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 Discovery Science Center President Joe
Adams and Community member Kate Upton travel to Washington from Santa Ana
California to receive the national medal and spoke to imls about how the museum
impacts the community so the science center is about inspiring the Youth of
today to be able to tackle the challenges and advances of tomorrow
through understanding science and what I mean by that is to have Hands-On
exploration of the world around us and then to to be able to give the youth
like Kate the the opportunities and the the excitement to say there's a whole
lot to go forward to in this world that we
need to know and that you can be a part of so we're not about collections we're
about Hands-On experiences in dissecting science and the world around us so that
our our audiences can understand the world better and have a better life
going forward one of the things that we do that's
unique about the science center is that we change the focus every month to be
specific to what the students need to learn uh per grade level so and what I
mean by that is that each month we change the science center up to focus on
a grade and we say what do these students need to know that if you're in
first grade and so we there's 20 different topics within science
standards and we that the teachers are teaching in the classroom and so we
bring in and add demonstrations to help explain all those Concepts so that you
can further understand and and and be able to
achieve the objectives that the state wants each grade level to to uh acquire
I grew up with the science center actually I went there when I was in
elementary school and I experienced everything there was to experience and
then when I was in high school and I needed volunteering experience for
college I went and volunteered there I did member events there I helped to
manage some of the other volunteers due to my familiarity with the science
center and then when I was in college and I needed a summer job I worked there
and now I talk to people at events about how the science center has impacted My
Life by helping to keep my interest in science alive because I I believe most
kids are natural born scientists and I definitely was so interested and curious
about the world around them that going to the Science Center helped to nurture
and preserve that interest and you look at that that curiosity is within us all
now how do you continue to inspire that Curiosity to be able to to to be a part
of your entire life journey and that's what the science center can do and
that's what we have been doing I'm a graduate student now in getting my PhD
in chemistry from the California Institute of Technology
and I have to say that the science center helped to keep me on that path
help to keep me interested because I knew that there were people who were
interested in My Success who were engaged with me and who
um knew that told me that I could do science all those years told me that I
could do it America is great because we are we're many things but it is also
because we're creative and that we continue to have no bounds to allow us
to explore our world around us to let us be able to to encourage more people from
all types to be able to get out there and to help us you know Advance the
world of science and the world around us and the know-how and take that and break
it down to the community so we want to inspire kids to be those scientists and
the designers and engineers and be creative and lead us well my PhD is
actually an astrochemistry that's my area of research it involves Titan one
of Saturn's moons which is of Interest due to the fact that it's the only solid
body in the outer solar system with a dense atmosphere this atmosphere is
composed of 95 nitrogen and five percent methane making it very similar to how
Earth may have been back when Earth was just starting to get formed
so Titan presents an interesting opportunity to possibly study the early
stages of evolution of life on Earth which the second half is I'm working on
some instruments for a possible mission to Titan in the future and
um so I'm in the early stages of that and I'm working with JPL on a lot of
those projects somebody working in NASA coming up with
like the latest of where we're going to be going in the future and maybe where
does how does this whole earth started in evolution I mean wow definitely the
science center we we want to take science make it friendly to we might to
all genders and all ethnicities and we want to say look the science is around
you and uh and we want to inspire you to kind of go after it challenge it explore
it move us forward and I'm really proud of Kate and and and knowing of your
success over the years and uh the and how you've been able to be able to take
your your beginning uh continued it through and now you're doing some really
high level research out there I you know definitely bodes well for I think our
community and uh as we look and say hey look this is where where you can go