David Ellis ’58 retires after 12 years as president of Boston’s Museum of Science, leaving a legacy of innovation, education, and progress.
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No one can argue that he deserves the break. Since taking the helm of the museum in 1990, Ellis has helped the institution strengthen its educational impact on the community and attract record audiences with “blockbuster” exhibits and a range of interactive activities, enhanced the role of technology throughout all programs, and consistently balanced the budget, which now has a surplus of $500,000 to $1 million rolled back into operations. Now 172 years strong, the Museum of Science remains one of the world’s largest science centers, with the greatest attendance rate of any New England cultural institution (1.6 million visitors last year alone). And this grand community landmark, holding court along the Charles River with wings in both Boston and Cambridge, has had as profound an effect on Ellis as he has had on the museum. He speaks of it with such unabashed joy, it’s hard to imagine he’d ever want to leave.
“One of the greatest things about working at a museum is to get excited by what other people are seeing and doing,” he says. “It gives me tremendous energy.”
Growing up in Huntingdon, Pa., he hadn’t envisioned a life ruled by science, although he received early exposure to it as a member of a 4-H Club. As a young boy, the son and grandson of college presidents (both of Pennsylvania’s Juniata College) enjoyed camping, working in his grandfather’s fruit orchard, and traveling with his father on church and college business. He was valedictorian of his high school class in 1954 and started Haverford with the intention to study business. However, his chemistry courses with professor William Buel Meldrum set him on a different course.
“He made links to the world we live in,” he says. “He made chemistry relevant to new things that were being discovered around that time, like artificial flavoring.”
He graduated with a bachelor’s degree in chemistry and then indulged in his passion for travel, backpacking around Europe with his friend and classmate John Hershey ’58. For the first time since the beginning of the Cold War, Russia was open to individual tourists, so they decided to see the country for themselves. Ellis remembers having to walk across the Berlin Wall to get to Russia and surrendering his identification at “Checkpoint Charlie:” “It was frightening to give up your passport and get nothing back.” He and Hershey flew to Moscow in the equivalent of a DC-3, and found the city to be very different from anything they had ever seen.
“Early in the morning, people would sweep the streets with brooms made of twigs tied together,” says Ellis, who also remembers courteous citizens, beautiful subways, and superb food. “Moscow was quite Western compared to the rest of Russia.”
He and Hershey also went to Leningrad, which he describes as “even more cosmopolitan than Moscow.” He was moved by the fact that, 10 years after World War II, the people of the city still discussed the horrors of the Germans trying to starve them out.
Upon returning home, Ellis entered Massachusetts Institute of Technology, where he met his wife, Marion Schmitt, in a cafeteria line at the graduate house. (Her father was Frank Schmitt, former chairman of MIT’s biology department, professor, and founder of the neuroscience research program.) Ellis received his Ph.D. in chemistry in 1962 and joined the University of New Hampshire, where he worked for the next 16 years as first an assistant professor of chemistry, then vice provost and vice president for academic affairs.
In 1978 he became the third generation Ellis to be a college president, heading Lafayette College in Easton, Pa., until 1990. “My father didn’t encourage me directly,” he says, “but most likely by osmosis.”
Years later, he would realize that his tenure at Lafayette was more than adequate preparation for his future with the Museum of Science. “There are many similarities between being a college president and a museum president,” he says. “The mission comes first, everyone functions as a community, and museum staff members are often academic and, like faculty members, they are active, individualistic, and talented.”
In 1989, after more than a decade at Lafayette, Ellis enrolled in the Advanced Management Program at Harvard Business School. The summer after he completed the program he announced that he would leave Lafayette a year hence, believing he would open his own business. But he met several people who told him that the Museum of Science had been searching for a president and he would have been perfect for the job—if it hadn’t already been offered to someone else. The announcement would be made soon, they said.
The announcement was never made. And, after a series of interviews, the position was offered to Ellis.
“It was a perfect fit,” he says. “It combined my top three interests of education, science, and administration.”
When he started, he knew he had significant shoes to fill. Explorer Bradford Washburn had put the museum on the map, securing land by the Charles River and building new wings to house planetariums and other attractions. Roger Nichols, Ellis’s predecessor, had brought the first “blockbuster” traveling exhibits and established the Mugar Omni Theater for giant-screen films. “I knew that the museum was one of Boston’s oldest and most revered institutions,” says Ellis, “but I was worried that everyone thought only in terms of what the next big show would be. No one could explain what appealed to them about the museum itself.” There were financial concerns as well: The region was in recession, and the museum’s fiscal year had closed with a $4.5 million deficit.
Within the first two years of Ellis’s presidency, the museum balanced its budget, initiated three construction projects, and implemented an innovative long-range exhibit plan called “Science Is An Activity.” Already in development when Ellis arrived, the plan called for six science activity centers and 18 related theme exhibits, with the goal of helping visitors understand what it’s like to be a scientist. They’re encouraged to learn science by practicing specific thinking skills, organized into activity centers focused on a different process of scientific inquiry. Visitors apply these skills in associated theme exhibits. Three activity centers have been completed: observation, classification, and experimentation. “Making Models” is under development. “Science Is An Activity” was awarded several grants by the National Science Foundation, and influenced the development of similar exhibits at other science centers.
