Recorder Newspapers profiles Liberty Sci’s Emlyn Koster

Recorder Community Newspapers talks with CEO of Jersey City’s Liberty Science Center, Emlyn Koster:

Emlyn Koster, CEO of The Liberty Science Center, stands by his exhibits

Emlyn Koster is a man with a mission. The Chatham resident who is the director of Jersey City’s Liberty Science Center sees the role of the institution he leads as facilitating the incorporation of science into the life of the community.

Since undertaking leadership of the center in 1996, he has overseen a massive expansion and reinvention of the museum to incorporate ground-breaking technological advances. The idea that motivates him, however, is not just to dazzle visitors with technology but also to use those facilities for the betterment of society.

“The accountability of the museum,” Koster said in a recent interview, ”is to draw the public into issues of importance between science and society, between science and the environment. We need to be necessary, not just nice.”

The Liberty Science Center, named by Parents Magazine as one of the 10 top science centers in the nation, is a far cry from a traditional museum. The emphasis is not on items in a collection but rather on visitor participation. Even before the nearly two-year-long renovation of the facility between 2005 and 2007, Liberty Science Center left visitors thinking not about what they saw but about what they did. That is now even more the case, and Koster hopes everyone will take a trip to this treasure around the corner that is one of New Jersey’s top attractions.

Article >>

|