 Lakeland Currents, your public affairs program for North Central Minnesota produced by Lakeland Public Television with host Bethany Wesley. Production funding for Lakeland Currents is made possible by Bemidji Regional Airports serving the region with daily flights to Minneapolis-Saint Paul International Airport for information available at BemidjiAirport.org. Closed captioning for Lakeland Currents is sponsored by Niswa Tax Service tax preparation for businesses and individuals online at NiswaTax.com To Lakeland Currents, I'm Bethany Wesley. For tonight's show, we turn our attention to a popular destination in downtown Bemidji. The Headwater Science Center first opened in the summer of 1993 initially boasting a selection of handmade exhibits and a science-centered gift shop. The center continued to grow over the last 24 years and its offerings now feature live animals, many more exhibits and increased opportunities for hands-on science exploration. Today, the Science Center continues its mission by offering science and technology-focused exhibits and programming to the greater Bemidji region. Tonight, I welcome to the program Annie Butler-Ricks, the executive director of the Headwater Science Center and Mindy Clark, a Science Center board member who also co-chairs its marketing committee. Welcome. Thank you. As we get started, first, let's talk about the basics of the Science Center itself in terms of the size, how many exhibits, how do you kind of introduce the Science Center to people? Yeah, so we have a 7,500 square foot exhibit floor, which sounds really big and it is. We have over 40 interactive exhibits and then we have a lot of live animals and I think that's a really big draw that children love and adults love coming and holding our animals and we have a lot of reptiles, a lot of snakes. We have a hedgehog and I really happen to like him. He's my favorite, but we have birds. We have three live raptors also that is a great addition. You know, those are permitted. We have a raptors program. We provide a lot of education with them. So how many annual visitors come in an average year? We'll get to why this was a little unique soon enough. But in an average year, how many visitors do typically host a year? Around 25 to 27,000. Oh, wow. Okay. And where do they come from? Obviously, you're in Bemidji, but from how wide the region do your visitors typically come? So we don't track them exactly, but what we do know is that most of our members are from the Bemidji area and then Minnesota, but we do have people who get memberships to our museum from all over the country. And in the summer, the majority of our visitors to the museum are people from out of town who are visiting. So do you have an ideal guest? Like, is there an ideal age? Is it young kids, older kids, tweens, teens, adults? I think right now a lot of the exhibits are geared towards kids and maybe the three to 10-year-old range. But that is something that we have been working on changing and we've actually gotten some new exhibits recently that appeal more towards older kids to the teenagers to adults. And we're seeing more of that. We're seeing more of Bemidji State students coming in to experiment with some of the exhibits to see the animals. So we have the last director got some math puzzles games and I have seen adults sit at those and there's a bunch of different little ones and they sit at those for an hour sometimes and can't figure it out and they love it because of the challenge. You know, it's not something that's just, really quickly, it's, oh, I got this. And then on the same hand, I've seen a seven-year-old solve those same problems. So I think that's just the perfect example of how it works for everyone. Some of our exhibits are just fun. We have little kids that love the bubble wall and then we have adults who've never played with such a thing and are fascinated by it and are trying to figure out, can I make one of these at home? And the teenagers especially love the reptiles. So I'll see, I'll pop in on a Tuesday afternoon and I'll see a pretty substantial group of our Bemidji High School kids holding the reptiles and checking out the birds, sitting in front of the fish tank. Oh, fun. As we move forward to talk some about the specifics of the center, I wanted to get to know you guys just a little bit for myself and also for our viewers. So Mindy, how long have you been a board member? I have been a board member about two years. And what led you to initially get involved with the Science Center? I actually hadn't even heard of the Science Center until a friend of mine invited me to the annual gala called E-Cubed. She said, it's food and alcohol and music and I said okay. And while we were there, I should have known something was up her sleeve. She said, I think you should become a board member and I agreed and here I am. Okay, enjoyable. Obviously you've stuck with it. I have stuck with it. It's a fun group of people and we get to work with science and we get to work with kids who are pretty excited about the whole thing. Oh cool. And Annie, you're still relatively new to the director position. So when did you first take over the position? Mid-May. Mid-May. And when you first came, it was pretty exciting time at the Science Center, correct? You were undergoing a campaign to raise funds. Yes. What were those funds for? We had just finished the dyno run, which Annie and her husband had actually helped co-chair the year before with the dyno run to replace the carpeting. The carpet in the center was about 30 years old. It was time. It was past time. And you actually were successful. You brought in the money. We were successful. We brought in the money. We raised quite a bit with the dyno run and then through various generous corporations throughout Bemidji, we were able to raise the funds and get the carpet installed. When was the carpet installed? Oh, she knows that better than I do. Yeah, so I started Mid-May and that is our really busy field trip season. And so that goes until about the beginning of June and then just maybe mid-June as soon as we were able to wrap things up with field trip season, we started on the carpet. And