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SEE Science Center Celebrates 40 years of hands-on exploration

The fun at Manchester’s SEE Science Center is multigenerational. A 30-year-old marketing professional who now lives in East Boston recently visited and remembered taking the bus to SEE as a middle schooler from Claremont. She marveled at many new additions and recalled older ones.

Becky Mayhew is SEE’s Finance Director and its longest-serving employee — she joined 35 years ago. On any given day, someone will tell her about coming as a kid on a field trip.

“They’ll say, ‘I’m bringing my kids now,’” Mayhew recalled. “Kids that came to us as campers … come back as teachers and bring their classes.”

Humble beginnings

In April 1984, Douglas Heuser, SEE’s Executive Director until he stepped down in 2016, wrote and received a starter grant of $40,000 from New Hampshire’s Department of Health and Human Services to create a science discovery center, using space in an old mill building donated by inventor and entrepreneur Dean Kamen.

It opened in April 1986. Though it then had a big name, Science Enrichment Encounters, there were very tight quarters for the two-person staff. Tours of the Manchester Mill District museum were by appointment during weekdays, with the public visiting only on weekends.

A dozen years later it shrunk its name but moved to a larger space on the third floor of 200 Bedford St.’s mill building.

“We probably could have fit three of our old offices into one of our new ones,” Mayhew recalled recently.

Despite having gone from 4,500 to 15,000 square feet, growth didn’t stop. SEE expanded to a lower floor and doubled in size. Plans began for the Lego Millyard Project, a Guinness World Records-recognized replica of the Mill District at the turn of the 20th century that opened in 2006.

The structure won a historic preservation award, SEE’s Executive Director Shana Hawrylchak noted during a recent tour of the facility. Several important buildings that were part of the landscape of the time no longer existed, so they were created using old photos and postcards provided by the downstairs Millyard Museum.

Specifically, according to a 2008 article in the Lego fanzine BrickJournal, the Manchester Train Station had a lot of pictures and postcards available, but there was just a single drawing of the Franklin Street Church, “so several ‘artistic liberties’ were taken to create the final product.”

“It’s all Lego, three million bricks, and seven to eight thousand minifigures, and all the buildings are from 1900 to 1910,” Hawrylchak said — except for a suspension bridge from the 1930s. It’s there because “it was such an interesting engineering challenge, and as a science museum we had to respond to it.”

SEE Deputy Director Pete Gustafson remembers the day trucks arrived.

“I went down with a pallet jack and loaded off 15 pallets of bricks,” he said. “There’s the idea phase of ‘We’re going to build a Millyard of Lego’ and it sounds like a great idea, but when 15 pallets of Legos get here, you know it’s happening.”

It took two years to complete everything, and it transformed SEE’s profile in the process.

“It really put us on the map, because it had that unique flavor, an item that no other museum has,” Gustafson said. “There are other Lego installations, but this is the Amoskeag Millyard, right? It’s unique to Manchester.”

This year SEE Science Center celebrates its 40th anniversary, while its plastic mini-city marks 20years. Both milestones will be observed in a variety of ways. For the week of SEE’s official birthdate, April 1, entry charge drops to the same price as it was in the 1980s. It’s both a gift to patrons and a way to shine a light on Museums for All, a national effort offering $3 admission to EBT, WIC and SNAP card holding families. SEE was the first museum in New Hampshire to participate in it.

“We’re trying to bring awareness to that program while celebrating the year,” Hawrylchak said.

Though not due for completion until year’s end, the efforts of SEE’s first-ever capital campaign, Science For All, are already on display. Launched in 2023, the campaign’s goals included innovating exhibits, along with improving accessibility and inclusion.

The Millyard Design Zone was launched to make the giant model interactive.

“It’s one of the biggest things we have on display, but you can’t touch it, and we’re a hands-on museum,” Hawrylchak said. “We’re taking a bunch of those hands-on elements and connecting them to how cities evolve through time.”

Budding city planners are offered a variety of tools for designing a city, she continued, pointing to one of the kiosks that have already been installed. Its goal is to determine what problems are faced at certain points in time by a city that need to be re-solved as it changes.

“Kids make cost-benefit analysis decisions about what to include in their city and what’s important to them, with three different challenge levels,” she said. “You can build a city with a blank slate, or with a green space preserve that you have to build around, or we’ve got our historic Millyard that you have to incorporate.”

Another exhibit focuses on adaptive reuse of buildings, such as converting an old mill into a restaurant, office or science center. It benefited from input provided by visitors who were offered a chance to test it out, which is done frequently as part of SEE’s development process.

There’s an interior design component, and a few caregivers and grandparents described difficulty seeing into the rooms. Automatic lighting was added to make it friendlier. “That was a very interesting change we had not thought of when we were doing the initial design,” Hawrylchak said.

