Quoted Text

Schenectady Museum to become regional science center
By Scott Waldman
Published 05:10 p.m., Monday, July 16, 2012

SCHENECTADY — The Schenectady Museum is being transformed into a regional science center that will draw students from 19 counties.

The museum, which eventually will change its name, is in the process of installing a Challenger Learning Center that will expose visitors to the space program and has entered into a partnership with a San Francisco children's museum to bring a rotating crop of exhibits every year. The rotating exhibit will take up 3,500 square feet of space and will be open by October. The Challenger program, which will immerse students in a two-month effort that will culminate with a project on NASA-like equipment, is scheduled to open in January.

The museum now will be geared to students in kindergarten through eighth grade and will provide hands-on learning in the science, technology, engineering and math, or STEM fields, that they don't normally receive before high school.

"They are going to have a chance to fulfill 21st-century skills our students need and they're going to be doing it right here in Schenectady," said Charles Dedrick, district superintendent of the Capital Region BOCES.

The museum will remain in its current location, but will have a new facade for its Nott Street entrance designed by the Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute School of Architecture.

The new projects will cost about $1.5 million. The money was raised by local business people as well as $250,000 from the state, said Neil Golub, Price Chopper's executive chairman of the board, who helped spearhead the fundraising effort.

There has been talk of moving the Schenectady Museum since at least 2005. That's when an architectural firm hired to help the Schenectady Museum hunt for a new home recommended it move to the Harriman State Office Campus in Albany. The firm created an $87 million plan to turn the money-losing museum into a regional science and technology center that would attract 350,000 visitors a year.

Read more: http://www.timesunion.com/loca.....98.php#ixzz20p9RgUzA