then something else happened. So what, your fall has been interesting. What happened after that? Yeah, so the carpeting project took a little bit longer than we anticipated and we finished in August with our remodeling and it was looking great. It was a busy, hectic summer for everyone but it was looking great and then about two to three weeks after our carpeting was done being installed, one of my staff members came in. On a Saturday morning, we were really lucky in that he had an outreach he was supposed to be going to. So he came in early to find himself in a couple inches of water splashing around. We later learned that a piece of tubing, so a smaller pipe than a pipe inside your walls but a piece of tubing going to a fish tank had burst and was running, we don't know for how long, most likely all night. And I know at first, right, didn't you try to see if you could kind of clean it up and save parts if not the majority of inside and you found it just wasn't going to be possible? Yes, I got the phone call to go to the Science Center with a wet vac and I was expecting not that and I arrived to find that there was, I want to say three to five standing inches of water throughout the majority of the floor. And Annie had already called Service Master and they were on their way. Community volunteers showed up, our headwaters volunteers showed up, our entire staff was there. It was quite the disaster. It was, a friend showed up to pick up my kids who were splashing through the water trying to help. It was a big effort that day to try to get us so we could open Sunday and we did. We opened on Sunday, had a big day, lots of visitors and then we learned the next Monday that things just weren't drying out how they should be. And so unlike when the carpet went in the very first time, you kept the Science Center open in portions or you were doing the carpet in portions, this time you found out that just wasn't going to be possible. How long did you end up being closed for? Seven weeks. Tell me a little bit about where your funding comes from. So 65% of our funding comes from daily admission and annual memberships to the museum, which is huge. If you look at most museums, it's not even close to that. It might be more in the 10 to 20%. So when our funding is coming from that, being closed for seven weeks is really difficult. It is. Any other 35%, 30%? I'm not the math wiz. This is why I'm on the marketing committee. I'm not the finance committee. The other percentage is raised throughout the community with individual donors, corporate donors, not just throughout the community, but really throughout the region. Legislative, the legislative grants that we get a few things like that. How did you feel supported by the community while you were closed? Were people upset that you were closed or were the community just trying to help you out or what was kind of the response from your clientele? People were very, very supportive. The hardest part were the kids that were crying outside the Science Center on a fairly regular basis when their parents didn't know we were closed and I would try to go out and greet them individually and even let them come take a peek and see that and tell them we were open. But we had businesses, business owners stopping in to see what they could do to help with people calling, offering, whatever we needed. I don't think I've responded to all of the Facebook messages and texts that I got those first couple of days from the community just saying, what can we do? And we posted on Facebook, originally we didn't realize it was quite as large as it ended up being and Radio Station picked up a Facebook post and asked people to show up with wet vaks and help and people came. So it was, by that point in time, Service Master was there and we were all breathing a sigh of relief but people came. It was very nice to see. I'm assuming that they were also there for you when you did reopen your doors? Yes. Things are back. You're back at operation. Things are going swimmingly, hopefully. Yes. Yes. I want to talk about some. We've talked a little bit in the intro in terms of the exhibits that expanded. You have animals. But there also seems to have been an increased emphasis on programming, like not just the hands-on opportunities but educational opportunities at the Science Center. Mindy, has that been a deliberate choice? Absolutely. We think that to create value to the community as a whole that it's really our responsibility to help raise up the next set of children into science-minded adults. If we can get them fascinated right now and get them started in the learning process, things outside what their teachers are normally able to teach them in school due to curriculum and timing requirements, get them excited about something and interested in science so that they can become the next doctor, the next engineer, really inspire them to do more than sometimes what I feel like they necessarily think they can do from small town Minnesota. Get them to think bigger. Yes. Think bigger. And so these are different opportunities. Because I know you host field trips in different groups and things, but these programming opportunities are unique, correct? Tell me a little bit about them. What types of programming options are there? Yeah. So some of our sort of more traditional programming is after-school science clubs during the school year. So we have a science club for kids in grades three to five. And they do just a variety of things. They learned about ecosystems this last week. Going outside and exploring fall leaves and looking at color and talking about that. So that's sort of our traditional one. We have a younger program called pint-sized science for the younger kids. And that's really just to help the kids and the parents understand that exploring the world around you is science. And that that is such an important learning opportunity. And so showing not only kids, but their parents what you can do to help encourage your kids creativity in the sort of STEM field, science technology, engineering and math. And I know you touched on this a little bit, but do you feel that your role in education in terms of