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Museum on Main Street wins 2017 Smithsonian Education Award for Innovation

The Museum on Main Street Team with Smithsonian Secretary Dr. David Skorton. From left to right: Tiffany Cheng, Terri Cobb, Carol Harsh, Shannon Sullivan, Robbie Davis, and Selwyn Ramp

 

 

The Museum on Main Street (MoMS) team have been called many things, be it the extension of the Smithsonian to remote and small-town audiences across the country, the voice of rural American within the Institution, award-winning exhibition creators, or just our great colleagues and friends within SITES.

Today, they added another title: Smithsonian award-winning innovators.

All of us at SITES are so proud and honored that the MoMS team earned the 2017 Smithsonian Education Award for Innovation today for their work engaging underserved rural audiences across America with evolving and innovative digital projects. The awards, presented annually, honor creativity and excellence in educational programming, exhibitions, publications, and digital media.

The awarding committee, made up of a committee of museum and education leaders outside of the Smithsonian, recognized that, “Through initiatives such as Stories from Main Street, a web portal for collecting and saving stories about life in small-town America, to Stories: YES, which supports youth participants in researching their town’s histories and assembling their work in digital formats, MoMS helps its audiences embrace local history with an approach grounded in community.”

For more than 20 years the MoMS program has worked alongside state humanities councils and more than 1,700 institutions in rural towns averaging 8,000 people to build grassroots community pride for areas which may never otherwise access the Smithsonian.  Within the past five years, MoMS has been a leader in using newer technologies that connect these grassroots efforts through digital storytelling, and widen the breadth of these stories to a state, regional, and national audience. 

“I have collaborated with Carol and her team since the partnership with the state humanities councils was launched in the early 1990s. Through all those years, Carol has led a team that has never stopped innovating, finding new ways to serve rural communities, and developing resources to meet new needs and circumstances,” Federation of State Humanities Councils President Esther Mackintosh said. “Education has always been an important component of the Museum on Main Street project, involving both adults and children and providing valuable resources for teachers.”

Starting in 2012, MoMS has engaged young people in a dozen states through the Stories: YES, which has allowed over 400 young people between grades 6-12 in small communities to research issues ingrained in their local history and create cultural digital stories combining interviews and multimedia.

“The Stories: YES site is a prime example of the team’s constant pursuit of new ideas and new ways of capturing and sharing the stories of rural America.  The contributions they have made to strengthening the civic health of these communities and improving the education of their children is incalculable and highly deserving of this award,” Mackintosh added.

By providing technology and training in digital curation for underserved youth, MoMS and the Stories: YES program have connected youth with a community of local educators, business owners, and historians and offered a platform for these teens to gain modern skills while becoming more enriched within their hometowns.  

An example of the program’s impact came from when MoMS collaborated with the Mississippi Humanities Council to bring Stories: YES to the Lynn Meadows Discovery Center in Gulfport, a community with 25.5% of the residents living below poverty level. Through the initiative, many of these underserved youth have received educational support and access to previously unrealized resources like the University of Mississippi’s anthropological collection to create their own companion exhibition to their digital storytelling.

In addition to the work on Stories:YES, MoMS has continued to build their innovative, interactive community outreach with initiatives like Stories from Main Street, an online portal that collects audio, photographs, text and videos directly from the community. More than 1,200 people have shared their stories on the portal, embracing community pride and providing a real, of-the-people living archive about life in small-town America. And in 2016, MoMS partnered with the MuseWeb Foundation, the non-profit arm of the international Museums and the Web Conference, to launch the Be Here: Main Street pilot program in Minnesota, not only collecting local stories, but connecting the community to its local governments and businesses.

These efforts have deepened the special bond between MoMS and the state humanities councils to where the program has become a bedrock of community arts.

“I have watched the [MoMS] program grow and innovate, increasing its impact in small rural communities across the nation with every new exhibition. The collaboration with state humanities councils leverages Smithsonian research in states and communities across the country multiplying the impact that either organization could have alone,” Oklahoma Humanities Council Executive Director Ann Thompson shared.

You can tap into some of the award-winning student stories here. And be sure to engage with all of the stories collected by MoMS here.

MoMS' 2017 Smithsonian Education Award for Innovation

 

Meet Marc Wynne, SITES' New Deputy Director for Operations

SITES' new Deputy Director for Operations Marc Wynne brings over 40 years of service improving the lives of others in healthcare

 

We know which staffer we’re turning to if any of our staff feels faint.

“I have been working in the healthcare field my entire career. If you start counting from after graduate school, it’s been 31 years - half in the private sector and half in the public sector. But if you start from my undergraduate years when I worked as a cardiopulmonary technician in a major Southern California hospital, it’s closer to 40 years. Then again, if you start from when I volunteered at our local community hospital when I was 16, it’s 43. Anyway you look at it, I’ve been doing healthcare a long time.”

Our new Deputy Director for Operations, Marc Wynne, joined us recently after seven years at The Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS), an agency within the Department of Health and Human Services, and a year at the White House as an inaugural White House Leadership Development fellow. And while the overlying subjects and vocabulary of his old and new careers may be different, he’s quick to note he was attracted to SITES by the core principals both fields share: Improving our communities through outreach and education.

