All Osher Fellows

Dr. Kim Gomez, a faculty member of the UCLA Graduate School of Education and Information, has stated, "Mathematics and science learning is carried on the wings of reading and writing and talk...I think it is simply impossible, certainly highly unlikely, that students can really learn mathematics and science—other than memorize for the moment—without having well-developed literacy skills." 
Gomez conducts research in how literacy skills play a critical role in mathematics and science education. She has noted that educators may think of students as proficient in English, and because of this not recognize when those students need support in specialized vocabulary and concepts so they can participate in discussion, reading, and writing about science topics.

Gomez has also tested protocols to directly ameliorate the literacy skills problem by using digital technology, afterschool activities, and real and virtual communities to support teaching and learning.  Through collaboration with classroom teachers she has also developed new approaches to teaching math and science that emphasize language comprehension and communication; these approaches have proven successful for students and teachers.

A performance artist and journalist from Mexico, Guillermo worked with our exhibit and arts program staff on navigation ideas related to his innovative performance work on North/South borders. He also gave workshop sessions with our teaching staff, local bilingual teachers, and high school Explainers on cross-cultural communication issues between the United States and Mexico relations. In June 1992, he received the prestigious MacArthur Fellowship Award.

Dr. Alison Gopnik is a professor of cognitive psychology and affiliate professor of philosophy at the University of California, Berkeley. She is an internationally recognized leader in the study of children’s learning and development and was the first to argue that children’s minds could help us understand deep philosophical questions. Gopnik is the author of more than 100 journal articles and books, including the bestselling and critically acclaimed The Scientist in the Crib and The Philosophical Baby. She has written widely about cognitive science and psychology for Science, the Times Literary Supplement, the New York Review of Books, the New York Times, and New Scientist.

Sadly, Professor Richard Gregory passed away on May 17, 2010. His legacy as world-renowned visual perception scientist, and his cherished friendship and collaboration with the Exploratorium, lives on in his influential research, wit, and energetic support for hands-on science centers. He was the author/editor of numerous books on perception including The Oxford Companion to the Mind, The Intelligent Eye and Eye and Brain, and was founding editor of the journal Perception in 1972. He went on to start the Exploratory, the first hands-on science center in the UK in 1987. He was also a professor at the University of Bristol and was elected the first president of ECSITE (The European Network for Science Centres and Museums) when it was created in 1989. He was an advisor in the creation of the Mind Zone in the Millennium Dome from 1997 to 1999, and consulted on exhibit selection and content for the science center Phaeno in Wolfsburg, Germany, in 2000.

Elaine started her museum career at the Boston Children’s Museum and was part of the senior staff group that planned the museum’s 1979 move from its original location to a new warehouse facility along Fort Point Channel. She spent five years as deputy director of the United States Holocaust Museum in Washington, D.C., and two years as deputy director for the National Museum of the American Indian. She also has been involved in Te Papa (New Zealand’s national museum), the Cranbrook Institute, the Dubai Municipality Children’s Museum, and the National Discovery Museum (Thailand). She writes extensively; many of her essays appear in Civilizing the Museum (2006). In the essay “Moving the Museum,” she discusses the Boston Children’s Museum’s roller-coaster experiences during four years of planning for a move and the first year in its new building. 

She is a board member for The International Council of Museums (ICOM), and a frequent keynote speaker at museum conferences nationally and internationally. She holds a master’s degree in education and originally taught art for K–6 before moving into the museum world. 

Dr. Kris Gutiérrez is a faculty member at the University of Colorado at Boulder’s School of Education. Her research interests address the relationship between literacy, culture, and learning, and target how students appropriate cultural concepts. Specifically, her work focuses on the processes by which people negotiate meaning in culturally organized contexts, using language and literacies that are embedded within socio-historical traditions. Issues of equity and excellence are recurrent themes in her work.

Gutiérrez has conducted long-term ethnographic studies across various school districts. Her studies have centered on the cultural dimensions of literacy learning, the social organization of formal and nonformal learning environments, and the effects of new forms of mediation on student and teacher learning. She has also studied the effects of new policies and reform initiatives on English learners and their schooling practices; and reading and writing development in elementary- and secondary-school-age students, including English Learners and students from migrant farm worker backgrounds.

