Hello and welcome to Good News York. It is your
host Mike Brindisi. Here, not in our new studios,
not yet. We're close. We're actually in the office
of the president of MOST, the MOST Museum in
downtown Syracuse, Mrs. Lauren Cochin. Hello
Lauren. How are you? I'm good. Of course, thank
you for having us. Good News York brought to
you by Ads on the Go. Get ads on the go dot com.
Lauren, we are here We realized on the way here.
We're here on probably a very busy week for you
because there's no school Yeah, so this place
is rocking right now. It is busiest week of the
year for us typically Yeah, it took us an hour
and a half to park. Oh, I'm kidding. It was an
hour and a half, but Thank you for having us.
This place is absolutely incredible. One of the
first things I realized is that this is the original
armory that makes this the famous Armory Square.
Do you want to talk a little bit about the building
and the transition into how it became the most?
Yeah, we are the armory of Armory Square. This
building really has an incredibly rich history.
over 115 years old. It pretty much occupies the
whole city block. It's about not quite a hundred
thousand square feet. So you know firstly an
armory, a military building, and then it's had
a lot of uses since from convention style, center
style with The bowling Congress that we still
see today at the on Center the circus came through
here our former NBA Nationals team before it
was at what is now like the war Memorial was
here So a lot of things have transpired through
this building It's got incredible history and
we the most has been here since the early 90s
Wow The best time. Armory to Children's Museum.
Armory to Children's Museum. What a 180. It's
a beautiful building and as soon as you walk
in the kid in you comes out because it just looks
like so much fun. First of all, tell us a little
bit about your background and how you came to
the most. Sure. Well, my background... This either
makes no sense or makes perfect sense. My background
is actually in sports PR. Nice. So I guess there's
a little like entertainment. Of course, of course,
of course. So I studied PR and marketing at SU
and I worked for the Crunch, interned for SU
athletics, interned for what is now the Mets.
My first job was at the Penguins and but it turned
out it just wasn't really It wasn't all that
I thought it was going to be. Sports is a huge
grind. The pay is terrible because everybody
wants to work in sports. And so... A lot of weekends.
It is. A lot of nights. Non -stop. Non -stop.
Yeah. And so I thought, you know, I'm going to
come home, get my get my masters just to give
me time to figure out what I wanted to do. And...
And sort of I fell into a job at Syracuse Stage.
It was doing marketing, audience development
work. So again, similar entertainment type of
stuff and still doing marketing like I was doing
in sports. And I really enjoyed that, but it
was a non -profit. And in doing that marketing
work at Syracuse Stage, I ended up also doing
fundraising work at Syracuse Stage. And it turns
out I was really good at it. And what happens
when you're good at fundraising for a nonprofit
is you keep doing it because it's such an integral
part of the nonprofit world. And also, if you're
really, really good at it, you get promoted really
quickly. So I went from that to being the Director
of Development at Arcovada Daga, which supports
people with developmental disabilities. It's
a really wonderful place. And I did that for
several years as well. And then I was recruited
to work here for my fund development and marketing
at at Arc primarily for my work in social media
which this was dating myself was so long ago
that a lot of people were not doing non -profit
social media marketing and same thing I got promoted
here from executive vice president slash development
officer to president which was about six years
ago. I've been here for a decade this spring.
Congratulations and you know it's very fitting
because You know, you were kind of joking about
how you went from sports and marketing to this,
but you and I both know that. I mean, there's
definitely a lot of similarities in this. It's
entertainment and it's marketing and PR. So I
think you were the perfect fit. Yeah. The place
is amazing. Tell us about what is the most. I
mean, obviously we know what it is, but for people
that maybe aren't sure, tell us what is this
place all about? So it is a science museum, but
it is primarily geared towards children. Though
we try very hard to make it something for everyone,
particularly so that the adults are enjoying
it and want to bring their kids back. But in
addition to being a science museum, we actually
are a chartered educational institution by New
York State Board of Regents. So our focus really
is and our mission is informal science education.
So we have fabulous interactive hands -on exhibits.
Informal science education meaning we understand
as educators, right, and as parents and as grandparents,
kids really learn best by doing. Play is really
important for a child's development. And so all
the exhibits are hands -on. And all of our exhibits
actually align with New York State science curriculum
somehow through a K -8 curriculum for science.
