Empowered Partnerships
UM program enhances impact via tribal maker truck, new food bank location
By Holly Truitt
It all started with an idea to convene existing and potential partners from the Flathead Indian Reservation, where the spectrUM Discovery Area has worked since 2007.
Founded a decade ago, spectrUM is UM’s hands-on science museum that works to inspire the next generation of Montanans about science, technology, engineering and math (STEM); higher education; and ultimately their futures. At the time, we were reaching over 50,000 people annually. Our museum had grown from a small, on-campus site to a beautiful downtown location. Our celebrated mobile science program had developed to serve three-quarters of Montana counties and all seven of our state’s American Indian reservations. However, as an organization, we felt like we could do more by working collectively with communities to design for greater impact.
Funding from the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation allowed this group of thinkers and doers — Bernie Azure, Whisper Camel-Means, Stephanie Gillin, Lance Hawkins, Cindi Laukes, LeeAnna Muzquiz and Carey Swanberg — to come together monthly to reimagine spectrUM’s existing Science Learning Tent at the Arlee Celebration.
To advance our vision of fostering a homegrown, Native STEM workforce, we chose exhibits that aligned with the tribes’ economic plan and workforce needs in the health, environmental and tech sectors; changed signage to feature local, Native STEM role models; and invited other Native STEM career and high school “near-peers” to serve as educators in the tent.
Of our pilot, The Char-Koosta News, the official newspaper of the Flathead Nation, wrote: “To say the first year of UM’s spectrUM traveling hands-on science and technology learning exhibit at the Arlee Celebration Powwow was a success would be an understatement. It was an overwhelming success that exceeded all involved parties’ expectations.”
Co-creating with SciNation
Building on this momentum, SciNation on the Flathead Reservation was born.
With spectrUM as its backbone and Jessie Herbert-Meny, head of spectrUM’s STEM Education, managing day-to-day efforts, SciNation includes members from the tribes’ health, natural resources and education departments; local K–12 schools; and UM. Our co-designed programs include our Science Learning Tent at local powwows, Science Bytes that embed STEM enrichment at free summer meal sites on the reservation, community family science nights and a mobile museum that travels to reservation schools.
A few years into our collective work, we realized there was still a gap between the change we wanted to create and our existing programming. Despite the desire to create a homegrown, Native tech workforce, we struggled to offer compelling tech experiences. In response, spectrUM and SciNation partnered with Tribal Education to co-create the Kwul’I’tkin Maker Truck, a mobile “makerspace” that weaves together cultural and conventional making and tinkering.
Named for the Salish and Kootenai words for “to make,” the Kwul’I’tkin Maker Truck is modeled in part after the SparkTruck, a mobile makerspace developed at Stanford. With funding from the National Science Foundation, the maker truck’s activities pair cultural activities like drum making, beading and basket weaving with high-tech fabrication techniques and STEM learning.
Bill Swaney, former head of Tribal Education and SciNation member; Nick Wethington, spectrUM’s resident “maker” and museum manager; and Herbert-Meny drove much of the design of the truck and its activities.
“We worked with SciNation and Tribal Education and brought our ideas for the truck and activities to each tribe’s cultural committee,” Herbert-Meny says. “Then we co-created with over a half-dozen tribal makers to develop activities that everyone felt excited about and invested in.”
After our intensive, yearlong iterative design process, Swaney told me that the project was especially meaningful to him because he was “engaged from the inception of the project to its reality.”
Lisa Blank, a research professor at UM’s Phyllis J. Washington College of Education and Human Sciences, says preliminary findings suggest that these activities are sparking interest in technology, STEM and design thinking.
Recently, I asked Swaney to describe his greatest aspiration for the truck, and he replied, “I hope the demand for the maker truck on the reservation far exceeds our ability to supply.”
If this happens, kids will still be in luck, as we are teeing-up for our next opportunity: partnering with Salish Kootenai College and other community partners to co-create an annual, reservationwide tech challenge with funding from the U.S. Department of Education.
Montana Constellations
We now serve as the backbone of community-based, co-created initiatives in Missoula, the Bitterroot, the Flathead Reservation and, starting this winter, Billings. These initiatives, along with our original efforts, reach an estimated 200,000 people annually.
I have come to think of these efforts as constellations of hope and change. Each community partner is a unique star joined together by a collective purpose larger than itself, making it — including spectrUM — brighter and more impactful.
It’s amazing to see where a small idea, a new way of operating and remarkable community partners have taken us. •
A Place for ‘EmPower’ment
EmPower Place is our newest co-created initiative. A vibrant family learning center dedicated to nourishing the bodies and minds of all Missoula children, it is one part science museum, one part library and one part community center. EmPower Place is embedded in the Missoula Food Bank, which serves over 1 in 4 children in Missoula County.
Co-led by the Missoula Food Bank and spectrUM, with leadership and programming support from the Missoula Public Library and other like-minded partners, EmPower Place is rich with hands-on science exhibits, UM STEM role models, books, playful activities and early literacy programming, as well as free meals and snacks for children. Since the grand opening in July, attendance has risen steadily. This summer we saw an average of 147 visitors daily.
Jessica Allred, director of development and advocacy at Missoula Food Bank, helped create EmPower Place and now directs its operations.
“When sharing early renderings of the new building with leadership at spectrUM, possibilities began to percolate of co-location — wherein we respond to the needs of families visiting our food bank, but also bringing STEM education, mentors and other opportunities to families with limited access,” Allred says.
This vision was ultimately made a reality by funding from the Missoula Redevelopment Agency and a grant from the Institute for Museums and Library Services to spectrUM.
This autumn, EmPower Place’s collaborative programming is expanding under the careful eye of Allred and spectrUM’s resident scientist Amanda Duley to include after-school science clubs rich with STEM role models from UM’s We Are Montana in the Classroom initiative. It also will offer an evening co-hosted with UM to help families and students with financial aid and applications for college and scholarships, as well as other college-readiness programming. A pending grant proposal includes scholarships earmarked for children who use the Missoula Food Bank.
“If we could make these systemic, audacious social changes on our own at the Missoula Food Bank, we would have done so a long time ago,” Allred says. “Trust in the collective and being open to different paradigms has nurtured true innovation, and our journey toward meaningful change is stronger because of it.” •
Holly Truitt is the director the University’s spectrUM Discovery Area and its parent organization, the Broader Impacts Group. She is passionate about the collective power of community and higher education to transform the lives of the next generation. She regularly speaks, consults, publishes and teaches on co-creating collective change. She is the principal investigator for $1.3 million in grants to enhance, research and disseminate BIG and spectrUM’s community-based collaboration models.
