VOLUNTEERING: Jim Meyer
Retired Kodak’s chief technical officer for Kodak making a difference at Rochester Museum and Science Center
By Mike Costanza
When the Rochester Museum and Science Center wants to create an exhibit using in-house resources, it turns to its all-volunteer technical advisory group (TAG).
Using their knowledge and technical skills, the group’s members design and build the kinds of interactive, hands-on exhibits that draw visitors to the RMSC year-after-year.
“We do something creative for the community and we get a lot of personal satisfaction for it,” said Jim Meyer, TAG’s 81-year-old founder and de facto leader.
Located on Rochester’s East Avenue, the RMSC offers visitors of all ages three floors of colorful and educational science and history-themed exhibits, along with the opportunity to enjoy demonstrations of different parts of the sciences. Meyer began volunteering for the nonprofit in 1990, when he joined its board of trustees. After retiring from his job as the director of research and chief technical officer for Kodak in 1998, he decided that in addition to serving on the board, he wanted to attack a problem the RMSC was experiencing.
“We could not afford back then to pay what exhibit houses were charging for hands-on physical science exhibits,” the Fairport resident said.
Meyer convinced four or five craftsmen, scientists, engineers and other skilled individuals that he’d come to know through his job to volunteer to help him build such exhibits.
“I was creative and I was good with my hands. I like to build things,” Meyer said. “I attracted a lot of people who had similar interests and that’s how TAG came about.”
Almost all of TAG’s members have been retirees. Down through the years, they’ve designed and built more than 100 unique, hands-on, interactive exhibits. Of that number, one allowed visitors to remotely control a model of an underwater robot, another featured a rocket that was powered by the electrolysis of water and a third was an interactive veterinary lab. TAG worked with Lollipop Farm, the Humane Society of Greater Rochester’s animal shelter, to create the lab.
One longtime favorite of visitors is the Erie Canal Locks exhibit. Located in the Water Worlds Gallery, it features two working scale models of canal locks that control passage on an oval stretch of “canal water.” Visitors can remotely run a tug through the waterway while operating the locks. It’s a particular hit with kids.
“It works just exactly like the real thing,” Meyer said. “The kids have to figure out what doors have to be closed, what valves have to open to flood the lock and to drain the lock.”
The Erie Canal Locks exhibit first appeared at the RMSC more than 15 years ago. Meyer and his team have improved it since then and it’s in its third iteration.
Nowadays, as many as 20 members of the TAG give their time and energy to RMSC each week. Meyer would like to raise that number.
“I would be happy to continue to bring in new people, retired or otherwise,” he said.