Northwest Arkansas planetarium idea hinges on scale, focus, community support

Katherine Auld remembers being permitted to stay up late as a child to watch a Perseid meteor shower from a blanket in her grandmother’s yard and tuning in at school to a live broadcast of a space shuttle takeoff with her sixth-grade classmates – two experiences that made a deep impression on her as an adolescent and sparked a lifelong interest in astronomy.

In addition to serving as board chair for Supporting STEM & Space, Auld is an adjunct professor, teaching astronomy and geology at NorthWest Arkansas Community College in Bentonville. She is also a NASA and Jet Propulsion Laboratory Solar System Ambassador.

For years, Auld dreamed of becoming an astronaut, later earning a Ph.D. in space and planetary science from the University of Arkansas.

“I wanted to go to space,” Auld said, and while she hasn’t completely ruled out that option, she might settle in the short term for bringing a simulated space experience to the residents and visitors of Northwest Arkansas.

To that end, Auld founded Supporting STEM and Space in 2014, with aims of establishing a planetarium and science technology center in Northwest Arkansas. The organization gained nonprofit status in 2016, and the board is now gauging community interest and looking to start a capital campaign for the project.

John Jacobsen, president of the Massachusetts museum planning firm White Oak Associates that previously worked with the Arkansas Discovery Museum in downtown Little Rock, said the viability of a planetarium in the region would depend on several points. First, when talking about the viability of a science center, scale is important, he said. His team is familiar with the Northwest Arkansas community because in the early 2000s it conducted research for the feasibility of a natural science museum. However, Jacobsen said has not stayed well-informed of the changes in the cultural and economic landscape.

For instance, the addition of Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art and the Scott Family Amazeum children’s museum in Bentonville during the last few years makes a difference in terms of planning a new facility, he said. A new science center might not focus on early childhood learning and instead will leave that subset of the population to be taken care of by the children’s museum, and organizers might do better to offer something more specialized than the broad natural history museum discussed years ago. That initiative, which was tentatively called Science Springs, was led by Bank of Fayetteville founder John Lewis, and it fizzled out after his death in 2007.

On the positive side for a prospective project, Jacobsen said the addition of additional cultural institutions paves the way for potential partnerships, and while he’s not up-to-date on the specifics of Northwest Arkansas’ demographics, he said, “Any community where the population is growing and there’s an in-population certainly can see a growth in the number of museums.”

MORE RESEARCH NEEDED
Jacobsen said for a science center to sustain itself it needs to have earned revenue and support revenue.

“None of these pay for themselves through admission, gift shop and function rentals alone. All require some amount of private philanthropy and in most cases public funding as well as a diverse portfolio of earned revenue admissions, function rentals and an active fee-based services menu.”

That includes program revenue, whether it’s camping trip programs in the summer, or telescoping-making courses in the winter, he said.

He said the Supporting STEM and Space group should look at what the community needs and where the gaps are in the region’s offerings and that create programs that will not only sell tickets but will also have a social impact that will attract philanthropy and government funding – whether that impact is broadening participation in science disciplines, helping steer regional identity or economic development. Jacobsen said planetariums have been growing in popularity because donors believe the appeal of space education is a good gateway into STEM learning and STEM careers.

“No one has ever expected a planetarium to post a profit based on earned revenue. They cost more to operate than they generate in admission fees,” he said, adding, “We support the idea of a new science learning center in Northwest Arkansas. It just needs to be the right scale and offer the community services that it really needs and is ready to pay for. That research needs to be done.”

Auld wants to raise money for a study, which she estimates will cost a few thousand dollars, and hopes to get it started this year. Her group has been focused on gauging interest and collecting signatures in support of the project, in addition to raising money to buy telescopes for each of the region’s libraries. However, Auld also has set forth a timeline for the planetarium that she said her fellow board members deem to be ambitious.

It includes raising $1 million this year, $10 million by 2018 and $30 million by 2019 and opening the science technology center, according to the Supporting STEM and Space website.

STEM ADVANCEMENT
“There is a significant need for training for STEM careers,” Auld said. “With a planetarium we can capture people’s imaginations and then explain the science.”

She proposes an interactivity facility for all age groups with hands-on education stations on science technologies that include robotics, in addition to a giant screen exhibit, which Auld said creates a long-lasting, memorable learning experience because it creates a sense of immersion.

According to a study conducted in partnership with the Houston Museum of Natural Science and nearby educational institutions, students were more likely to retain good test scores six weeks later on a topic they learned about on a dome screen than on a typical-sized computer screen. The closest planetarium is in Tulsa, Okla., and there are only two planetariums in Arkansas, at the University of Central Arkansas in Conway and Henderson State University in Arkadelphia.

Auld believes it’s a project that will resonate with the community.She receives positive feedback when speaking about the proposal, including during regular Sidewalk Astronomy telescope viewing events the group hosts in the region’s downtowns.

The group has sought advice from other organizations, including the Amazeum on how to bring the project to the next stage. Right now, it’s a “small nonprofit with a lot of interest.”

Although a set plan for the center is not in place, a preliminary design features a 150-seat planetarium and 40,000-square-foot facility. Auld envisions a space modeled after the Exploratorium in San Francisco. The group is also looking at the possibility of incorporating an IMAX-branded theater within the center, in addition to a planetarium. The closest IMAX theater is in Branson, Mo., and one in Little Rock.

“We’re dreaming big and going for both,” she said.

However, if one aspect of the proposed project gets cut, it will be the IMAX idea.