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About Our Education/Outreach Program

  • Our website offers more than a dozen virtual exhibits, online activities for children, “Ask the Expert”, educator curriculum guides, and collections data for researchers.
  • Teacher training workshops are conducted throughout the year, reaching 350+ K-12 educators per year. Teachers gain inquiry-based experience working in UT-Austin labs and in the field, while earning professional development credits.
  • The enormously successful Museum Express program takes scientists and educational staff into area K–12 classrooms for presentations using specimens from the collections, and serves 4,500+ schoolchildren per year. Scholarships are available for disadvantaged classrooms through gifts from Tokyo Electron America, Temple-Inland Foundation, ConocoPhillips, and interested individuals.
  • Family Fossil Fun Days, held twice a year, attract Austin area children and parents who participate in activities focusing on dinosaurs and prehistoric life.
  • Identification Days, held twice a year, draw several hundred visitors bearing specimens for identification by scientists and other experts.
  • More than 4,000 Austin-area students participate in guided tours each year. Tours are conducted by The University of Texas at Austin undergraduate docents. Tours for K–12 students included a pre-visit lesson plan, hands-on activities and exhibit worksheets, and focused on multiple themes from the Texas Essential Knowledge and Skills (TEKS) in science, the state curriculum guidelines.
  • Periodic lecture series are coordinated with The University of Texas at Austin’s adult lifetime learning groups.
  • Curriculum guides designed to help K–12 teachers utilize information from the Museum's exhibits are available for downloading on the website. Curriculum guides are based on the K–12 TEKS for science curriculum objectives.
  • Free use of Discovery Kits for teachers to use in the classroom, appropriate for grades K–8. Kits are based on earth and life science themes from the TEKS. Each features lessons and reproducible activity sheets, manipulative and investigative materials, a step-by-step procedure, a vocabulary list, and assessment and extension suggestions.
  • Scientists and educational staff are active in local and statewide museum and informal science education associations and boards. They also serve as consultants for science education projects around the state and regularly visit Austin-area schools and community organizations to promote the Texas Natural Science Center and encourage science education.