About Us | Our Future

We envision a one-of-a-kind place, a science park, offering extraordinary experiences indoors, outdoors, and virtual where children and adults learn through the pursuit of their own interests and curiosity. We will be recognized as the leader in public engagement with science in the Triangle region and as a model for science museums across the nation.

Future Scenario: 2016

Who would have imagined that the Museum would be the cover story on a national magazine? Just a decade ago, we set off to achieve something great and now we are receiving accolades nationally for our impact within the Triangle and for our nonprofit business practices.

We don’t see our accomplishments as great but rather on the way to greatness. We always set our sights high, but we’ve realized that achieving our mission means continuous achievement.

A little over a decade ago, we envisioned a one-of-a-kind place, a science park, offering extraordinary experiences indoors, outdoors, and virtual where children and adults learned through the pursuit of their own interests and curiosity. Today, we have become that place even as we continuously strive to fulfill our mission.

When we started our transformation, we were just about to open a major expansion of our campus—a three-part expansion including Explore the Wild, Catch the Wind, and Dinosaur Trail. All of these areas attracted new audiences, both day visitors and members, which brought in additional revenue to sustain our operations. We knew that our attendance would likely remain at new levels but that the newness would wear off eventually and force us back into the struggle to attract new audiences—a costly enterprise.

That’s when it occurred to us that we had opportunity: our future success lay mainly in serving our repeat customers—our members. Instead of focusing our efforts and resources on day visitors, we needed to become a member-focused organization. Of course, we continued to attract new customers, but primarily we worked to build relationships with members and earn their loyalty.

Our new mission forced us to think about creating experiences and environments where people of various ages and diverse interests learned something new every time they visited the Museum campus or visited our web site. We needed to entice people not only to visit on occasion but participate in an ongoing relationship where they would see the Museum as a “portal to learning.”

We also knew that our location presented another opportunity: we were located in an area of abundant resources in science, technology, and business. Our proximity to major research institutions, medical centers, the Research Triangle Park, and other science and technology-related corporations offered the potential for partnerships. Could we find partners that shared a common goal to connect public audiences, especially our members, to contemporary science, medicine, and technology?

As they say, that was then, this is now — 2016.

Today, we serve over 15,000 members, generating a large part of our operating budget from membership services and sales. What do members like most about their membership? It depends upon whom you ask, but their answers center around the experience. They often compliment the attentive, knowledgeable and helpful staff and mention the welcoming atmosphere of the Museum.

They often hang out at the Museum, sometimes deeply engaged in activity or in lively conversation and at other times strolling the out-of-doors or grabbing lunch or a cup of coffee. Of course, this is what we hoped and planned for in creating a “third place,” described by Ray Oldenburg in his book A Great Good Place along with coffee houses, bookstores, and similar venues as “the heart of a community’s social vitality.”

It is the social experience that is at the heart of our approach where people, young and old, learn from each other and through exhibits, media, and programs, all in a way they choose.

For members the experience is enabled and nurtured in a special way. Upon joining the Museum, members receive a wearable device that eases their entry to the Museum campus, allows them to download information at exhibits, and personalizes their learning experience. Personal Web pages for every member customize learning experiences that tie each museum visit to personal interests.

The indoor exhibit spaces are a combination of high and low-tech experiences, all designed to stimulate the mind and appeal to the senses. Spaces, visually captivating and provoking different moods, surround the visitor. Entire walls and floors are touch-interactive video screens. And where there are no walls, walk-through fog screens where images are projected on a thin laminar air flow of water vapor appear to float in mid-air.

These high-tech interfaces are part of an interchangeable exhibit platform where new exhibits and new topics change frequently. Exhibits challenge, provoke, and encourage deeper exploration. They enhance social interaction around activities of common interest or concern. Even low-tech activities are complemented with our thin-screen “labels.” The labels, which replaced the static printed labels so common to museum exhibits, are actually ultra-thin displays that allow the user to explore content — text, audio, video — to seek answers to questions they might have or to satisfy their curiosity. Downloads are available at many exhibits so that content can be carried away or transferred to personal web pages for later consumption.