In 2006–2007, she was a Fellow at the prestigious Center for Advanced Studies in the Behavioral Sciences at Stanford University. Most recently, Professor Gutiérrez served as a member of President Obama’s Education Policy Transition Team. She is currently serving as president of the American Educational Research Association.

Cultural anthropologist and prolific author, Edward has explored cross-cultural perception and behavior and intercultural relations. He developed Proxemics, a field of study that looks at the personal and social space people create in different cultural situations. During the second part of his fellowship, he worked with a wide variety of Exploratorium staff on issues concerning cross-cultural communication and perception in exhibits and programs within the museum. He returned as an Osher Fellow in November 1995 for the first part of a two-part fellowship. He lent his unique perspectives to a wide variety of exhibit development and program efforts throughout the Exploratorium. During his fellowship, he concentrated on the refocusing of the floor project. Numerous provocative discussions were held with large numbers of staff in which Edward challenged many of the assumptions regarding the organization and content of the Exploratorium’s public environment. Many of the ideas raised in these discussions became key themes in the refocusing planning effort. He also met with teaching staff to discuss cultural issues related to working with diversity in the schools, and he held some lively sessions with our high school Explainers on the cultural differences the Explainers encounter as they assist the visitors on the exhibit floor.

Director of the Scottish Council for Research Education in Edinburgh, Wynne has worked to encourage schools to create learning situations in which the processes of science are used to develop conceptual understandings. She has also conducted extensive research in how children and adults use out-of-school experiences in more formal learning settings. Her wide-ranging research was helpful in creating the pedagogical infrastructure of our National Center for Teacher Education, and in planning the Institute for Inquiry’s inquiry-based curriculum programs.

The late Jan Hawkins was the director of the Center for Children and Technology at the Educational Development Center (EDC) in New York City. The EDC’s innovative projects provide highly diverse youth with access to media technology. Jan’s experience in effective learning assessment was invaluable to the Exploratorium’s Center for Teaching and Learning projects, as well as visitor research/evaluation efforts.



Professor in the Graduate School of Arts & Social Sciences at Lesley College and co-director of the Program Evaluation and Research Group, George has conducted extensive research on learning in museums. He has a doctorate in chemistry, has developed science curriculum, and has been active in school reform efforts. Associated with the Exploratorium for many years, George is an advisor for Institute for Inquiry programs and was an evaluator for the Traits of Life project.

California State Poet Laureate Juan Felipe Herrera is an acclaimed poet and author, and has taught poetry, art, and performance in different settings such as prisons, libraries, and community centers. He is Chair of creative writing at UC Riverside, and was named Poet Laureate of California in early 2012. The appointment is the first for a Latino in California. His parents were migrant farm workers; his writing articulates the life experiences of Mexican-Americans. Herrera commented, “This award is for all the young writers who want to put kindness inside every word throughout the state, because kindness is the heart of creativity.” 

Juan holds a bachelor’s and master’s degree in social anthropology from UCLA and Stanford, respectively, and has an MFA from the University of Iowa. His numerous poetry volumes include: 187 Reasons Mexicanos Can't Cross the Border, Undocuments 1971–2007, and Border-Crosser with a Lamborghini Dream. He has also written children's books including, The Upside Down Boy, Laughing Out Loud, I Fly, and Cinnamon Girl, winner of the Américas Award. He has received numerous awards such as the National Book Critics Circle Award in poetry, a Guggenheim Fellowship, a PEN award, California Arts Council grants, National Endowment for the Arts fellowships, and a UCB Regents Fellowship.

Tim is an artist, tinkerer, filmmaker, and writer. He is also producer and director of two TV series: “The Secret Life of Office Machines” and “The Secret Life of Machines,” broadcast in England and the U.S. on the Discovery cable channel. Tim was a wonderful resource for exhibits in almost every area. He served as an overall burst of energy for our machine shop staff, and created numerous ideas that added to and improved existing exhibits in electricity, heat, and temperature.