The FAO Schwarz Fellow at Museum of Science
Boston, MA
The Museum’s mission is to inspire a lifelong love of science in everyone. Through delightful exhibits, programs, curricula, and professional development offerings for educators, staff make science and scientific thinking accessible, engaging, relevant, and endlessly fun for people of all backgrounds, ages, and abilities. Our vision is a world in which science belongs to each of us for the good of all of us.
About the Fellowship Position
The Fellow will be a museum educator in Museum programs serving the Greater Boston community. As part of their Special Project, the Fellow will also play a lead role in re-imagining and re-envisioning our engagement and youth development/mentoring programs and producing a large-scale museum event for youth.
Direct Service
The FAO Schwarz Fellow will work directly with schools, families, and public audiences of all ages onsite and in the community as a part of the education team.
Onsite work includes teaching inquiry-based interpretations in the Hall of Human Life and the Yawkey Gallery Field Station, facilitating engineering design challenges in the Engineering Design Workshop, and developing and presenting live presentations to museum visitors. Community work will include participating in outreach events and working directly with local high schools and youth organizations.
The Fellow will:
- Work as part of the education team teaching science and making presentations at the Museum to visitors.
- Teach offsite in our programs in the community and at schools.
- Engage in the Museum's youth programs, such as the Summer Youth Internship Program and our youth Professional Development workshops, as an educator and as a mentor.
- Partner with staff to support teens as part of our school partnership programs and impart career, STEM, and communication skills in less formal education settings.
Special Project
The Fellow will help re-envision the Museum’s youth/teen engagement and development programs. As part of this work, the Fellow will play a major role in planning large-scale events for youth, first by shadowing, listening, and collaborating, and then by playing a leadership role in producing a youth event at the Museum.
The Fellow will:
- Shadow education staff through the coordination of events such as Computer Science Education Weekend to learn the many facets and processes of large-scale event planning.
- Incorporate insights gained from active listening and working with youth into planning for these events by being their voice.
- Develop a culminating youth event related to Museum content, special topic or themed heritage month.
- Apply best practices in planning to improve and deliver summer workshops alongside education and human resources staff
LOCATION Boston, MA
WEB mos.org
FOUNDED 1830
STAFF 401
How to Apply
Applicants must be college seniors at accredited four-year colleges or universities on track to graduate between December 1, 2024 and June 31, 2025. They must also be eligible to work in the United States for the duration of the two-year Fellowship.
The deadline to apply is February 1, 2025 at 9:00 pm ET.
Host organizations will select applicants for interviews and make their decisions by the end of April 2025. Fellowships begin in the summer of 2025.
Learn more about Museum of Science by visiting their website. [LINK]
A Closer Look
About The Museum of Science
The Museum is an international beacon for informal STEM education. It engages audiences through exhibits, in-person and digital programs, and curricula. Visitors can explore 110,000 square feet of permanent exhibit space and over 700 hands-on and interactive exhibits. Museum attractions also include the Charles Hayden Planetarium, where visitors explore our universe and beyond, and the Mugar Omni Theater, which wraps audiences in larger-than-life images. Other programming includes live presentations such as Lightning!, forums, and lectures, which further enliven the Museum’s exhibits and engage visitors in lifelong learning.
The Museum also partners with schools and community groups to bring audiences in through programming like School Visits, which impact thousands of PreK-12th grade students annually—and to bring Museum staff and resources out to the community. Its Community Outreach Programs team presents engineering design challenges and other engaging, hands-on STEM activities to community partners across the Greater Boston area. Digital programming launched during the pandemic continues to engage school and family audiences through a robust set of English and Spanish content accessible anytime anywhere including live, interactive presentations, podcasts, and family activities.
