Message from the Director

It's been a big month in the Howell household: I've just sent my son off to his first year at college, while my daughter is about to start her senior year. It's the sort of thing that inspires me to think about cycles and transformation, particularly as I'm just coming up on a full year at the museum. We're back at the beginning of a new academic year, and while some things are starting to feel familiar (like preparing for the twenty-fifth annual ID Day!), we've also been growing in many new ways. 

I'm so proud of our team here at the museum for everything we've accomplished in the past year, from the wonderful new exhibits we've developed to the community outreach programs we've built with our collaborators. As we get ready to launch full-speed into Laser Queen, the return of Science Café, ID Day, and an interactive Farrand Memorial Lecture, I hope you'll join us to make this year even more special.

Sincerely,
Lucie Howell, Director

This Month at the Museum

Please note that the museum will be returning to regular hours in September: Tuesday–Sunday, 10am-4pm

Fridays and Saturdays, 5pm, 6pm, 7pm
Laser Queen

September 1
Museum closed

September 24, 5:30–7:30pm
Science Café: Pollinator Power

Weekend Programs

Schedule subject to change.

12:30 p.m.: Out of the Water and Back Again: A Whale's Tale [Demo]

1:30 p.m.: Museum Highlights Tour (Saturdays) / Walking With Whales Tour (Sundays)

2:30 p.m.: Out of the Water and Back Again: A Whale's Tale [Demo]

Click here to see the up-to-date planetarium schedule for this month.

Special Feature: Meet Rich Bacolor

Our new Assistant Director for Education, Rich Bacolor, joined us over the summer. We sat down for a quick chat to get to know Rich a little better and hear about his history with the museum.

This interview has been edited and condensed for clarity.

Rich Bacolor: I’m Rich Bacolor, the Assistant Director for Education at the museum. I started out as a middle school science teacher, and I did that for about twenty years in suburban Detroit—Redford, specifically—and then I spent the next ten years of my career as a science curriculum specialist for all Wayne County schools. 

I supported districts with curriculum adoption and review, I supported teachers with professional learning and teaching curriculum, pedagogy…it was a little bit of everything related to formal science education.

I graduated from the University of Michigan with a degree in Biopsychology in the early ‘90s, so I have a long history with the university and LSA specifically. I also have a personal connection to the museum and ID Day, actually; I’ve said this before, but ID Day holds a very dear place in my heart. When my daughter was about eight years old, she found a fossil in our back yard, and the natural place to bright it was the museum’s ID Day. It was so cool for her to talk to real scientists about the fossil and science in general—she actually ended up going on to get a minor in bird science and spent a summer in Camp Davis.

Being a science teacher and a parent, I always knew that science happened in the real world, not necessarily in a textbook or online. We wanted to give our kids as many opportunities as possible to do science on their own, and that started in our own back yard. My daughter was digging in our garden when she found that little horn coral fossil, and that’s what I like to see: science starts at home, and we can keep exploring from there. 

Scientists look for other experts, so when we didn’t have the resources at home to look up what that fossil was, it was just a wonderful opportunity to bring something from the natural world in our everyday life to connect with experts from all kinds of discplines. My daughter has always been excited to learn stuff, and being able to talk to real scientists is identity-building in ways that reading about them just isn’t. I still have that fossil somewhere!

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