“I was in healthcare because I felt a need to help people and improve their quality of life. I was fortunate that over my career I was able to do that in each job in one way, shape, or form. What actually made me start thinking about alternative careers was the year I spent at the White House,” Marc recalls. “It opened my eyes to a number of things. Not only did it open my eyes to the needs of the greater federal government and the whole issue of enterprise management across agencies (our common goals), but it showed me that I could readily apply and repackage my skill sets to work in pretty much any field.”

“The more I learned about SITES and the Smithsonian, the more I wanted to work there. I really resonated with the mission. At CMS I was working to improve the health and quality of life of over 100 million Americans in the Medicare and Medicaid programs. Now at the Smithsonian,  I work to improve the human condition by bringing educational programs to the regions—to urban and rural centers—and stimulating the national dialogue on a number of really important topics. That really resonates with me, because while I may not be doing health care, I’m helping to improve society. I’m helping to improve the human condition.”

While healthcare was his first career, Marc developed a love for history and archaeology early in life while living abroad in the Middle East as a teenager. His time overseas, “made me appreciate other cultures and belief systems, and it made me appreciate what we have here in the United States much more.”

Alongside archaeology and history, Marc brings a love of music to the team, having been classically trained as a bassoonist since he was 12. This former 200-average bowler (who also recorded an unofficial perfect game) is also an avid theology buff, by his own estimate owning 150 tomes in his library.

Amid such an eclectic, accomplished life, the one major interest he hasn’t mastered? Flying.

“I’m a frustrated pilot,” Marc said. “My grandparents were both pilots. My mother was a pilot. My father flew during the war, World War II. I got my license, but never pursued it. Someday I’ll be able to fly again.”

But so long as he’s on the ground, Marc is excited about the development opportunities he and SITES can offer for the American people, himself included. “Life is a never-ending learning opportunity,” he noted. “We’re here to learn. We’re here to grow. And it’s nice to be able to dust off the gray matter once in awhile and make it work.

“I find the museum field is fascinating. I’m enjoying my educational journey.” 

 

Marc will oversee the administrative operations for the organization, including managing the Finance, Administration, Scheduling, and Public Affairs departments, as well as our customer relations management system. Please join us in welcoming him to SITES.

Guest Blog: The Last Time the Command Module Columbia Toured, by Allan Needell

*Special Blog*

Written and compiled by: Allan Needell

 

This week, we announced that the Apollo 11 Command Module Columbia, the original spacecraft that carried the first astronauts to walk on the Moon, and more than 20 additional flown artifacts from the Apollo 11 mission will go on a national tour to four major American cities: Houston, Saint Louis, Pittsburgh, and Seattle. The tour coincides with the 50^th anniversary of the Apollo 11 mission in July of 1969. While this will mark the first time the spacecraft has left the Smithsonian since it was added to the collection in 1971, it is not the first time the Command Module Columbia toured the United States.

The Command Module Columbia is among the most prized and popular artifacts in the Smithsonian’s National Air and Space Museum collection. It was launched atop a Saturn V rocket on July 20, 1969 carrying astronauts Neil Armstrong, Buzz Aldrin, and Michael Collins on the first lunar landing mission. The spacecraft was their home as they traveled to the Moon and back. On July 24, 1969, it reentered Earth’s atmosphere and splashed down in the Pacific Ocean to bring all three astronauts safely home.

Before it was entrusted to the Smithsonian for preservation and public display, Columbia went on another, now largely forgotten, journey. The National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) organized and executed an ambitious public tour of a Moon rock, Neil Armstrong’s lunar extravehicular activity (EVA) spacesuit, several small items that had returned from the mission, and the Command Module Columbia. Stopping at 49 state capitals, the District of Columbia, and Anchorage Alaska, the tour provided Americans with a unique opportunity to view and marvel at these historic items. When the tour was over, in 1971, Columbia was relocated to Washington, DC. It has been cared for and displayed by the Smithsonian Institution ever since, until now.

As you prepare to see Columbia in one of the four stops of the tour, relive its first journey across the US here with pages from NASA’s 1971 report for the “Fifty-State National Tour” along with images from that period (All photos courtesy of the Smithsonian's National Air and Space Museum.):

The final report of NASA’s Fifty-State Tour issued in June 1971.

According to this, 3 ¼ million Americans attended the tour.

The Command Module, and supporting artifacts, traveled nearly 26,000 miles for the tour, including trips by sea to Alaska and Hawaii.

Hawaii had the largest turnout with 135,000 people visiting.

Each state put its own spin on hosting the tour. In Dover, Delaware, a colonial regiment band opened the exhibition.

The tour prompted many states to declare “Space Week” or “Apollo Days” for the duration of the tour in their state.

A Norman Rockwell painting of the Lunar Module on the Moon was included in the tour.

Maryland had the lowest turnout with 32,500 visitors.

Alaska and Hawaii had the highest turnout of visitors.

To get to Hawaii and Alaska, the Command Module spent nearly a month at sea for each trip.

Are you planning to visit Columbia when it goes on tour this October?