ED31D-2260 Co-creation of a Museum Exhibit about Climate Change with a Diverse Team of Students, Scientists, Educators, and Museum Professionals
Conference Proceeding
Overview
abstract
Winds Through Time is a unique project that brought together undergraduate students and an interdisciplinary team of university faculty, scientists, museum educators, education specialists, and exhibit designers to create an interactive exhibit that invites museum visitors to explore and learn about paleoclimate and climate change. The students, from a broad range of educational backgrounds, including Art and Visual Performance, Computer Engineering, and Geosciences, came together for one semester in a class offered by the University of Colorado Boulder’s ATLAS Institute. They were asked to conceptualize and design a prototype exhibit for the NSF National Center for Atmospheric Research (NCAR) Mesa Lab Visitor Center in Boulder, Colorado, that brings to life how massive ice sheets helped shape North America’s wind patterns and influenced the weather and climate during the last ice age.; ; The members of the project team mentored student teams during this course, supporting them in co-designing science exhibit prototypes with complex content that were engaging and relatable for a wide range of visitors to the NSF NCAR Mesa Lab Visitor Center. After the semester was over, the team reviewed the designs, selected one to be refined and built as a permanent exhibit, and embarked on an iterative design process to produce the final exhibit. This project was the first time the team at UCAR-NSF NCAR brought in university students and other external collaborators to contribute to the development of a new exhibit.; ; This visitor center contains approximately 6,000 square feet of exhibit space on topics such as climate change, weather, air quality, and solar physics. Tens of thousands of people visit the Mesa Lab each year, including K-12 students and teachers on school field trips and family groups. Winds Through Time is an exciting new addition to the climate change exhibition at the Mesa Lab.; ; This project was funded by the NSF Paleo Perspectives on Climate Change program and was an outreach component for the research project, An integrated model-proxy approach to understanding Western U.S. hydroclimate change since the last glacial period.
