Update from our CEO | October 2025

Dear Friend of the Museum,

I have been in many conversations this year where someone has used the word "hopeless." It is a big word...a deeply sad word. It connotes not just despair, but giving up—that circumstances cannot be improved, no matter how intolerable.

“Hopeless” is not in Discovery Museum’s vocabulary.

With federal policy slashing public education budgets, questions about the truth of science running rampant, and an urgent need for creative, collaborative, open-minded problem-solving across our society, I, my wonderful team, and our Board of Directors agree: hopelessness serves neither the Museum nor our community. It is simply not an option.

Our calling has always been to nurture and celebrate the values that support scientific thinking—integrity, diligence, fairness, curiosity, openness to new ideas, skepticism, and imagination—and we need each of those values now more than ever. Surrounded as we are every day by examples of our work’s impact in our museum galleries and school classrooms across Massachusetts, we know that what we do, and the way we do it, creates real change (and delight!) for kids, now.

In short, we feel a profound responsibility to respond to these times, and an overwhelming sense of hopefulness and optimism about the next generation’s potential.

Here is what we will do.

We have committed to an ambitious growth trajectory for our well-heeled Traveling Science Workshops (TSW) program, which is already bringing hands-on science to 60,000 kids a year right in their classrooms. By 2030, we will have doubled the scale of this program to serve 120,000 elementary school students a year across Massachusetts and beyond. It will take a $1.6 million catalyst investment to get there. 

Our research has proven that our open-ended workshop experiences change children’s attitudes about their own capacity and their ability to “do science” and to think scientifically. In short: We build their curiosity and confidence! And because we travel to school classrooms, we can reach every student without regard to learning difference, English language fluency, disposition about science, family economic status, or access to transportation.

Waiting even one year to invest in this growth would mean thousands of children missing out. Scaling up means investing in expansion of our infrastructure so we can reach communities far from Acton. We’re already getting started and are launching our new North Shore Hub this month—this work cannot wait.

Is this risky? Financially, the $1.6 million it will take to make this happen is a big investment at an uncertain time. Operationally? I can tell you this:

• We’ve been offering Traveling Science Workshops for a solid 34 years, in more than 100 cities and towns and 3,000 classrooms a year—we know how to do this.
• Our 90% rebooking rate shows that schools trust us.
• Our 183% growth in enrollment over the past 6 years shows that there is demand.
• Our 4.8-out-of-5.0 rating from teachers for increasing student interest in science and 4.6-out-of-5 rating for building STEM confidence tells us we are having the impact we intend.

The power of our approach has been proven again and again by a generation of kids and teachers.

And we will strive for greater equity: Today, 15% of the schools we serve pay little or nothing for our workshops. Our growth plan increases that to 20%: 24,000 children each year who go to school in districts without the budget to invest in enrichment programs will receive our hands-on STEM explorations.

Will more Traveling Science Workshops—more captivating and exciting and energizing science in classrooms—change the world? Not right away. But it is a way to begin to remedy hopelessness.

If this resonates with you, if you join me in believing that firing kids up about their ability to solve problems and be powerful thinkers is important, if you believe that Discovery Museum is uniquely positioned for this work and more young students deserve hands-on, open-ended, material-rich STEM explorations in their classrooms, please lend us your financial support, your advocacy, your energy. Just reach out to me personally if you’d like to know more, or with your feedback: mbeam [at] discoveryacton.org (mbeam[at]discoveryacton[dot]org). You can also learn more about our expansion plan and make a gift on our website. Thank you!

Marie R. B. Beam

CEO 

P.S. Last week we launched our new content offering for parents and caregivers, Discovery Soundbites! Soundbites are short-form video and podcast interviews with fascinating people that present a hopeful and action-oriented lens on today's world. Three questions, short interviews, BIG ideas! Please check out Discovery Soundbites on our website or wherever you get your podcasts.