Volunteers Yue Chen and Jin Wang work with liquid nitrogen in the Museum’s lab

“ A lot of the work of managing volunteers is repetitive,” says Leslie Fann, volunteer coordinator at the North Carolina Museum of Life and Science in Durham.  “There’s a lot of responding to e-mails and a lot of work with people who are excited but don’t know how to fit in. You have to be available to anyone who drops by.  It takes effort, but the possibilities are endless. The only limit on our growth is my time.”

Durhamites have always gone to bat for their Museum. It was founded by a group of volunteers in 1946; in the1950s, one supporter drove a flatbed truck to Alabama to pick up the Mercury Redstone rocket that stands at its front entrance.  Its location in the North Carolina Research Triangle is another big advantage, because the neighbors include major universities (like Duke and North Carolina State) and research-intensive corporations (like IBM and GlaxoSmithKline).  “You can’t throw a rock around here without hitting a scientist,” says Fann.  These resources and connections are why a county with just 262,000 people contains a thriving 84-acre science museum with 285 hands-on exhibits and an annual budget of more than $6.5 million.  Volunteers logged more than 14,000 hours of service last year, and they’re on track to donate 15,500 hours this year.  “That’s the equivalent of about eight full-time staff positions,” says Fann. “We absolutely depend on it.”

The range of volunteer work is unusually diverse.  On Engineers Day, IBM sends several dozen of its finest over to set up tables and lead fun learning activities.  “They’ll give people a handful of gumdrops and some toothpicks and tell them to build the tallest structure they can,” says Fann. A different kind of help comes from Durham’s school system, which sends 11-year-olds to clean and dust museum objects, including a lot of fascinating stuff donated by NASA.  “They’re called the fingerprint police,” says Fann.  “They work with the exhibits director, and they ask a lot of questions.”

Duke University’s fingerprints are all over the museum. Folks from the Fuqua Business School recently analyzed the gift shop’s operations, and the Nichols School of the Environment and Earth Sciences is a long-time partner in environmental education.  Personal involvement from faculty provides another important spark.  Chemist Ken Lyle got involved in 2007 to give lab demonstrations. “Last summer, Duke donated some liquid nitrogen and Dr. Lyle trained staff to work with it for presentations,” says Fann. “He came by with some students last week to do a program on the chemistry of combustion. And around Halloween they will do a program on the science of scary things – how to make bubbling potions and so on.  People love it.”

The Chemistry of Combustion

Visiting faculty and graduate students from North Carolina State University also attract volunteers, but for a different reason.  “They have the only veterinary school in the state, and admission is highly competitive,” says Fann.  “People volunteer for animal keeping jobs in our farmyard, wetland, and Carolina wildlife exhibits because they want a career in animal husbandry or veterinary science, and the more experience you have handling animals, the stronger your application will be.  The volunteers also know they’ll get a chance to interact with professionals in that field, and maybe make a connection.”

Fann typically trains new volunteers in customer service, but she adds that most of the training happens on the job.  “We’ll team them up with an experienced person for the first two or three sessions.  We encourage our docents to get visitors to use their powers of observation – to see, listen, and touch.  You can touch almost everything in the museum.  And I encourage the volunteers to ask questions and go anywhere they want to go.  I tell them nothing is off limits.”