UChicago paleontologist Paul Sereno and community leaders announced Scitopia Chicago, a community science education center based in the Washington Park neighborhood, at an April 14 press conference.
The center, set to open in 2029, will provide teens on Chicago’s South Side with resources to explore science through extracurricular programming and mentoring, as well as serving as a community hub for the neighborhood, according to Sereno.
Scitopia Chicago’s proposed site—a now-vacant lot next to the Garfield Green Line station—will hold small-group labs, classrooms, lecture and exhibition rooms, a library space, a café, and a large central museum.
According to a brochure for the project, that location will help the area become an “anchor for neighborhood corridor revitalization,” provide resources and connections for local schools, and serve as a unique South Side destination for Chicago residents and tourists alike.
The center will hold programming across scientific disciplines and serve as a home for a “conservatory-vivarium-museum” to attract foot traffic to the neighborhood.
“I want to see Washington Park full of people again,” Dwayne Daniel, a Washington Park resident and teacher, said in a video announcement for the center. “If [institutions] really want to invest and help grow a community, this is ideal…. The infrastructure in this neighborhood is here already.”
Sereno announced the project alongside Third Ward Alderman Pat Dowell and other leaders in the Washington Park community. It will be overseen by the nonprofit Scitopia Foundation, the board of which includes the president of Washington Parks Residents’ Advocacy Council, the senior minister at the Church of the Good Shepherd, and several UChicago leaders. The center’s advisors include leaders from across Chicago. The building was designed by Architecture for Public Benefit, a firm that specializes in community-centered design.
The center will serve as “the beating heart of a transit synergistic corridor center,” Sereno told the Maroon in an interview, with a design focus on equitable, transit-oriented development and based on a “learning in community” model that will be “intensively hands-on across all the sciences, with media [education] thrown in.”
UChicago’s Fossil Lab in Washington Park, which Sereno helped to design with the intention of being accessible to the local community, was a dry run of the Scitopia Chicago project, he said. The new project is the outcome of “over 25 years” of outreach, visiting installations, thinking about hands-on spaces, and researching the impacts of after-school programs on teens, said Sereno.
Scitopia Chicago’s primary goal is to expose teens to science in a community-based environment. “As much as I love schools and their training… I didn’t learn fundamentally about science in schools.… Some have good relations with school, but many… are nonplussed,” Sereno said. “What if you take this person to a different environment? And you say… ‘I need you to show up and tell me what you’re interested in.’”
Admission will be free for all visitors, according to Sereno, and the center may be able to provide small stipends to ensure students will be able to participate in programming.
The center is now entering a fundraising push for a building anticipated to cost $51 million and an additional endowment to ensure the long-term viability of the project.
Sereno asked that UChicago professors donate time to help facilitate center activities. “Give us something. And I bet some of the best classes are [going to] be done for free.” And to the community more broadly, he said: “Join us. We’re moving, and we love the participation of anybody from the community.”
Though the center is not affiliated with UChicago, Sereno expects it to improve the relationship between the University and its surrounding communities. “We have a mental lapse [about community relations], and people don’t know what to do about it.… [T]he thing to do about it is to do what we’re doing, to build social capital. And I think it will have a major effect.”
