The National Association for Research in Science and Technology (NARST) has selected Megan Ennes as this year’s recipient of its Early Career Research Award. Ennes joined the Florida Museum of Natural History as its curator of museum education in 2019, the same year she obtained her doctoral degree.
“It was clear to me early on that Megan would become a creative and innovative scholar,” wrote Ennes’ graduate advisor, Gail Jones, a distinguished professor of science education at North Carolina State University. “She has amazing skills in teaching and communicating about science.”
Since 2019, Ennes has been conducting research, developing education programming and, more recently, serving as director of the museum’s Thompson Earth Systems Institute.
The NARST Early Career Award is annually given to a member who has made significant contributions to their field of study within seven years of earning their doctorate. Among the more standard criteria for the award, such as the number of papers published, conference lectures given and grants received, NARST places a strong emphasis on the degree to which the person nominated has helped steer their discipline in new directions.
Ennes, whose specialty is finding effective ways for museums to teach and inspire individuals and families, did her best to keep her hands on the wheel in 2020 when museums veered off course after the outbreak of Covid 19 forced them to close. She studied the ways in which museum educators responded to the shutdown, described the harried but innovative ways in which they pivoted to an entirely digital audience and reported on what worked well and what fell flat in a series of scientific papers written to help her colleagues learn from each other’s experience.
She has also published studies pointing out hazards on the road ahead, like barriers to a career in museum education and obstacles that prevent children and their families from nurturing and engaging with their passion for the natural world.
“The research that Megan and I have been conducting gets at the heart of what it means to motivate youth to engage in science,” Jones wrote. “We want people of all ages to enjoy science in their everyday lives.
Source: Megan Ennes, mennes@floridamuseum.ufl.edu
Media contact: Jerald Pinson, jpinson@flmnh.ufl.edu, 352-294-0452