.bodytext {float: left; } .floatimg-left-hort { float:left; margin-top:10px; margin-right: 10px; width:300px; clear:left;} .floatimg-left-caption-hort { float:left; margin-bottom:10px; width:300px; margin-right:10px; clear:left;} .floatimg-left-vert { float:left; margin-top:10px; margin-right:15px; width:200px;} .floatimg-left-caption-vert { float:left; margin-right:10px; margin-bottom:10px; font-size: 10px; width:200px;} .floatimg-right-hort { float:right; margin-top:10px; margin-left:10px; margin-bottom:10px; width: 300px;} .floatimg-right-caption-hort { float:left; margin-right:10px; margin-bottom:10px; width: 300px; font-size: 10px; } .floatimg-right-vert { float:right; margin-top:10px; margin-left:10px; margin-bottom:10px; width: 200px;} .floatimg-right-caption-vert { float:left; margin-right:10px; margin-bottom:10px; width: 200px; font-size: 10px; } .floatimgright-sidebar { float:right; margin-top:10px; margin-left:10px; margin-bottom:10px; width: 200px; border-top-style: double; border-top-color: black; border-bottom-style: double; border-bottom-color: black;} .floatimgright-sidebar p { line-height: 115%; text-indent: 10px; } .floatimgright-sidebar h4 { font-variant:small-caps; } .pullquote { float:right; margin-top:10px; margin-left:10px; margin-bottom:10px; width: 150px; background: url(http://www.dmbusinessdaily.com/DAILY/editorial/extras/closequote.gif) no-repeat bottom right !important ; line-height: 150%; font-size: 125%; border-top: 1px solid; border-bottom: 1px solid;} It’s not uncommon to see parents dealing with a screaming toddler who doesn’t want to leave at the end of a day’s adventure at the Science Center of Iowa. From Mary Sellers’ perspective, it’s a great endorsement of the interactive programs the downtown attraction has created.

“In some cases, people don’t think of science as such an engaging and fun thing that little ones will cry when they have to stop doing it,” said Sellers, the Science Center’s president and chief executive officer. “Those are elements that keep us going day to day, when we really see little ones engaged in what they’re doing.”

As its third summer season approaches, the Science Center appears to have laid a foundation of two strong initial years, and is betting that coming attractions such as 11-foot-tall, 22-foot-long animatronic insects and the premiere of “Spider-Man 3” on the IMAX screen will continue to draw big crowds. Looking ahead to 2008, planning is already under way for a new “experience platform” that will constitute the first of several promised makeovers of the permanent exhibits over the next four years.

At the same time that Cedar Rapids’ science center, the Science Station & McLeod/Busse IMAX Theater, was struggling with a heavy debt load that threatened to shut it down, Des Moines’ SCI ended its first two years in the black and has its sights set on meeting a year-end deadline to pay off the remaining $2 million owed on its building debt that would secure a $1 million challenge grant. The non-profit organization has also tripled its membership base to approximately 7,400 households within the past two years.

When SCI’s new 110,000-square-foot museum opened on May 14, 2005, officials projected it would attract a total of 1 million visitors within its first three years. Sellers said it appears the Science Center may reach that goal as early as next month, a full year ahead of schedule.

Aimee Lanager, a program presenter with the Science Center of Iowa, performs a Kitchen Chemistry demonstration with 9-year-old Peter Clark.Photo by Duane Tinkey

“So one of the things we’re really proud about is that the community and the state of Iowa have really embraced it as their science center,” she said. “Our goal to be a resource and a forum is really coming through loud and clear through their participation. So that’s been something we’ve really been pleased with.”

The downtown Science Center, which replaced the aging original facility in Greenwood Park, includes the state’s largest IMAX theater, a planetarium and a performance theater for live shows. It also encompasses classrooms for use by school groups and a complete science-based preschool program as well as a cafeteria and gift shop.

The Science Station in Cedar Rapids, which had said in October 2006 that it might have to close due to a $1.3 million debt, dodged a bullet when a community fund-raising effort enabled it to erase that debt by January, according to news reports. The museum was also able to purchase its 13,500-square-foot facility, which it had been leasing.

According to earlier reports, the Science Station’s debt began accumulating with the construction of its IMAX theater, which opened in 2001. Officials had hoped to raise $6 million to build the theater, but the effort fell short by $775,000 and the Science Station took out a bank loan to cover that amount, which it has been unable to repay. It also incurred a $350,000 embezzlement loss last year.

Officials from the Science Station could not be reached for comment.

Financially, SCI ended its first two fiscal years in its new facility “in the black,” with operating revenues exceeding operational expenses each year, Sellers said, though she declined to provide specific income and expense figures.

According to the most recent figures filed with the Internal Revenue Service as required for non-profit organizations, SCI generated $1.67 million in earned revenues in the fiscal year ending Sept. 30, 2005. The bulk of that income, $1.2 million, was generated from admissions, with membership dues making up the next highest amount at $400,724.

About 75 percent of the Science Center’s operational income has come from earned sources, Sellers said, which includes admissions, membership fees, school program revenue and preschool tuition.

“Public support [from government grants or programs] for our operations accounts for less than 3 percent of our total operating budget,” Sellers said.

The remainder of its operating budget, about 25 percent, is unearned income, the bulk of which comes from private sources, including its annual fund, sponsorships and grants, she said. By comparison, science centers nationwide on average receive 28 percent of their operating income from public funds, according to a 2006 survey by the Association of Science-Technology Centers.

SCI’s capital campaign to date has raised $60 million toward a goal of $62 million, with the money coming roughly equally from public and private sources, Sellers said.