Events at SEE Science Center
Sunday, March 8: Ralph Baer Celebration Day. Baer was a Manchester resident and electronics pioneer whose “brown box” controller became the original prototype for the first video game, Pong. Though his engineering career began in New York, Baer moved in 1955 to Manchester, where he lived and worked for the remainder of his life. His awards and honors include the United States National Medal of Technology, and his workshop is on display at the Smithsonian.
Tuesday, March 10: Science on Tap, at Bo’s Lounge (Stark Brewing Co., 500 Commercial St., Manchester), a discussion on game design. “Whether they are played with dice and cards on a board or with our hands and fingers with game controllers and screens, every game begins as an idea before it goes public. Learn how apps and games become reality and how some games last and others fade away.”
Saturday, March 14: Pi Day, celebrating the world’s most famous irrational number, π, 3.14159…. A video on SEE’s website, starring their intern Travis, shows an experiment that demonstrates how to discover it for yourself. The link is tinyurl.com/4wefyrub.
Wednesday, March 25, and Thursday, March 26: The 25th Annual Champagne Putt, an 18-hole minigolf tournament to benefit SEE. A winning team will be crowned both nights, with an overall tournament champion announced March 26. The event runs from 5 to 8 p.m. each night and includes food, drinks, the tournament and contests. There is also a raffle, and the event is 21+. For details, go to see-sciencecenter.org/champagne-putt.
Saturday, March 28: Rube Goldberg Machine Regional competition, a renowned STEM event that challenges students to innovate, collaborate, and bring engineering concepts to life. The event at SEE is a stepping stone to the prestigious Rube Goldberg Machine Contest World Championship, and the lowest-cost STEM contest in the nation. For details, go to see-sciencecenter.org/rubeg-contest.
Sunday, March 29, through Saturday, April 4: Science for All Week. SEE Science Center will be charging the Museums For All admission price of $3 for all visitors, no card required.
Wednesday, April 1: SEE’s official 40th birthday
Sunday, April 5: SEE closed
Monday, April 20: Park to Park Community clean-up. SEE photo contest starts on social channels.
Mondays, April 20 and April 27: special Monday hours 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. during school vacations, with Earth Day pop-up activities.

Something for everyone

There are a myriad of exhibits beckoning beyond the SEE Science Center’s first-floor entrance. Every activity has an explanation of the science behind it and offers visitors ways to make hypotheses or connect it to their lives. Topics covered include force, light, sound, electricity, momentum and simple machines (like pulleys).

Everything is arranged to allow visitors, especially youngsters, to wander and land on what interests them. A lot of research has been done on display placement, but SEE’s Executive Director describes this philosophy through her own experience.

“I’m in this field because when I was younger my parents took me to the New York State Museum and I saw the mummies,” she said. “I was so excited that I spent the next however many years … studying archaeology and anthropology, and it ended up getting me a scholarship to college. But it started from that visit.”

Steering children to specific stops is discouraged.

“It can be so easy to make learning a chore, but where you really get that change and impact is when you as a learner get to decide … that’s when you become invested,” she said. “It doesn’t matter exactly what you’re learning, just that you care about it, that brings you through.”

While children are a big reason it exists, SEE’s target demographic is “age 2 to 92,” she continued, and many recent improvements reflect this. For example, more seating for older adults who can tire faster than children was added. The goal was to design the space so a whole family can experience it.

“You go to a lot of public venues, say an amusement park, and a bunch of people from the family might have to sit to the side while the rest are experiencing it, and we really don’t want that here,” she said. “We want to make sure you’re experiencing it together, because that’s where some of the interesting learning happens.”

Observing how family groups interact is also important, Hawrylchak continued. “Where do we get the most positive behaviors? Let’s say there’s an exhibit that requires a little bit more contemplation. We’re going to be shifting that around so that we can create that sort of pocket environment for that experience to occur.”

Some of SEE’s most memorable moments happen in the lab, such as the Slimy Science program, where kids make their own Silly Putty. “That’s been running for 27 years. We did a calculation a couple of years ago, and it was about 85,000 batches of putty.”

Recently the STEM Lab was overhauled.

“This one is particularly important to us because a lot of the kids on school field trips have never been in a lab environment,” Hawrylchak said. “Most of the schools don’t have specialized science rooms, so this really gets them to be able to embody being a scientist.” Improvements include full wash stations, a new floor and accessibility upgrades to accommodate different abilities and younger kids. “We had high school-sized tables, and it was really tricky with kindergartners in here doing reactions,” she said. “We’re so happy about the floor; you have no idea how much we clean off.”

A family affair

Becky Mayhew, Peter Gustafson and Design Coordinator Adele Maurier all have worked multiple decades for SEE, part of a close-knit team of nine full-timers. Everyone does a little bit of everything, like when Hawrylchak climbed into the Lego Millyard to fix a bent tower spire recently.

