$100,000 needed to keep doors open past December
By Anthony Brino
Staff Writer
EASTON — Gina Miranda-Martin is the mother of a young daughter and son who fell in love with science early on, fascinated by technology and the outdoors.
Star-Herald photo/Anthony Brino
LEARNING ABOUT chemistry, butterflies and the planets through art at the Francis Malcolm Science Center in Easton, and admiring a model rocket’s trajectory outs
“They like anything and everything science, and like to build and explore,” said Miranda-Martin, of Madawaska. “I give them options and let them choose, and they naturally gravitate towards things like this.”
Last Saturday, Miranda-Martin and her fourth-grader Christopher and third-grader Nicolette came to an open house at the Francis Malcolm Science Center, a museum and planetarium that has hosted more than 100,000 students since 1983 and is now in the midst of a fund-raising campaign to stay open.
As her son showed the model rocket he recovered after its launch and descent and other children enjoyed other activities and exhibits, Miranda-Martin talked about the benefits of offering interactive learning to children like her’s at an early age and the challenges of doing so in the current educational system.
“In Madawaska we do have a couple of teachers who are really good at fostering science. But I think with all the cuts, some of this has fallen by the wayside,” she said. “There are not enough field trips when they’re younger. I think sometimes they don’t do it when they’re young enough, and by the time they’re older, it’s not as exciting.”
The Francis Malcolm Science Center, she said, seems to fill that need — and she wants local schools to make use it as a resource. “Madawaska has not come down here, and I think I’m going to talk to them about coming here because this is really cool. It’s a Saturday and they’re excited about learning.”
Leaders of the 32-year-old Francis Malcolm Center have long seen it as a their mission to offer the planetarium, ecology exhibits, interactive activities and wooded trails as a resource to schools, free of charge, as well as seniors and adult learners.
“The science center is 32 years old, and I know we’d like to be here another 32 years,” said Larry Berz, the center’s planetarium director and am astronomy and history history teacher at the Maine School of Science and Mathematics.
The trouble is the original $1.5 million endowment left by the late Easton-born educator and California real estate investor Francis Malcolm has largely run out, destroyed by the Great Recession and putting the center at the risk of closing at the end of the year.
Last weekend the center welcomed young families and longtime visitors to to raise support for their capital campaign and to preview a new digital programming in ancient archaeology, geology, astronomy featuring presentations like “Super Volcanoes” and “Sea Monsters: A Prehistoric Adventure.”
Berz, a life-long astronomer, set off model rockets to give kids (and adults who never took physics) a sense of the technology behind space exploration and aviation, and the Wiscasset-based nature education organization Chewonki also came to let visitors see a live owl and lizard.
For long-term sustainability, the $1.5 million would ideally need to be replenished. In the short-term, to stay open for 2016, the center needs to raise about $100,000, said Jim Orser, the center’s operating trustee and Francis Malcolm’s great-great nephew, by way of his mother Peg, her mother Margaret and her mother Elizabeth Stewart, Francis’ sister.
The center also is hoping to invest about $30,000 in the digital technology to adapt the planetarium for a broad array of science programming, such as from National Geographic, that can add value to the science curriculum at local school districts and be a unique experience for seniors and community groups. “We’re trying to share the universe,” said Berz.
Star-Herald photo/Anthony Brino
LARRY BERZ, the Francis Malcolm Science Center’s planetarium director, at an open house that included model rocket launc