science is unique in a smaller town versus like a larger metropolitan area? Is there a service here that's unique in that way in terms of the way that children are given opportunities to learn about science? I feel like definitely yes. I come from a larger metropolitan area where it's a pretty standard course for children to be exposed to more simply because of the bigger town, more opportunities, more museums. For a lot of children in our region, the Headwater Science Museum is really the only thing that they have that exposes them to thinking about caring about animals is related to science. Going and learning on a Saturday science activity about aviation and airflow and wind dynamics, that's science. It broadens their horizon and allows them to think about different things that they wouldn't necessarily be exposed to living in a smaller town. They're really lucky to be exposed to agriculture here in a way that big city kids aren't and they have a great understanding of that. We want to broaden their horizons and make sure that they are. I know that not only do people come to you, but you go out to them. Tell me about your outreach. How does that work and in what situations have you done that? We do quite a bit of outreach. As you probably know, the transportation expenses are a really big cost of field trips. For many schools, especially those in small, more rural areas than Bemidji, that is just too large of a cost and so in those cases, or really whenever anyone asks us, we will pack up our Science Center van and we will head to a school, to a community center, to a library. We've done all sorts of different events. Outdoor events, indoor events, it doesn't really matter and we'll really do all sorts of things. We'll set up a portable planetarium and do some star shows. We've traveled as far north as Lake of the Woods School, really up right at the border, spent the whole day with the entire Lake of the Woods School. What a great opportunity that is for the kids there to spend some time. Five of my staff went up and really spend time doing science almost all day. I just think that's such a great opportunity. We're willing to travel. We'll go out for birthday parties. We'll do anything. Tell me a little bit about how you keep the Science Center offerings fresh. How often are you adding new exhibits? How far down the road do you look in terms of developing new offerings? That's something I'm thinking about constantly. Even when I'm doing the more mundane tasks that I do as the Executive Director, I'm always thinking, what can we be doing in 2018, 2019, 2020? There have been lots of studies that talk about rotating exhibits. It's important to have some key exhibits but then to have some that rotate. We're going to be trying to do that a little bit more. We have two new exhibits in the Science Center right now with three more coming in the next month or two. I'm really trying to get some fresh things in there. I do like it when people say, oh, I came here when I was in third grade and it hasn't changed at all but really part of me wants them to say, oh, and I love the new exhibits at the end of that. I just need a little bit more. I'm always thinking about how can we change programming? How can we reach more people? How can we reach not just the normal typical visitor to the Science Center, but how can we reach those kids whose families can't afford daily admission or an annual pass to the museum? We have a few initiatives we're working on. We are recently a member of Museums for All, which is a nationwide initiative that allows visitors with an EBT card, to come to the museum for $3 a person. So we're really trying to, I'm always thinking about things like that, brainstorming with my staff, with my board. How can we keep growing and reach more people? You had just said a few minutes ago about rotating exhibits and keeping them fresh. Are there systems in place that allow you to rotate or how does that work? Who do you rotate with? So we are sort of, I guess, lucky that we have a basement and we have a lot of exhibits that some people have given us. So Science Museum of Minnesota will give us exhibits sometimes. The Minnesota Pollution Control Agency has given us exhibits. That's one of our new ones that's coming, actually. But I have, my former, the former executive director had worked really hard on making relationships with small children's museums in the area, because there aren't really any other small children's museums. We're the only science museum between Winnipeg and the Twin Cities. So there's not anyone at sort of the Science Museum level that we can trade exhibits with, but we do share exhibits with the Duluth Children's Museum, which is a great museum that you can go to if you have an annual membership at our museum. And so we're really working on, I'm working on continuing to cultivate those relationships to get new exhibits in. Is that one of the strength that you get from partnerships then, as you develop relationships and partnerships, is the way that you guys can grow off each other? Definitely. Yes. And we've had some past exhibits that have been donated by corporations within the community, Paul Bunyan Telecommunications provided one for us. Sanford Health provided one for us. Yeah. Tell us about the community in terms, we talked about how they supported you through the disaster with the flooded floor and everything. Talk to us a little bit about the community as a whole. Do you feel like the community has always been behind the Science Center and is always hoping that it helps to grow and I think this is an interesting point of conversation for both Annie and I being newer to the Bemidji area. I didn't hear about the Science Center. I don't have little children. I have older children for a while while living here. And then when I talked to people, very people knew very much about it. So while I feel like the people who know about the Science Center support it, I feel like there's a huge segment of the population who's missing us entirely. Is that one of the keys then in the outreach is as you go out, you hope that not only are they learning from your on-site visits but that perhaps