MAINTAIN THE MESSAGE, ADAPT THE DELIVERY: OPTIMIZING OUTREACH FOR SMALL MUSEUM SUCCESS

The Dunn-Seiler Museum includes a small public gallery in the Department of Geosciences at Mississippi State University. The exhibits are a favorite request among visiting groups, with museum tours often accompanied by a fossil-collecting excursion to our campus Cretaceous outcrop. Most of the museum visitors are K-12 students on a field trip, and undergraduate students assigned to complete a task within the museum.

There exists a large, religious, young Earth population among our visitors. Throughout the last decade, programming developed to maximize the Dunn-Seiler Museum’s outreach while delivering the science content in a respectful manner that minimizes visitor discomfort. While we modify how we deliver the content for visitors, especially in guided tours, the Dunn-Seiler Museum has maintained the dissemination of the important concepts for geoliteracy. Our website alerts potential guests that our displays “help visitors visualize and understand the 4.6 billion year history of our planet.” The exhibits and activities provide informal education on biodiversity, evolution, extinction, fossilization, and geologic time.

In addition to our museum displays and campus fossil collecting excursions, we celebrate US National Fossil Day and Earth Day by inviting K-12 students to participate in Fossil Art & Story contests and Creative Recycling competitions. Since 2010, the Fossil Extravaganza Open House celebrates fossils with tours, refreshments, and fossil activities. We further extend outreach through Darwin Day, Cargo for Conservation, and Mississippi State University’s Night at the Museums programming.

With over 1000 visitors each year, our visitors’ logs indicate increasing impact with our outreach. We propose that careful consideration of our visitors’ philosophical views allows us to promote the geosciences through adapted program delivery. We maintain the message, but we broadcast it in a frequency that can be heard and assimilated by our audience.