the National Medal for Museum and Library Services is the nation's highest
honor for libraries and museums that are serving their communities in exceptional
ways boo feel youth museum director Patsy roblin and community member Lauren
Collins traveled to Washington from malden Missouri to receive the national
medal and spoke to IMLS about how the museum impacts the community the city of
Malden is about 4,700 people the museum opened its doors in 1996 we have about
30,000 guess a year which is pretty remarkable for a community our size we
have guests that travel from all over the region including Northeast Arkansas
and Illinois and Tennessee we're a hands-on science center so all of our
exhibits are science or math based you know even if you go into our Lewis and
Clark exhibit what we're trying to do is teach the kids about botany or naturally
naturalism and that kind of thing the AmeriCorps program it's a it's a
national program it's a volunteer service program it offers a small living
stipend based on the number of hours that you complete and a scholarship for
college my role is that I am a full-time member and we do hands-on science and
math education in the schools and inside the museum when do you work shops
after-school programs festivals that sort of thing the way that the program
works is I get to go find all of these great wonderful young people who have a
passion for education or working with children or for science or for some
other reason and they get to come and be a part of what we do and there's two
great things about this one is that we serve these little kids and we allow
them to actually do science so they're getting dirty they're making slime there
you know shooting catapults and doing all of those kinds of things but then we
also have these great young people that get a chance to kind of figure out what
they want to do with their life when I started the program of
I had super short bubblegum pink hair and I was extremely loud and extremely
colorful I'm still pretty colorful but I I did it more of like as humor and to to
be attention-grabbing and I really didn't have that much confidence though
I put all the confidence into the acting silly and then as I got like a
leadership role it taught me like so much about myself and I know now that
I'm fantastic with children and I just I love serving and I love working with the
kids hands-on and teaching them and seeing how excited they get about the
science and what they're learning you know we do have a lot of exhibits in the
museum but we do a lot of activities that you would normally find in a big
museum so our AmeriCorps members are actually actors we do a play called the
three little pigs and their cousin shakin bacon which is an earthquake
science activity it's very fun very interactive and it's also educational
Lauren is also our lead mad scientist so she does you know different science
demonstrations for big and small groups as many as I think she has done a
presentation in front of 230 people before or just a group of 10 you know
people that come in we're in a in one of the worst areas of the country and there
aren't a lot of jobs you know it's not like you know Lauren can go out and find
a job in a factory or or even working in a convenience store I mean we're a where
you know we have two traffic lights in town there aren't enough jobs for the
people that live there and but technology and science and math are
areas where people are always needed and it's the foundation of the universe if
we can teach kids how this little thing works in a in a simple fun way it's
going to create a passion for science and math in them and it's going to be a
way to either make mulled in a better place or to get them out of town
into a place where they're going to be able to raise a family and and you know
have a great life um every day we are a part of the after school program at our
elementary school they're in town and we do science with them and then on the
weekends our AmeriCorps members who serve at the Museum do science
activities for the kids or they'll put on the astronaut suit and they'll walk
around and they'll talk to the children but I found that what the kids get most
out of it is more of like a mentor because most of us are at this perfect
age where the kids still really look up to us you know we're not an adult yet
but we're not one of them and so it's like they want to be like us and for us
to give them strong role models who are teaching them you know you want to learn
you want to continue your education and this can be fun and they're starting to
think hey maybe science can be fun hey maybe I do want to do this and so for us
to be such a small community and to have so many youth volunteers it's an amazing
thing and it's going to help us when we're growing up to understanding you
know giving back and then it helps the community by the service that we provide