Tips for Recruiting Diverse Youth for Your Museum

My colleague Neal Ramus, Senior Manager of Youth Programs at the California Academy of Sciences, co-authored this helpful blog post on youth recruitment. He reviews some of the challenges in recruiting a diverse pool of youth for internships, workshops, camps and other opportunities for young people.  Among the nice bits of advice: Successful youth programs …

2016 Year in Review

Two thousand and sixteen was a big year for me at the California Academy of Sciences.  Lots of pivots, adventures and new beginnings! Here’s some of the highlights. The biggest news was my transfer in the Spring from Digital Learning over the Science Action Club team. Shifting from managing my own youth program to being part …

Pulsating Spider Would Rule the Disco

Guys, this is the most amazing arachnid ever , the Bird dropping spider (Cyrtarachne sp.). Apparently the pulsing is caused by contractions in the gut of the spider that contain pigmented cells. There is no consensus about the evolutionary advantage of this, but it presumably could be to mimic a predator or warn would-be predators. More pics …

Stanford: Most Young People Can’t Spot Fake News

Most young people can't distinguish between a fake news story and a legitimate source, a fake Twitter account and a real one, or an advertisement or the article it's contained within. This according to a new study released by Stanford University today. According to lead author Sam Wineburg and his co-researchers, youth across a wide range of …

interns tide pooling

Academy Interns Collect Marine Life in Pillar Point

This Saturday, I had the pleasure of driving a group of the California Academy of Science’s teen interns to beautiful Pillar Point in Half Moon Bay to go on a marine life collection expedition. The purpose of the trip was to work with a group of teens from the environmental nonprofit Nature Bridge to refresh …