Exhibit spaces appeal to a wide range of audiences. While most spaces attract multi-generational audiences, some are devoted to children or adults. Our exhibit space for young children and their caregivers provides a variety of experiences grounded in brain and learning research. The space combines indoor exhibits with outdoor, seemingly flowing from inside the building to outside.

Adults especially enjoy the i.e., Intellectual Encounters spaces and programs. Here members, researchers, and innovators meet. Scientists, artists, politicians, and business leaders engage adults in conversation about advances in science and technology as well as the issues surrounding them. With its comfortable furniture, high-def screens, and internet access, these inviting spaces afford presenters and participants an intellectual encounter of the third-place kind. For parents we offer a program for their children in another part of the Museum, while they enjoy a drink and adult conversation.

The outdoor exhibits are equally attractive. The Dinosaur Trail was well-received and to this day remains one of our most popular attractions. We added features to Explore the Wild and Catch the Wind, offering richer and deeper learning experiences. Similar to indoor exhibits, members can download content at each exhibit. What really set these outdoor areas apart are the scientists, artists, and musicians that one encounters along the way. Visitors enjoy conversation with scientists, see a painter at work, or stop to hear a musician play. They also see people participating in educational programs or collecting data as part of citizen science projects.

Downloads of music, video, news, interviews, debates, and stories have become pervasive and the preferred way Americans are entertained and kept informed. The Museum got ahead of the curve and began delivering downloadable content via kiosks in coffee houses, bookstores, and juice bars throughout the Triangle several years ago. In collaboration with a major media organization, area universities, and a start-up tech company, the Museum produces and distributes the downloadable video and audio stories, interviews, and debates about advances in science and technology and issues that affect our lives, our environment, and our economy.

We’ve achieved our goal to cultivate lifelong learners largely through establishing learning communities, or communities of engagement. Members of these communities interact, learn together, build relationships, and develop a sense of mutual commitment. Their experience is both online and onsite. Online learning communities of families, adults, research universities, commercial participants, and others are drawn together and organized across topics of shared passion. The role of the Museum as developer and deliverer of experiences has been transformed into one in which the users — the members — take a much more active role in determining the content, the mode of delivery, and the outcomes of experiences.

Scientists and engineers participate in the online communities, in presentations and discussions with members, in programs and citizen science projects, and contribute the content to video and audio productions. The Museum has become a bridge from the Triangle’s research institutions and the Research Triangle to the public in communicating current research and technological achievements. The university and corporate community have embraced the Museum as a trusted and competent partner in engaging the public in conversation about science and technology.

Parents, teachers, and school administrators have come to see us as part of a larger educational infrastructure, where a whole range of institutions such as schools, museums and media contribute to a well-rounded education.

Our focused field-trip experiences are hailed for their uniqueness and educational value. Begun in 2006 with funding from Bayer CropScience and the GlaxoSmithKline Foundation, the program has grown into one of the most popular educational experiences in the state. The experiences connect classroom curriculum to truly immersive, one-of-a-kind opportunities and environments, some involving high-end equipment, grid computing, and Web-based field trips to research sites.

While our members and day visitors pay a premium for the experiences and products we offer, we have delivered on our commitment to serve the underserved. Our increased financial stability and our strong partnerships enabled us to target audiences who would not otherwise visit us, or become members, or seek the learning experiences we offer. In collaboration with community organizations, schools and churches, we’ve delivered programs to neighborhoods and have brought our neighbors to the Museum. In a partnership with Durham County and institutions of higher learning, our second neighborhood SLC (science learning center) opened this fall. We employ managers and youth from the neighborhood to operate the centers, which has proven to strengthen their effectiveness.

Today, the Museum is recognized as a well-run, well-staffed and fiscally-fit organization that is a model for excellence in the field of nonprofit, public, and private collaboration. A clear and transparent business policy establishes a high level of credibility and trust among customers and clients, stakeholders, and contributors.

The Board of Directors today is a model of nonprofit governance and resource development. Much admired and written about, the Board’s practice of rigorous orientation, ongoing education, and self-evaluation have not deterred participation. Indeed, it is viewed as THE Board on which to serve in the Triangle.

For all of these reasons and more, the Museum is featured in a national magazine. We are successful and we take pride in our accomplishments, but as long as we have a mission to fulfill, the work lays in the road ahead.