So kids are going to be learning something that
somehow aligns with what they might be learning
in school if they're in those grades, in those
grade levels. So we have exhibits from simple
foam building blocks to really high -tech micron
exhibit and we sort of have everything in between.
We have an Upstate Life Sciences exhibit where
kids can learn about genetics and parts of the
body. We have my particular favorite exhibit,
which just opened, called Onondaga Grown Presents
Grow, which is a farming and agriculture exhibit.
Oh, wonderful. It's awesome. And so, you know,
it's a really interactive, cool experience with
a farmer's market and a field where kids can
learn about crop rotation and how our own indigenous
community was really the innovators of agriculture.
And so not only is everything hands -on and it,
you know, aligns with curriculum, but one of
the things our museum does so well that in fact
we often are going to other museums or going
to conferences and teaching other museums about
it is our museum really is a reflection of our
community. And so what I mean by that is you
know, we might not have a Micron exhibit if Micron
wasn't here or, you know, even our agriculture
exhibit is really unique to Central New York
Ag. You'll see a lot of things that are really
relevant to Central New York. We have an exhibit
called Machines and Makers, and it's all about
manufacturing. Central New York is a huge manufacturing
community, but within that exhibit, Tessie has
a setup, Marquardt has a setup, Morris Manufacturing
actually built a drum rotation thing for kids
to try. It's so community relevant, which also
from a business model perspective is so helpful
to the museum because we're getting this financial
or support to build exhibits from community partners,
which is incredible. That's amazing. I love how
you incorporate not only the learning aspect
which kind of you know that's going to happen
when you have a science center but I like that
you also cultivate it you know or tailor it to
local I think that's wonderful and I'm wondering
you said you know you kind of work do you work
with the local educational institutions like
do they have to approve any of this because you
know you know you have to include stuff that
that is things that they are learning in school
or is this kind of something that you do on your
own? We largely do it on our own. Our biggest
department is our education department. We have
about 10 people that work in the education team
and they are well trained and well qualified
in New York state standards. We do have a lot
of programs with schools. and we do use schools
as a resource. We're a non -profit, we have educators
on our board, several of them. So we certainly
use them as a resource, particularly if things
are changing in schools, changing in education,
and they are wonderful resources. We also rely
on some of our community partners for support,
certainly when we were... building the Micron
exhibit, we actually had, and this is really
the first time we did this, we actually had an
advisory committee to build that exhibit. So
it wasn't just Micron engineers, but it was community
leaders and teachers in particular, like how
do we make a semiconductor engaging? That was
a challenge, right? What would a teacher want
to do in this exhibit or how do we bring chips
into the classroom, right? Because teachers want
to know. There's going to be how many thousands
of jobs that Micron's going to have over the
next decade or more. We know we want kids to
have those jobs. They're high paying jobs. They
have great benefits. There's this tremendous
opportunity. And what we found was our local
educators really, really want this opportunity
for our children. The most really saw that firsthand
and it was actually really inspiring to see how
much teachers wanted to be a part of this. Particularly
because they really just saw it as this tremendous
opportunity that maybe in their careers they
have not seen before. And so to be able to put
a committee together like this that we hadn't
also done before was a really incredible experience.
That's amazing. Want to definitely talk about
the the actual exhibits themselves, but I was
wondering if you could peel the curtain back.
I'm curious How much goes into? Deciding what
type of exhibit to have and and when are we going
to turn that over and which ones are going to
stay permanently? What talk about that process
a little bit if you don't mind there's um, I
always say that With my non science background,
so take that with a grain of salt. I always say
that every Every good science museum for kids
particular should have dinosaurs, should have
outer space, should have like some kind of like
nature slash rocks. And I say that because that
seems to be what is what I call like the fan
favorites. That's what kids sort of cling on
to when they're little. That's what they're fascinated
by. And that's what we want. We want kids to
get excited about science at a young age. in
the hopes that they will continue to be excited
about it forever. And so to get them excited
you know those are the things I think every good
science museum should have. Absolutely. Right?
How many kids do you know like love dinosaurs
at some point? Right? Or thought outer space
was so cool or wanted to be an astronaut at some
point? Or just love to go out and play in the
mud? Yeah. Right? Love nature. Absolutely. So
So we have all those things, right? We have a
dino zone. We have a planetarium. And outside
the planetarium, we have a lot of space things,
including we're a designated NASA community site,
which is very cool. We have a lot of things with
nature throughout exhibits. And then every month,
we do a huge Earth month celebration and festival.
