National Council of Science Museums, Kolkata, India
Visvesvaraya Industrial and Technological Museum, Bangalore, India
New York Hall of Science, Queens, New York

For more than 20 years, the New York Hall of Science (NYHS) has operated a minority youth development program called Science Career Ladder (SCL). SCL employs 200 urban, minority high school and college students each year as “Explainers” trained to provide exhibit interpretation and science demonstrations to museum visitors. Many NYHS Explainers go to college with majorsand, later, professional careers in scientific and technical fields.

NYHS will work with the National Council of Science Museums in India and VITM in Bangalore, India to share their project model. In return, VITM will work with NYHS to strengthen the public demonstrations at the New York museum. Each institution will contribute a different strength to improve the experiences of their young interpreters and the audiences they serve.

College-aged youth from each institution will be selected to participate alongside professional staff in online, collaborative training. The participants will travel to their partner’s site to explore, trade stories, model behavior, and share their job experiences. Museum staff will work together on improving two existing public demonstrations and creating an innovative new demonstration at each museum. The youth interpreters will be challenged to think about the diversity of their audience and the impact that an understanding of basic scientific principles can have on the daily lives of people in the communities they serve.

The primary goal of this project is to make the participating museums more welcoming, accessible, and accepting to ethnically and economically diverse visitors. An important secondary goal is to adapt this program for use in science centers across India to increase access to technical careers for minority youth.