if they're ever in town they would support you back. They would support us. Yes. And have you seen that happen? Yes. I think we see people from, you know, who come from the way to come visit us, from Park Rapids from Grand Rapids. They'll come and visit us. And I think that's, you know, I think a lot of people do see the Science Museum as a place to take their kids in that three to nine year old range. And really, we want to be the place that people are coming to for anything science related in Bemidji. That coming to Saturday Science Events coming to our programming that is geared towards older kids and adults. That we're sort of the first place for that. How has your attendance been in recent years? Have you been increasing? Has it been pretty stable? Has it kind of been up and down? How has it been? I mean, I'm assuming it's tracked. It is. I'm thinking about the graph in my mind right now of how to look after this year. It has definitely increased over the years. You know, we're very seasonal so our summers are very busy months including field trips. But each year we're increasing and we used to be, even though I've only been there since May, I've heard myself say this, that on a warm summer day in Bemidji all numbers will be low at the museum. Everyone's going to want to be in the lake not this summer. I mean, we it would be gorgeous 80 degrees outside and sunny and we would be packed. And I think it's things like that that just show we're continuing to grow in popularity. As you look at planning additions and expansions in the future how much of your own personal interest in your own background kind of drives that because I know that you came to the Science Center from a previous position at Bemidji State correct? So does that impact anyways when you look forward in terms of what you're interested in personally? Definitely. So I'm a chemist so this is a little bit of a change for me to being an executive director and I'm a renewable energy chemist so I studied electron transfer without relates to solar cells and so one of our brand new exhibits happens to be a solar exhibit and I do think it's really important that we have some renewable energy concepts whether it's solar wind, you know, geothermal any of those but I was able to make some connections with our real and Bemidji State to have that solar exhibit happen. So that's definitely where I'm thinking but I'm also thinking about just generally how can we expand to reach areas we're not reaching so we don't really have a lot of necessarily chemistry exhibits that's something I'm thinking about but I'm also thinking about other areas of science. What was it about this position that interests you then if it was a little unique from what you had been doing previously? Yes, so I've been at Bemidji State before, I've been working with students, I've been teaching and you know it sounds really cliche but I was ready for something new and a little bit different and this is definitely it. I miss chemistry but every day changes. I don't do the same thing, you know, minute to minute and that can be a challenge but it can also just be a wonderful thing. I want to talk about some of the people that help make this happen because while you're certainly the spokesperson in the face for the Science Center, there's a lot of individuals who help. How big is your staff? We have currently five full-time and five part-time staff. And then consistent volunteers, I know that you also have volunteers on hand. Yes, we do. We have anywhere from volunteers that come in almost on a daily basis or at least Monday through Friday to volunteers that come in weekly, you know, monthly our volunteers are amazing and I don't think I can name them because I'm going to forget someone very very crucial and important but you know dedicated volunteers are really what help run the HSC there are people that built some of the original exhibits who still stop in to check and see how we're doing and just check on things. Do the volunteers usually come to you with some kind of interest or you find a way to fit them into something that you need or how does that work? Yeah, so we have a volunteer coordinator who has sort of an application form but that also helps her figure out sort of what the volunteers interests are and we go from there. So there are some volunteers that just really want to work with kids and they're great at helping with some of our science clubs and then we have other volunteers who would prefer to help us dust and clean and we are more than thankful for that type of volunteering also. Oh I bet. So here you are on TV is there anything that you need or anything that you would ask from the community that would help you guys in this current time? I think the one thing Mendy sort of mentioned is you know we definitely want people to know that we're here and even though we've been here you know since the early 1990s that we are a very still small non-profit at least budget wise and we would like people to come see the changes we've made, see where the direction the Science Center is going and come support us. Mendy is working on our Gala the Ecubed event in February so if you want to help. Saturday February 24th will be our annual I think our 8th annual 7th or 8th We should know that. I should know this. Our annual Gala where it's really a time to thank our sponsors and donors Tickets are available for purchase by the public and our donors and sponsors are able to come and enjoy an evening of good food and music and just being in the center at night a little dressed up a silent auction is always fun and this year we're going to do a big 50-50 raffle which we're hoping we'll invite more people to donate a little more money to us. And this is an adult event Yes. It gives them a chance to see the Science Center in a different light, different way. Yes, we're a great party place. Great. Well listen, I want to thank you guys for coming on the show tonight and for talking to us about the Science Center and everything that has happened this year and looking forward to what's coming up. So I thank you and I thank you guys for tuning in tonight and I hope you join me next time. Bye.