There’s a sense of mission that’s rare and wonderful.

“I don’t want to use the cliché of, ‘oh, we’re a family,’ Mayhew said. “But, you know, everybody is. When you’re a small staff and you have a small, small budget, everybody has to pitch in, from the top to the bottom. I like that.”

Gustafson brought an education background but was also a working musician when he joined in February 1997. He wanted a job that accommodated that.

“Going straight to a regular classroom wasn’t appealing to me at the time,” he said. “So what brought me here was a non-traditional classroom opportunity to educate.”

In his time there he’s built and fixed exhibits, written grants, worked with SEE’s marketing team, and lately manages special events. Last year the New England Museum Association honored him with its Excellence Award. Gustafson responded modestly and pointed the spotlight on his team.

“No one’s excellent alone, we’re excellent with each other, so while it is nice to get that honor, I think it’s a statement about our institution, our organization,” he said. A quote on NEMA’s website read, “I didn’t plan to be an Exhibit Fabricator or Development Director, but the organization needed it, so I learned how to do it.”

Mayhew graduated from Saint Anselm College hoping to be a teacher but ended up working in an office.

“It was hard to find a teaching job,” she said. “But … just sitting at a computer all day doing data entry, it was just horrible. I just kept my eyes open, and I saw this job at the SEE Science Center.” She came on part-time and fit in immediately.

“I got pretty handy with duct tape, a paper clip and hammering wood, doing all these things,” she said. “We’d do the painting of the floor, all that kind of stuff. So it was really a different job every day, always different and exciting.”

She became Finance Director after SEE had split from its parent organization, Southern New Hampshire Services, and Hawrylchak came on board.

“She noticed how organized I was,” Mayhew said. For some time, she’d been doing POs, deposits and similar tasks.

The change came at the right time. “I was getting a little burnt out on 30 years of doing programs,” she said. “So it was a way for me to stay here, help grow the institution, and still get to dabble in a little education every once in a while. But, you know, my focus gets to be a little bit different.”

Her dedication is exemplified by the fact that both of her daughters came to work at SEE. Her oldest, Jordan, spent almost seven years there, with responsibilities including demonstrating SEE’s Van de Graaff generator and Air Vortex Cannon.

When they were in grade school in Merrimack, both girls went to SEE’s summer camps, but they hadn’t been on any field trips — until mom stepped in.

“There was no way my daughters were not coming here,” she said. “So I called them up, and for my older daughter, I was like, ‘hey, I will foot the bill for your class.’”

The school loved it. “It became a regular thing. There are two other elementary schools in Merrimack; now those two elementaries come. The first-graders have been coming from Merrimack since my older daughter was in first grade. She’s 24 now, about to get married.”

Summer and fall activities at SEE
Friday, June 19: SEE Golf Tournament fundraiser.
Saturday, June 20 – Friday, June 26: Kickoff to Summer featuring Lego activities and Celebrating the Lego Millyard Model. Also, the Lego Collection drive starts.
Monday, July 13: First day of summer camps.
Friday, Aug. 14: Final day of summer camps.
Tuesday, Sept. 15 – Thursday, Oct. 15: SEE celebrates scientists of Latin American descent.
Friday, Oct. 16: Community Discovery Night.
Monday, Oct. 19: Trick or Trash neighborhood cleanup.
Wednesday, Nov. 11: 21+ fundraiser at SEE the Tinker Games, and completion of the Millyard Design Zone exhibit gallery and capital campaign improvements.

Looking to the future

One focus of late has been development of programs and experiences for middle-schoolers. “That’s when these kids start to select out of science and start to do other things,” Gustafson said. “So that’s been a new and exciting challenge for us, engaging that audience.”

To that end, SEE is working with ARMI, the Advanced Regenerative Manufacturing Institute. “We’ve developed some programs under their guidance that highlight regenerative medicine, from the basics of cells to how our body heals to how science and technology can be applied to bioengineering.”

Though the 40th anniversary won’t officially occur until April 1, SEE is already looking ahead to its 50th year. A strategic plan is underway to address the next phase and whether that means a move beyond its longtime home in the Mill District.

“I think one of our big things is, what is a permanent home for SEE?” Hawrylchak said. “We are very lucky to have this longstanding partnership with [Dean Kamen’s] FIRST, who’s been just amazing to us. But at some point we probably need a space that’s permanent for the Science Center.”

How that might be realized is under discussion. “We’re still in those early phases,” she said. “It might entail us staying here, but we’re having those conversations to say, you know, when we get to our 50th we want to make sure that we’re a permanent fixture for this community.”

Featured photo: See Science Center dinosaur. Courtesy photo.