Kids and adults clustered together, phones ready to capture photos and videos.
Breathless excitement filled the room as they awaited the main event.
The sight inspiring such wonder?
A rocket ship launch.
Well, a LEGO rocket.
This wasn't Cape Canaveral, but the Great Lakes Science Center. The NASA-themed display was part of the museum’s “Build It!” LEGO exhibit.
The exhibit is part of a new model that GLSC President and CEO Kirsten Ellenbogen is bringing to the science center.
Ellenbogen, now in her fourth year at the helm of GLSC, is moving the museum away from its traditional reliance on traveling exhibits. Instead, she wants to create exhibits that better represent Cleveland. Featuring the Northeast Ohio LEGO Users Group’s work, the LEGO exhibit did just that.
It’s one of many ways Ellenbogen is transforming the 21-year-old museum that, with the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame and FirstEnergy Stadium, anchors Cleveland’s lakefront.
Putting Down Roots
A Detroit native, Ellenbogen moved to Cleveland in 2013 to take the science center’s top job.
Her career — during which she has worked at five museums and consulted for more than 30 — has brought her and her husband, Charles, all over. They’ve lived in Chicago, Baltimore, Nashville, London and Minnesota.
“We usually move to a city and find that one loves it more than the other,” she says. Not so with Cleveland.
“We've never settled into a city as quickly as we have here,” she says. “We’ve been in a lot of friendly cities, but Cleveland is a city that pulls you in closely, very quickly.”
The couple lives in Shaker Heights with their two children, ages 10 and 12. Charles teaches English at Cleveland Metropolitan schools.
Ellenbogen and her husband, in particular, enjoy the local theater scene and the City Club of Cleveland.
“My husband and I would like to retire and just live at the City Club,”
she says.
“We just love it there.”
For the entire family, the city has become home.
“We’re putting down strong roots,” she says. “It’s easy to imagine staying here a long time.”
The Long Game
Four years ago, Ellenbogen arrived
at a struggling organization.
“Like any nonprofit, periodically the budget has to be reviewed, and my first job was to figure out how to stabilize things,” she says.
One of her first tasks was to review the last 10 years’ operating budgets, and to work with the science center’s board to develop a strategic plan.
Ellenbogen and her staff looked at ways to run the building — massive, she says, for a city of Cleveland’s size — more efficiently. One way they did that was digitizing GLSC's Omnimax theater.
“It was incredibly expensive to run,” says Ellenbogen. “So we took a leap.
We raised $2 million. And we are the first laser-projection dome in the world.”
That $2 million investment resulted
in $250,000 annual savings.
“We say at the science center, ‘No margin, no mission.’ We just can’t forget that we can be a great asset to the community — as long as we still exist. Which means that we have to operate within our means.”
The move away from traveling exhibits not only saves the museum money up front, but capitalizes on this region's talent.
“This is a city that builds things,”
says Ellenbogen.
That was the inspiration, too, behind the Cleveland Creates initiative, the signature piece of the 2014-2016 strategic plan. The science center brought together local corporations for one reason: to listen to them.
“Northeast Ohio is not short on people,” explains Ellenbogen. “But we have a lot of jobs that are unfilled because we have a skills shortage.”
One way the museum adapted was to feature exhibits that require users to design, build and test their work — then identify why it’s not working and fix it. That’s because manufacturing companies told the museum that, while they have plenty of problem solvers, they often lack employees who are problem identifiers.
The science center is not in the business of workforce development, per se, but it can play a crucial role in preparing young people for the future. “It's just not sufficient to focus on college students or retraining adults,” Ellenbogen says. “We’re in this for the long game.”
To that end, GLSC has reworked its programs for students. Cleveland
Metropolitan School District CEO Eric Gordon praises Ellenbogen's approach
to education.
“The district and the science center have long had a collaboration around science education, but prior to Kirsten it was more of a field trip experience,” he says. “But with Kirsten, she immediately embraced what I would
call field experiences, where there
is a much more intentional, planned experience between what kids are doing in the classroom before they come, what they do at the science center and then what they will do when they go back to their
classrooms.”
“Field trips are largely ineffective if you just show up, walk around the museum, eat some things, then go back and do the work you were doing,” he adds. Under Ellenbogen's leadership, “it’s much more purposeful, and I really appreciate and
admire that.”
Other community leaders, too,
applaud Ellenbogen’s leadership.
“I think she’s really come into the role in a very powerful way, and defined for our community as well as the science center what its role and contributions should be in this region,” says Margot James Copeland, chair/CEO of KeyBank Foundation,
a financial supporter of the museum.
Another supporter of the museum is Cuyahoga Arts & Culture, which distributes grant funding to nearly
250 organizations. Since 2008, the
science center has received
$4.4 million from CAC.
“I think she was the right person at the right time for that organization,” says Karen Gahl-Mills, CAC CEO and executive director. “I think she's an amazing role model for women and girls, as well as being the right leader for the organization.”
Looking to the Future
The science center recently marked its 20th anniversary. With a new 2017-2022 strategic plan in hand, Ellenbogen and her team have their eyes fixed on the museum's next milestone.
“Walk into the science center at our 25th. You'll see an even more enticing interior experience that connects you directly to the lakefront once you walk in our front doors,” she says.
Highlighting the museum’s position on Lake Erie is a major part of the vision. “We want to move from something that's nice on the lakefront to something that's necessary,” says Ellenbogen.
GLSC is part of a broader effort to turn the lakefront into a downtown focal point. Community leaders envision an interconnected area in which visitors can find a full day’s worth of activities: shopping, places to eat,
a visit to the science center and the Rock Hall.
Other changes coming in the next few years:
• A renovated early childhood exhibit that incorporates the latest research
on how young children learn.
• A new area that introduces visitors to the “maker” movement, which encourages do-it-yourself digital fabrication.
• A revamped second floor, which houses the classic phenomena exhibits. “Some of them are 20 years old, and we've revamped and refreshed them over those 20 years, but people still love them because they are these classic physics experiments,” says Ellenbogen. “So we are looking to make some updates to that, without getting rid of the classics that people love so much.”
• Programs changing more frequently.
• Changes to membership packages to make them more valuable to users.
• More exhibits created by the science center.
• More fundraising to reduce GLSC's reliance on earned revenue, which makes up about 70 percent of the museum’s revenue.
“All these experiences build toward the same set of things: making sure that we are reflective of the community.” Ellenbogen says. “That we are, at the very youngest ages, building skills that support our future workforce.
“And most of all,” she says, “we’re about being there for families to have fun and learn together.”