The Science Center has until the end of this year to raise $2 million more to receive a $1 million challenge grant offered last year by the Myron and Jacqueline Blank Fund, a goal that Sellers said the non-profit organization will achieve.

“We’ve had a lot of people that gave support early on with the Vision Iowa request, and we have some that are continuing their support,” she said. “We have gained a national reputation, so we have actually gained significant support from outside of Iowa, and we’re pursuing more national foundations for fundraising to wrap up this campaign.”

Support is also evident through its membership statistics. At the end of fiscal 2006, SCI had more than 7,400 member households, three times what it had when the new science center opened.

“We put an active effort towards strengthening our membership program, and that continues to grow, bucking the national trend,” Sellers said. “Typically, [with a new facility], it’s a spike at the opening, and then a continual decline until it stabilizes. But we’ve seen it do just the opposite. So looking at attendance and membership together, we continue to hold steady.”

Nationwide, attendance at science centers over the past several years has also been “steady,” with more than 43 million visits reported by 163 U.S. science centers last year, said Sean Smith, director of government and public relations for the Association of Science-Technology Centers. The Science Center of Iowa is a governing member of the non-profit, Washington, D.C.-based group.

Among those science centers that have the resources, the strategy of changing out major exhibits on a regular basis has become increasingly popular, Smith said.

“So much new [scientific] information is coming out on a daily basis,” he said. “To be able to create something new to address these emerging technologies, to have the space to be able to do that is something that many of our members would certainly look to.”

The majority of SCI’s members have combined memberships that are offered in conjunction with Blank Park Zoo and Living History Farms.

“I think the partnering element is really attractive to the community at large,” Sellers said. “Those numbers continue to climb in terms of membership, and I think that’s a good sign, that people plan on coming back and engaging over and over again. With that comes a lot of responsibility for the Science Center to keep things new and engaging and fresh for people to feel that need to come back.”

Toward that end, the Science Center has taken a “layered approach” in offering programs and exhibits designed to keep visitors engaged, she said.

One layer consists of the planned change-out of five of its six permanent experience platforms. The first change-out a year from now will begin a cycle that will repeat every 18 months as existing sets of exhibits are replaced with new ones.

“The way this facility and its experience platforms are designed, we built a lot into the infrastructure initially to allow for economical change long-term,” Sellers said. Work is now in the early stages in designing “Grossology: The Not So Polite Science of the Human Body,” which will replace the “When Things Get Moving” platform next spring.

Those exhibits are being designed based on input from classroom teachers in Greater Des Moines.

Another layer of change lies in the traveling national exhibitions that are brought in, such as “Titanic” last summer, and “Backyard Monsters,” an exhibition of jumbo-sized animatronic insects coming this summer that will be paired with a film, “Journey into Amazing Caves.”

“Equal to that level of change is the IMAX films we bring in,” Sellers said. The IMAX theater has added a new film to its schedule 21 times since opening, with three movies – “The Living Sea,” “NASCAR: The IMAX Experience” and “The Polar Express” – earning return engagements due to their popularity.

“That’s a lot of change that we’ve executed in terms of the films,” she said. “Coming this summer, we’ll launch ‘Spider-Man 3’ as a day and date release nationally in May. We’ll also launch Harry Potter [and the Order of the Phoenix] in July along with a film that will complement the [Backyard Monsters] traveling exhibit.

“Then you’ve got a third level of change, which is the programmatic level of change,” she said. “There are our theater programs; we just launched News from Space for spring break in our Star Theater. We’ve got original productions in our John Deere Adventure Theater, and what we call larger-scale demonstrations that we’re continuously demonstrating.”

The Science Center also conducts special-event days once or twice a month in which it partners with various community organizations to bring in a nationally known speaker.

“This entire project, from the development of the new science center through the program development, was born out of market research,” Sellers said. “It’s more of a for-profit model than a not-for-profit model. It’s asking, ‘What does the audience want?’ and then turning around and giving it to them. That’s why we have the WHO weather studio here, because weather was the highest-tested content area, and for obvious reasons. It affects every one of us, whether we’re a farmer or an urban dweller.”

For each new program that’s developed, a multidisciplinary science advisory committee reviews it for accuracy and content. Additionally, some programs are tested with audiences on a limited basis to gain feedback and refine them prior to launch.

“For instance, for News from Space, which we just launched publicly, we put that on the floor during Christmas break and did research with our audience to ask, ‘What did you like?’ ‘What would you change?’ and we used that feedback to adjust the show before final production before it launched. So it’s a very iterative process.”

One of the best examples of an interactive exhibit that resulted from focus-group input is the Cosmic Jukebox, Sellers said. “When we were first talking to people about a planetarium-type experience, they said, ‘You know what? We want to create our own planetarium show.’ Well, to create a planetarium show takes anywhere from three to five years. We thought, we’re never going to be able to meet that demand.”

Confirming that opinion was a response to an inquiry that SCI put out to the International Planetarium Society, whose members said it couldn’t be done.

“After doing more research on it, what we came up with is the Cosmic Jukebox, where you can string together your own show from a series of clips to create your very own planetarium show and see it on the dome,” Sellers said. “There are patents pending on it; we’re the only ones in the world who can do it.

“It was the community of Iowa that said, ‘This is what we want,’ and we simply facilitated that desire,” she said. “As a result, we’ve got an exceptional and unique experience here in Des Moines, Iowa, that you can have nowhere else in the world. That underscores our commitment to the process of including the audience in determining what we’re going to be. And that, I think, is a key element of our sustainability long-term.”