And then in addition to that, you know, for us,
there are certain criteria we have for exhibits.
I came into a permanent collection that really
touched on a lot of topics, and I think the most
in particular has a robust collection. So we
do have sort of the engineering -based build
types of things. We have, you know, the farming
exhibit. We have, you know, life sciences, all
of those kinds of things. So it's pretty... It
covers a lot of topics in STEM. Some of the things
we didn't have, of course, the Micron exhibit.
One of the things that we kind of have, we're
still working on, we sort of struggle with, is
the math part of STEM. So right now we have what
we call play. It's just games. computational
thinking, that kind of a thing. To get the M
in a museum, to make math fun, to meet our criteria,
fun, engaging, the community relevance piece,
the curriculum piece, to meet all those criteria,
especially meeting the fun and engaging piece
would probably cost us between half a million
and three quarters of a million dollars for a
permanent exhibit. So we're not doing the M right
now. So the board game suffice. The good thing
is the kids love it. So something like that I
would say is lacking or missing. But other than
that we really do have a pretty robust collection
that I think meets what I would call the standard
for a science museum. That's wonderful. You've
touched on some of the exhibits. Let's get into
the details. What are some of your favorite exhibits
and how large is this place, first of all? The
exhibits on the floor and our Exploradome take
up about 35 to 40 ,000 square feet. Wow. So yeah,
it's a pretty big museum, covers, you know, sort
of covers about three floors. lower level main
floor and mezzanine. And then we have a National
Grid Exploradome. So that is a theater with a
domed screen. It's got a digital laser projection
system. So the image on the screen is incredible.
The sound is incredible. And the dome, you know,
makes it this immersive experience. It's like
the Sphere in Vegas. It's at the Armory right
here. Almost as cool, too, right? It is almost
as cool. And on that we do, you know, we do documentaries,
but the dome obviously is very cool for planetarium
shows. And so we do shows every hour and a half
hour. That's amazing. Yeah, it is. It's very
cool. Well, let's talk about the Micron exhibit
because that's exciting. Everybody's talking
about Micron around here for... obvious reasons,
one of the biggest things to happen in the area
in a very long time. What can we expect from
the Micron exhibit? It is really cool. It is
the first of its kind in the world. So we really
had a fun time making this with Micron. You get
to see actually what that entire huge campus
is going to look like. I think they have like
four to six buildings, each one of them the size
of you know six football fields. So the campus
itself is going to be extraordinarily large and
you we have sort of that we have the the site
the original site that they built right there
in the exhibit. And like I said, it's sort of
hard to make that interactive. So what we have
is you can walk in and you sort of take a tour
of what the inside of a chip looks like. We have
a lot of huge touch screens where you can learn
about different things about chips, memory making,
the manufacturing of it. The idea behind this
was let's deconstruct what memory is, what semiconductors
are, let's like help kids understand that everything
that you do in your everyday life has a chip
in it, right? And so really everything they touch,
everything they use from healthcare to video
games to their phones. And then we get a little
bit into sort of the chemistry. behind it in
the exhibit and a little bit about the careers
too obviously you know the job piece is really
important to them it's important to the community
workforce development in general is huge to our
museum because we live in what I consider a stem
region as far as careers go so that's a huge
focus for us on all of our programming so there's
a little bit of that in there too. then because
the interactivity piece was a bit of a challenge
every day at noon we have what we call the Micron
skills bar where we send actually one of our
education staffers in there to do some games
with the kids. Oh I love it. A couple more questions
looking out here because I know you're very busy.
This seems to be a very busy time because school
is off. What is your busiest, like, what's your
Super Bowl? What is your, like, we're preparing
for this time of the year? You're here for it.
