultural institutions
to reach out and powerfully impact youth at
the neighborhood level,” he notes.
Carnegie Museums
of Pittsburgh President David Hillenbrand agrees. “At
a time when funding for our public schools is so limited,
programs like this are an educational necessity, not a
luxury,” he says. “The
cultural community plays a pivotal role in filling critical
voids in formal education. At Carnegie Museums, we consider
this a core strength and an absolute responsibility.”
Live Pets, Computers, and Hope
A group of scientists are working side-by-side, peering intently
into their microscopes. They’re studying hormones in
human cells, watching for patterns that will help them engineer
new tissue—tissue that can help restore a dying kidney
or regenerate a failing liver.
But these scientists aren’t
medical researchers, biochemists, or tissue engineers.
They’re
middle-school students from the Hill District, and their
research is a lesson currently being taught at Mission Discovery.
“
Mission Discovery is a wonderful alternative to the school
environment,” says Meredith Murray, principal of Milliones
Middle School. “We have students from throughout the
Pittsburgh Public School system who attend the program. It’s
a good fit, and the students love it.
“
How many science classrooms in city schools have live pets,
or computer labs?” she adds. “Cultural organizations
have resources that we don’t have, due to budget
limitations. They’re addressing academic and social
needs in ways that go beyond complementary.”
They
also give kids something that doesn’t come from
a textbook: hope.
“
This program gives kids hope that they can be scientists and
astronauts, discover cures and explore the universe,” Frazier
says. “And in the short term, we hope it will help improve
academic scores and close the racial achievement gap that persists
in the public school system.”
“
It’s also fun,” says Mayada Mansour, Carnegie
Science Center’s coordinator for Mission Discovery
programming at Hill House. “We encourage kids to
question what they’re
learning. We give them the tools to think through a process,
and then apply that knowledge to an interpretation of their
own world.”
Some examples: “Our unit on physics
relates everything back to sports. Kids learn about angles
and arcs by making
foul shots while playing basketball, or banking a cue ball
in a game of pool. And the unit on forensics allows them
to identify different blood types and understand why fingerprints
are unique to each person. The students watch crime shows
on
television, so the study of forensics immediately captures
their interest.”
Mansour is already considering the
possibilities of Mission Discovery’s expanded programming: “Students
like art, and science is related to art. For example, we
can make
glowing paint and link it to the study of an animal that
has bioluminescence (that is, it glows in the dark); or
we can
create shapes to link art with geometry. Students will
have the opportunity to see many facets of one topic, and
the whole
idea fits well with Hill House’s goal to create a
broader content spectrum. It’s really exciting.”
A National Model
Mission Discovery has already been recognized nationally
for its creative partnering between cultural organizations,
schools,
and community service agencies.
In January 2004, Carnegie Science
Center received the 2003 National Museum Service Award from
the Institute of Museum
and Library Services (IMLS), in no small way due to the innovative
Mission Discovery. A contingent from Pittsburgh traveled
to Washington, D.C., to accept the award from First Lady Laura
Bush. It included Joanna Haas, The Henry Buhl, Jr., Director
of Carnegie Science Center; Howard Bruschi, Science Center
board chair; the Hill House’s Evan Frazier; and, last
but not least, Mareena Woodbury-Moore.
“
She knocked the socks off everyone,” Jo Haas recalls—including
First Lady Laura Bush who, after presenting the awards and
posing for group photos, requested a private photo shoot with
Mareena.
“
It was special being there to see Mareena buzzing through the
White House with her two cameras and cellphone/camera, posing
for pictures with the First Lady and giving interviews to the
national media. She energized us all, and she embodied the
many, many young people whose lives have been made richer by
programs like Mission Discovery.”
“
For young people who lack a sense of focus in their lives,
Mission Discovery provides direction and enlightenment,” says
Mareena’s mother, Darlene. “It helps them to
explore their inner selves and excel in ways they can’t
imagine.” And
neither Mareena nor her mother would have imagined that
she would enjoy science so much that she’d go on
to become a “Youth
Explorer” in the Science Center’s Science in
Your Neighborhood program, which trains teens to be science-learning
mentors at after-school locations throughout the city.
“
The most profound thing about a program like Mission Discovery
is the bond it creates between students, community, learning,
and the future,” Haas adds. “Cultural and educational
institutions absolutely have an obligation to be a catalyst
for those kinds of connections and facilitate their wide-reaching
impact.
“
In the years to come, students engaged with Mission
Discovery
will not only become more scientifically passionate and
literate, but they will also become ambassadors of art
and explorers
of natural history. We are catapulting them toward a possibility-oriented,
culturally rich, intellectually stimulating future.”
Says
Evan Frazier: “It’s our responsibility to
inspire the youth of today. Ultimately, they are the leaders
of tomorrow.
One such leader of tomorrow is Mark,
a 12-year-old “scientist” with
Mission Discovery. In a true testament to the hope and
drive that Hill House and Carnegie Museums are trying to
instill
in the kids they reach through programs like Mission Discovery,
Mark’s got his life pretty much plotted out. And
it’s
a good one.
“
I want a career in science, and this will help me get there,” Mark
says, unabashedly. “I learn stuff here that I don’t
learn in science class at school. My plan is to be engaged
when I get out of high school at 18, then get married when
I graduate from college at 21. When I’m 24, I’ll
have a master’s
degree and will start having kids. And by the time I turn
28, I’ll have my Ph.D. and will be a chemist. I’m
going to have a perfect life!”
That’s one mission
of discovery definitely on its way to being fulfilled.
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2005 CARNEGIE Magazine. All rights reserved.