With conversations about “teen takeovers” and curfews swirling as the new school year begins this week, Discovery Place wants to play a larger role in creating more opportunities for youth.
This week, the organization will launch a series of programs for sixth through 12th graders. The “Next Gen Collective,” as they’re calling it, includes:
- Explorers (grades 6–12), beginning September 19, helps beginners “spark curiosity” through camps and monthly workshops.
- Scholars (grades 9–12) offers mentorship and 6-to-8-week afterschool programs for students to deepen their relationship with STEM.
- Apprentices (grades 8–12) is a cohort program that builds communication skills and confidence.
- Fellows (grades 11–12) is a paid 12-week internship for advanced students, training them for the workforce. Fellows will complete 100 hours at Discovery Place’s museums in summer 2027.
Also, Discovery Place recently introduced a youth membership, for ages 14-20, at $49.95 per year — about half the price of a regular membership.
Earlier this month I sat down with Chief Learning Officer Dr. Nikki Hill at Discovery Place Science in Uptown to talk about the new initiatives and the thought behind them. Her answers were interesting, and so is her backstory, so I’m putting the rest of this in her own words.
Hill is a mother of four (16, 18, 22, and 27 years old) who began her career as a kindergarten teacher in Columbia, South Carolina. After four years in that job, she joined EdVenture Children’s Museum as an education director, where she worked for 14 years, eventually becoming executive vice president and interim CEO. She came to Discovery Place in 2023.
Here she is, in her own words (edited for brevity and clarity) …
“Growing up in Hartsville, South Carolina, we came on a field trip here in the fourth grade. It was my first field trip to a museum. I remember walking in and saying, ‘Wow, oh my goodness. This is a place where it’s about learning and exploration, and nobody’s telling me I’m doing it wrong.’
“Twenty years ago, I remember sitting in these same conversations talking about, ‘What do we do for our youth? What do we do for our future workforce?’ Nothing has changed in those conversations today. … One in five residents in Mecklenburg County is under the age of 18. So that means we have a lot of work to do. We can’t do it by ourselves, and we can’t feel like we have all of the answers because we don’t.
“When I started at Discovery Place, we had a youth development program that was really answering the call of what our community partners [such as Bank of America and Truist] wanted to see as far as our youth.
“Over time, we felt like we needed to really figure out, what do we want to accomplish? It’s fine to have open access, but what are we really providing our future, our young folks? What are we giving them the opportunities to experience? The Next Gen Collective is essentially creating that pipeline of opportunity. It’s going to allow students to come in and choose their path. What do you want to learn? What do you want to experiment with? Where do you see your future?
“Youth today deal with things that we cannot even imagine in this world. Four out of 10 students in high school right now think about hopelessness. They think about where they belong. Where are they supposed to go? There’s a lot of depression. And so we have to look at this as not just about content. It’s not just about learning, and it’s not just about STEM. It is about the whole child.
“I asked my 16-year-old, I said, ‘Let’s go to the museum and do something fun.’ And my 16-year-old looked at me and she said, ‘And what would that be?’ The thing [my kids] tell me is that we have to make these experiences intentional. It’s not just about providing something to provide. It’s not just about picking things that we think they want to see. It’s about asking those questions.
“We also have to remember that there are so many children, youth, that have no idea if they’re going to be here tomorrow. We talk about going outside. We talk about drinking from the hose outside when we were kids. Kids today, some of them can’t go outside. Some of them don’t know where to go to be safe or to feel like they have an opportunity to see what the next day looks like. … We’ve got to teach them about how to live in this world that sometimes doesn’t feel like it’s for them. How do we create those opportunities for that? How do we create that safe space?
“Sometimes the phone is safe. If you get on your phone and you’re sitting in your corner, you know that you’re there. You know that you’re alive. You know that’s your place. How do we make those experiences and opportunities other places?
“I think that’s true anywhere. In rural areas, you’re trying to figure out the same things. In cities, you’re trying to figure out where you go and where you’re not to go.
“It is about bringing that village together to let them know that we’re all here for them. That we’re all in your corner, that we’ve all got your back. That’s something that my kids tell me every single day. That we have to make sure as adults we’re not looking at them as problems.”