Emerald Coast Science Center weathers COVID pandemic and emerges stronger
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Two and a half years ago, Diane Fraser, director of the Emerald Coast Science Center, wasn’t sure the children’s science museum at Fort Walton Beach would survive the pandemic.
Two weeks ago, Fraser attended a conference in Pittsburgh to receive an award for the survival and prosperity of the science center at the time.
The Emerald Coast Science Center received the Roy L. Shaffer Cutting Edge Award for Resilience from the Association of Science and Technology Centers, an international association that provides support and programming opportunities for science centers and museums.
The Resilience Awards recognize organizations that have overcome significant challenges and focus on how they have faced challenges and achieved a new life, mission and potential.
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2020 was the year of the top. until it isn’t.
What a difference in two and a half years.
“When the pandemic started, I had no savings, not even enough money to cover my expenses for a month,” says Fraser.
In 2014, the Science Center moved from Brooks Street in downtown Fort Walton Beach to its current location at 31 Memorial Parkway and took out a mortgage to purchase the city’s old senior center. Fraser said it was a struggle, but it got better over the years. More visitors, more field trips, more grants, more programs.
“2020 was the best year ever. After spring break in 2020, we were booking field trips every day,” Fraser says.
But in March 2020, Okaloosa County students left for spring break and didn’t return until the fall because of the pandemic. There were no excursions that school year or the next.
“There is no other program that makes field trips financially profitable,” Fraser said.
Walk-in visitors to the Science Center have also dropped sharply. Fraser estimates that in the spring and summer of 2020, the center lost $109,000 in revenue from these two sources.
“It was very scary. Our board of directors was meeting on Zoom every week,” says Fraser. “The bank said, ‘We have enough money to stay open until June,’ but we got the first round of the PPP[Paycheck Protection Program]so we said, ‘Now we’re going to stay open until August. I can do it.’
Communities, businesses gather around science centers
Clearly, some kind of long-term support was needed to keep the science center running. Mr. Fraser met with Ted Corcoran, chairman of the Greater Fort Walton Beach Chamber of Commerce, to develop a plan to involve local businesses in an unprecedented way to appeal financial support directly to the community.
“We went out to the community and started talking about how horrible it was going to be for the museum,” Fraser said. Some even donated through Facebook.”
Local businesses such as Eglin Federal Credit Union and Mills Heating and Air received financial support, as did members of TeCMEN, a local organization that champions the science, technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM) industry. And that support, both large and small, has helped centers through the most difficult times of the pandemic.
The pandemic has also had an unexpected positive impact on science centers.
“It slowed us down and made us really look around and think, ‘What do we really need to focus on?'” Fraser said. “Everybody said, ‘Get out.’ That was the problem. It’s safer outside. We have this. gigantic space. “
In June 2020, Fraser and her staff of about a dozen part-time educators began looking for ways to take advantage of the center’s two acres, which contained nothing but picnic tables and a turtle exhibit. They planned an outdoor exhibition and contacted local builders to ask if they would donate the needed materials.
“Whitworth Homes and Navarre Lumber contacted us and said they would provide everything on your list,” Fraser said.
A local concrete contractor, GCF, provided labor and materials to build a giant sandpit where children could dig for dinosaur bones. Airmen from Watree Homes and the RED HORSE Civil Engineering Corps at Hurlburt Field worked together to construct a roof over the dinosaur dig site. Fraser also tapped into another military resource, students at the US Navy’s Explosive Ordnance Disposal Training School. Recently arrived students, whose classes had not yet started, helped build many of the outdoor exhibits.
“We had a regular group of eight to 10 people coming in every Thursday for about six months,” says Fraser. “That was our labor.”
In February 2021, Liza Jackson Preparatory School donated the STEAM Bus, a science and technology classroom on wheels, to the Science Center. Fixed buses needed power for air conditioning and roofs to protect them from bad weather. A local member of the National Defense Industrial Association purchased a carport for the buses, and Florida Power and Light volunteers built a deck around it. Volunteers also built a treehouse, a stage, and a deck around the boating and water safety exhibits.
“We couldn’t have done it alone,” says Fraser. “None of these things were planned before the pandemic.”
“During the pandemic, we were close to total closure. Instead, we survived and expanded.”
Donations and volunteer work over the last two years have nearly doubled the number of exhibits at the Science Center. And all that effort and money seems to have paid off. The Science Center’s fiscal year, which ended June 30, had 23,000 visitors.
“The best pre-pandemic year was about 18,600,” Fraser said. “We have not only surpassed who we were pre-pandemic, we have actually grown.”
Annual family memberships have more than doubled to about 650, Fraser said, and school excursions, which resumed in January, are expected to be at or above pre-pandemic levels next year.
“This award really belongs to our community,” said Fraser. “During the pandemic, we were close to total closure. Instead, we survived and expanded.”
The once eerily quiet halls of the Science Center are now once again filled with the sounds of young minds learning.
“When you hear kids laughing or doing something and they have an ‘aha’ moment, it brings you joy,” Fraser said. Not having it was soul crushing.”
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