The Osher Program
February 1994
Exploratorium Osher Fellowships -List of Participants
Through an endowment from the Bernard Osher Foundation, the Exploratorium has established a Fellowship program in which each year, four to six outstanding people from the arts, sciences and humanities are in-residence in the museum for approximately four weeks. The fellowships are very flexible and informal and primarily involve working with Exploratorium staff to help launch new ideas for education programs and exhibit projects, as well as adding their expertise to on-going projects within the museum. Each Fellow also gives a public lecture.
List of Osher Fellows
Oliver Sacks, April and July l988
Professor of Clinical Neurophysiology, Alfred Einstein School of Medicine, New York and author of numerous books including The Man Who Mistook His Wife for a Hat and most recently Seeing Voices. Dr. Sacks helped in our development of a exhibition on memory.
Richard Gregory, March l989
Professor Gregory is an internationally known visual perception scientist, author of many books on perception, editor of the recent book The Oxford Companion to the Mind and founder of a new science center in Bristol, The Exploratory. Dr. Gregory assisted us in a variety of perception and physics exhibit development projects and worked extensively with our high-school Explainers .
Philip Morrison & Phylis Morrison,July-August l989
Philip Morrison astrophysicist and Institute professor at MIT, is book review editor of Scientific American. Together with his wife Phylis who is a noted art and science educator, he created the recent PBS series The Ring of Truth. During their Osher Fellowship the Morrisons worked with Explainers, exhibit development staff and Exploratorium teachers on ideas that ranged from cosmology to cognition.
Edward T. Hall, January and August l990
Cultural anthropologist and author of 15 books, Dr. Hall has explored cross-cultural perception and behavior and inter-cultural relations. He developed proxemics, a field of study which looks at the personal and social space people created in different cultural situations. During his two part fellowship Dr, Hall worked with a wide variety of Exploratorium staff on issues concerning cross-cultural communication and perception in exhibits and programs within the museum.
Jont Allen, August l990 and February ,1991
Dr. Allen is a senior researcher in acoustics, cochlear modeling and digital signal processing at Bell Laboratories in New Jersey. Dr. Allen primarily worked with exhibit development staff on new exhibit ideas in music and hearing and ways to upgrade and improve existing sound exhibits.
Guillermo Gomez Peña February -March,1992
Performance artist and journalist from Mexico. Mr. Peña worked with our exhibit and arts program staff on navigation ideas related to his innovative performance work on north-south borders. He also gave workshop sessions with our teaching staff, local bilingual teachers and high-school Explainers on cross-cultural communication issues of U.S. and Mexico relations. In the Winter of 1992, he will return for part two of his Fellowship. In June of 1991 he received the prestigious MacArthur Fellowship Award.
Judah Schwartz, January 1992
Harvard University Professor, Dr. Schwartz studies learning and the use of technology to make abstract ideas much more accessible. He is recognized as a leader in both cognitive science as well as education research fields. We look forward Dr. SchwartzÕs help with the planning our next major step in exhibit development which focuses on cognition, as well as his help in our expansion of our teacher programs and media and communication endeavors.
Jeanne Bamberger, January & July1992
Dr. Bamberger professor of music at MIT, is recognized for her use of innovative techniques for teaching music that interconnect with her research on cognitive processes of learning. She will come for four weeks to work with us on navigation and music exhibit ideas, and a possible research collaboration project. Her Fellowship expenses will be jointly shared between Osher, Music and Navigation funds.
Kristina Hooper Woolsey, February-March 1992 and January1-30 1993
Founding director of the Media Lab. Dr. Woolsey worked with us on new directions using computer/video multi-media technology as part of our creation of a Center for Media and Communication. The Media Lab has created a number of multi-media projects/interactive video discs, including Life Story , which was based on the discovery of DNA and The Visual Almanac. Dr. Woolsey also worked with our exhibit developers and education staff and has helped us create an overall program planning process.
Jon Ogborn, February 21-March 27, 1993
Chair of Science Education at the University of London the Institute of Education, London. He was jointly responsible in the late 60's for the Nuffield Foundation Advanced Physics Teaching Project for 16-18yr. olds. His more recent interests include developing ideas of John Tukey about Exploratory Data Analysis for high schools, developing computational modelling systems which require little or no mathematics, and fundamental studies of the sources of people's conceptions of the world. A recent graduate student of his completed a Ph.D thesis on what people remember after visiting museum, 1 month, 4 months and 6 months later. His broad interest in science teaching and learning was of use in our teacher programs, Explainers and exhibit development projects.
Steven Rose, March 10-21, 1993 and July 1-30
Chair of Biology Dept., Open University, London, Director of the Brain and Behavior Research Group, and author of the recently published book, Learning and Memory. He helped with ideas that would integrate biology exhibits with many of the other themes in the Exploratorium, specifically through making links between the perception exhibits and the brain processes that underlie them. This also included helping us develop a plan for cognition exhibit areas.
Paul Black, April 19-May 1 and June 26-July 14, 1993
Recently retired as Director of Education, Kings College, London, Dr. Black is an internationally respected leader on assessment and teacher education. He is involved with a number of curriculum and education testing and assessment programs in the U.S. and Europe including the current major U.S. national standards program to revamp the way assessment is carried out in the schools. He has greatly helped us think through and develop a plan for creating a degree granting science teacher learning center based in the Exploratorium .
Hilary Rose, July 1-30, 1993
Professor of Social Policy and Director of the West Yorkshire Centre for Research on Women, University of Bradford. She has her Ph.D in the Sociology of Science, and has written a number of books and articles on science and societal issues including a new book published winter 1994, Love, Power and Knowledge. She helped us explore different ways in which we can, through programs and exhibits, have more social focus to the science we present in the museum.
Tim Hunkin, August 3- September 15,1993
Artist, tinkerer, film-maker and writer, producer and director of the TV series, The Secret Life of Office Machines broadcast Spring 1993 on British channel 4 television and The Secret Life of Machines, a series broadcast in England and in the US on the Discovery cable channel. He will be a good resource of ideas for exhibits in most any area. He served as an overall burst of energy for our shop people and created numerous ideas that added to and improved existing exhibits in electricity and heat and temperature.
V.S. Ramachandran, October 15-November 15, 1993 and February 1994
Professor of neurosciences and Director of the Brain and Perception laboratory at the University of California, San Diego. Dr. Ramachandran has done extensive research in perception, and brain processing. Part one of his visit coincided with a large temporary exhibition on psychology at the Exploratorium. His recent work in phantom limb research and his wealth of experience in cognitive science will be of use in our planning for new biology and cognition exhibits. During the first part of his Fellowship he met with exhibit staff, conducted workshops with middle school teachers and explainers and gave a public lecture on his brain and phantom limb research.
Jim Minstrell, February 10-24 and April 1994
A High-school science teacher from Mercer Island, Washington, and nationally respected researcher on learning, Jim Minstrell is extremely thoughtful about science teaching and learning. He will make a valuable contribution to our teacher programs, especially the Teacher Institute and the Explainers (trained High School students). His experience in teaching teachers to be researchers of their own student's learning will be of use throughout the museum.
Mierle Ukeles, January and August 1994
Currently an Artist-In-Residence for the New York City Department of Sanitation, Mierle Ukeles co-coordinated with us a symposium involving artists in large scale waste management projects and will more generally help us plan ways to link environmental issues and art with our future expansion planning.