The Museum is also focused on the Boston Science Common, a decade-long effort to transform our Blue Wing into a space where our communities and government, academic, and industrial sectors can come together and tackle today’s most urgent science-related issues. The Boston Science Common will be common ground for members of our diverse communities to break down silos, foster authentic cross-sector dialogue, and cultivate shared understanding and optimism around overcoming today’s challenges and building a more sustainable tomorrow. This initiative will focus on addressing our communities’ most urgent questions related to BioTech, AI & Data Science, Climate & Sustainability, and more, helping the Museum bring science to the public at the pace of change.
Impact
Our Impact
- The Museum of Science works to measure its visitor experience by utilizing COVES – the Collaboration for Ongoing Visitor Experience, a tool designed to unite museums across the country to systematically collect, analyze, and report on visitor experience data.
- The Museum is nationally known for its research and evaluation on Universal Design for museums; its COVES system; and participation in the National Informal STEM Education Network, a community of informal educators and scientists with over 600 partners across the country.
- The cities of Boston and Cambridge have recognized the Museum for its energy and sustainability efforts; Work Without Limits, a Massachusetts disability employment initiative, has named the Museum an Employer of Choice; El Planeta awarded the Museum Best Tourist Attraction for the Massachusetts Latinx population; and Boston Magazine named the Museum of Science the Best Family Friendly Museum for 2021.
- In 2022, EiE’s newest Computer Science Essentials curriculum was announced as a CODiE Award Finalist in the Best Coding & Computational Thinking Solution category.
Policies
COVID POLICY
All staff, volunteers, and interns will be required to show proof that they are fully vaccinated against COVID-19 as a condition of employment. Individuals that will be working on site (any site, including schools, other Museums, etc.) must receive their first vaccination shot no later than September 13, 2021 and be fully vaccinated by October 25, 2021. The Museum will consider an exemption from the vaccine requirement if the staff member, volunteer, or intern is unable to get vaccinated due to a qualifying medical disability or a sincerely held religious objection. The Museum is not required to provide an accommodation or exemption from the vaccine requirement if doing so would pose a direct threat to others in the workplace or would create an undue hardship for the Museum. For more information please request our Respiratory Illness Prevention Policy.
NONDISCRIMINATION POLICY
It is the policy of the Museum of Science that all employees should be able to enjoy a work environment free of discrimination and harassment. This requires that each employee treat with courtesy and respect every other employee and individual with whom the employee has contact in the course of the employee’s employment. The Museum strictly forbids discrimination or harassment of any kind, including discrimination based race, color, religion, creed, gender, sex (including pregnancy), sexual orientation, gender identity or expression, national origin, ancestry, age, marital status, citizenship status, genetic predisposition or carrier status, disability, military status, status as a disabled, recently separated veteran, Armed Forces service medal veteran, or other covered veteran or any other protected status under applicable law. This policy extends to each and every level of our operation.
Accordingly, any form of harassment, whether by a fellow employee, manager, supervisor, or by a third party doing business with the Museum, will not be tolerated.
If an employee believes that he or she has been the subject of discrimination or harassment or that he or she has witnessed it in the workplace, the employee should immediately bring concerns to the attention of Human Resources, his or her supervisor, or any member of management with whom the employee is comfortable.
Compensation & Benefits
Compensation
First year: $50,000 (includes $2,000 start-of-Fellowship bonus)
Second year: $55,000 (include a $3,000 end-of Fellowship bonus)
Benefits
+ Health insurance: Medical, dental, and vision insurance, health/dependent care flex spending plan, short- and long-term disability
+ Vacation days: 15 vacation days, 12 holidays, 10 sick days
+ Retirement: plans available
+ Other: free parking, T accessibility, life insurance, employee referral program, tuition assistance, professional development
Other benefits may apply.
For general questions about compensation, please see the Fellowship FAQ.
Typical Work Schedule
The Fellow will work Tuesday-Saturday (9:00 AM – 5:00 PM) with occasional holidays and evenings to support the education team throughout the calendar year. This will primarily be an onsite role with the ability to work from home up to one day per week as agreed upon with the manager.
Approximately 90 percent of our Education staff work schedules that are not Monday-Friday.