“People enjoy it because it’s interactive,” says Ellis. “It makes links to the world around them”…much as Professor Meldrum did with chemistry during Ellis’s Haverford days.
Throughout his 12 years as president and director, Ellis focused on strengthening the museum’s adult programming and education, entering into partnerships with universities such as Harvard, Tufts, and MIT to bring leading scientists to share their research. Under his leadership, the museum teemed with curiosity-seekers drawn to mammoth exhibits like 1997’s exploration of Leonardo da Vinci, and to Omni films like Everest, Kilimanjaro, and Shackleton’s Antarctic Adventure; in 2001, the theater ranked number one in North America and number five worldwide in giant-screen theater paid admissions. Ellis also oversaw a strategic plan for increasing diversity, making the museum more accessible to all visitors and to the community at large, and created a new guest services training program for all staff. It wasn’t unusual to see Ellis himself at the box office in his red lab coat, answering questions and directing traffic.
In 1995, Ellis and the museum’s senior management recognized the importance of incorporating current trends in science and technology throughout the museum. “Technology touches every person’s life almost every day,” says Ellis. “To not include it would seem like a mistake; we’d be missing a glorious opportunity to connect with people’s lives.” He became involved in crafting an initiative that called for making technology and science equal partners in exhibits, adding new educational programs especially for adults, and creating a new wing that represented the high place of science and technology in everyone’s daily lives.
The first step in this initiative was to integrate Boston’s Computer Museum with the Museum of Science in 1999, bringing with it such programs as the Computer Clubhouse for underserved youth, the Technology Business Breakfast Series, and The Virtual Fish Tank, where you can launch a simulated fish into a virtual tank and explore the ecological interactions among species. Then, in 2001, the Current Science and Technology Center (CS&T) opened, presenting and interpreting science and technology news and designing exhibits in response to audience questions about that news. Right now, for example, visitors can learn more about the International Space Station; the AbioColor Heart, the first fully implantable replacement heart; and the Capsule Camera, a swallowable camera that helps diagnose disease in the lower intestine. Also this year, the Frontiers of Health Science Series, supported by a grant from the National Institutes of Health SEPA program, brought guest presenters from research institutions like Harvard’s School of Public Health and Medical School to the CS&T stage to discuss their work.
The CS&T received the 2002 Gold Muse Award from the American Association of Museums (AAM) for “the highest standards of excellence in the use of media and technology for interpretation and education in science.”
Looking back on his accomplishments, Ellis is pleased with the evolution of the museum, and believes its focus is key to its success: “If you try to be everything to everyone, you lose sight of the focus.” He is, however, looking at ways to bring other genres into the museum. Although he once passed on the popular Rolling Stones giant-screen film because it had nothing to do with science, he agreed to let the Omni Theater feature a film about Michael Jordan “because it encourages young people to be all that they can.” He’s also studying the ways science and art come together, and how painting and dance could find a home at the museum.
There are many aspects of the museum that presently occupy Ellis’s mind, and many events to anticipate in the near future—in November, the exhibit “The Quest for Immortality: Treasures of Ancient Egypt” will bring to the museum the largest selection of ancient artifacts ever lent by Egypt for display in North America. So why has he decided to announce his retirement now? “After I announced my wish to give emphasis to technology, trustees of the museum asked me if this is what I wanted to take on for the next 10 years,” he says. “I considered this and realized that I was tired of working 70-80 hours a week. I wanted more control of my time.”
He’ll stay on until a replacement is found, and then he and wife Marion will spend some quality time at their house in Cambridge (right across the street from the museum). They’ll also travel, visiting daughters Kathryn and Lorna, who live in Durham, N.H., and Audrey, who resides in Italy. Ellis will continue to be involved in community programs like ElderHostel, an informal learning service for people 55 and older. “I once read a book,” he says, “that advised retirees to give back, have fun, and stay active.” He’ll do all three.
And of course, there’s always the anachronistic seaside cabin in Maine to remind David Ellis that, as integral as technology is to all our lives, it never hurts to remember simpler times.
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After World War II, under the leadership of Bradford Washburn, the Society sold the Berkeley Street building, changed its name to the Boston Museum of Science (later, dropping Boston from the name) and negotiated with the Metropolitan District Commission a 99-year lease for land spanning the Charles River Basin, now known as Science Park. In 1948, the museum designed and built the first traveling planetarium in New England to promote the development of a new museum building. The cornerstone for the new museum was laid at Science Park a year later, and a temporary building was erected to house the museum’s collections and staff.
In 1951, the first wing of the new museum officially opened, making it the first to embrace all the sciences under one roof. Comprising 14,000 square feet of exhibit space, the new museum’s first wing was already much larger than the entire exhibits area of the old Berkeley building. That same year, one of the most endearing and memorable symbols of the museum, “Spooky,” the Great Horned Owl, was given to the museum as an owlet. Spooky lived to the age of 38 years, becoming the oldest known living member of his species.During the next two decades. the museum greatly expanded its exhibits and facilities. In 1956, the museum was successful in campaigning for a Science Park MBTA station that now brings visitors to within 200 yards of the museum. The Charles Hayden Planetarium, funded by major gifts from the Charles Hayden Foundation, opened in 1958.
By 1968, further building expansion was under way as ground was broken for the museum’s west wing which was completed in the early 1970s.