This is it? Yeah, we consider ourselves, yeah,
you're right, in prime time. Perfect. We planned
it that way. Yeah, right. We consider ourselves,
we call ourselves sort of the cold weather destination
for kids. You know, this is a great place for...
if they're looking for something to do with their
kids or grandparents are looking for something
to do, and even schools. A lot of schools will
bring their students in the spring for field
trips to avoid snow days, to avoid... hauling
all the kids on the bus in wild weather, but
we are open, even though we're only open to the
public four days a week, we are open to schools
and community groups seven days a week. So we
do have school groups in here every day all year
long. I was gonna ask if you get a lot of field
trips, I assume. We do, yeah. Some are like the
good old -fashioned just book a field trip and
hop on the bus with your students and some are
actually really set programs where we are you
know instead of a school just sort of running
through and having fun some of them are really
sort of pre -planned where we provide a program
or a workshop in addition to all the good field
trip fun that you'd expect. Do you guys host
any private events or birthday parties? Do you
do anything like that? Yep, we do. We host really
fun, I'm a little biased of course, we host really
fun birthday parties. We have four a day on weekends
and they're a lot of fun because kids get to
pick their little science demo workshops. You
can do bubbles, you can do slime, you can do
dinosaurs. The birthday party admission is all
day long. So we always have a lot of kids running
around from a birthday party here on weekends.
And every program that we do, we do a lot of
programs outside of the exhibits. Usually admission
is free if you register your child for one of
our STEM education programs. So if your kid is
signed up for something, let's say on a Saturday
morning from 10 to 11. They can stay all day
and have fun at the museum. That's amazing. I
want to get the plugs from you before we go,
but also, is there anything you want to mention?
Any events or special events coming up or anything
that you want to kind of advertise or plug or
market? You know what? Well, I think the most
important thing that I always want to make a
plug for is to become a Most Member. Membership...
There's four different levels of becoming a member
individual all the way through the household
premiere. So when you become a member you get
in free to the museum all year long, and there's
all kinds of extra perks. Discounts on camps,
discounts on birthday parties, and on the National
Grid Explorer Room. It comes with free, you couldn't
find parking, guess what? You would've had free
parking in the lot behind the museum. What the
heck. Which is good for our hours when we're
open. So there's tons of great perks to being
a member, and all of that revenue really helps
support the most. We are a non -profit, and half
of our... annual budget is through donations.
And so memberships are really, really an important
part of our annual operating. These are yearly
memberships? Yeah, they're good for 12 months.
Great. And memberships are as low as I think
$69 to start and they're good for a year. Awesome.
In addition to the regular plugs, I want you
to give us, you know, websites, any information
you want, social media, but also how can people
get involved and help donate to this amazing
place? Well, you know what, the best place to
donate is most .org and there's lots of ways
to donate. You can just give us your cash, that's
fabulous. You can come to one of our fundraisers.
We have three fabulous fundraisers. We just had
chocolate discovery where in sort of a Valentine's
Day type of celebration we have a chocolate.
and champagne tasting, followed by a, right?
I am addicted to chocolates. This is the best.
Sweet on Chocolate provides this incredible chocolate
tasting, thousands of samples. And then we have
a Star -Crossed Lovers planetarium show in the
National Grid Explorer Dome. The next one up
is in June, and that is Savoring Science. That
is our sort of gala that we host at Lemongrass.
Our beer tasting is one of the best in town,
tapping to the most in September. And then we
have other smaller fundraisers. Celebrity bartending
is coming up. We always celebrate St. Patrick's
Day at Kitty Hoynes. That one is on March 12th.
Our celebrities are Senator Chris Ryan. Alex
Canavan, who runs the CNY Women's Network, and
Jim Cirosi, who is the COO of the Syracuse Crunch.
Love Jim. So fabulous lineup. We keep the tips.
We always celebrate also, of course we do because
we're science nerds, pretty geeky over here.
We always celebrate May the 4th with a Star Wars
movie. Love it. So that one will be Saturday,
May 2nd this year. So we do a movie, a happy
hour. And again, that's sort of a smaller fundraiser,
but all great ways to support the most. That's
awesome. And give us your social media handle.
So because we know you can go to the most dot
org. Yeah. Give us your social. Everything is
at most Syracuse. That's perfect. Nice and easy.
Lauren Cochin, president of is it the most museum
or just most? Most. President of most. Science
Center, museum, just amazing. All of it. Everything.
Right in downtown Syracuse. Thank you so much
for your time. I really appreciate it. This was
so much fun. Mike Rennessy signing off on this
Tuesday. Is it Tuesday? Yeah. Tuesday edition
of Good News York. You can find us at Good News
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