News from the UL Lafayette Science Museum

It has been almost a year and a half since we partnered with Lafayette Consolidated Government to reopen the museum. This partnership has given new life to the museum and reinvigorated our exhibits, field trips, and special events.

With help from the UL Lafayette College of Sciences, we’ve created new exhibits such as “Natural Born Killers of the Mesozoic,” “Mighty Math,” “The Physics of Energy, Color, & Sound,” and “Earth from Space: Satellite Imagery of Louisiana's Deltas.” We began hosting school field trips from across the state; it is such a welcome sound to hear excited children in the museum again! In addition, we launched our Halliburton-sponsored STEM Saturdays program, which offers extra hands-on activities for museum visitors on the second Saturday of each month.

During the summer of 2023 we expanded our hours to include Wednesdays. On Wednesday 31 May 2023 we kicked off our “Summer of Science”, with lots of activities to keep you engaged and entertained! We learned why we have seasons; about the different compositions of sand; and we even had Animals of Australia visit us, thanks to Schoolhouse Safari!

We will close with a few thoughts from Museum Director Dr. Jennifer Hargrave.

As summer draws to a close, we want to thank our members and visitors for making our “Summer of Science” such a success! We had nearly 7,000 visitors this summer. It was wonderful seeing so many of you exploring our museum and extra events. Just because school has started doesn’t mean the fun has ended though. We have many exciting events planned this fall. We hope you continue to visit us to see all that’s new. We have updated school field trip information on the museum website, so get a head start and schedule your field trips now! One of our favorite events, Documentary Date Night, made its much anticipated return in July with a great turnout. I want to personally thank our new friends at Aqueos for sponsoring this event. We have at least three more planned for 28 September, 30 November, and 25 January. Mark your calendars and join us! In addition, Oats and Marino has sponsored the update of our “Space Travel and Robotics” exhibit, and we have partnered with KLFY to update our Weather exhibit. We are so grateful for these sponsorships that allow us to continue to provide quality exhibits for you.

We invite you to support our mission to provide educational, engaging experiences in STEM fields to the community, K-12 students, and University students, provide innovative research opportunities, and preserve current and future museum collections for use in exhibits, classrooms and scientific research. We have a variety of opportunities for businesses and individuals to provide financial support so that we can continue to expand and enrich our programming and exhibits. For more information about how you can play a pivotal role in the museum's work and its mission, please email me (Dr. Jennifer Hargrave) or call 337-482-0678.