Jackson Free Press

Lauren Clark loves museums.

"I always went to all of the museums and historical sites around Jackson," Clark, a Jackson native, says. "My family ... would go to Natchez and see antebellum homes in the Natchez area and go to Vicksburg and look at the military park."

That family tradition influenced her career path when she decided she did not want to be a teacher. While studying elementary education at Mississippi State University, Clark turned to informal education, instead. "I decided to come work at a museum and be able to teach children but not in a classroom setting," she says.

In 2012, she graduated with dual bachelor's degrees from Mississippi State University. One was in elementary education with middle-school certifications in language arts, science and social studies and the other in communication with an emphasis in journalism. Clark, now 26, started working at the Mississippi Children's Museum part-time before becoming the museum's school-programs coordinator in July 2013. Today, Clark is the museum's education programs administrative manager. Clark is responsible for booking, registration and development for all field trips and staff-development programs at the museum. She also assists with planning outreach programs.

Clark says most of the museum's initiatives are focused on science, technology, engineering and math (STEM subjects), plus literacy, 
and health and nutrition.

"Through the initiatives, we are trying to make more professional-development and field-trip programs that relate to our literacy initiative and STEM initiative," Clark says.

She believes it's vital to increase a child's knowledge in STEM areas and literacy. "We want to go ahead and start preparing children for that while they are still in elementary school, so we can have people who would be able to fill these positions when they become adults," she says.

These initiatives are applied and brought to life in the museum's six permanent galleries including World at Work and the Literacy Garden. In the World at Work exhibit, Clark says children learn how a car works by playing with a Nissan Altima. As far as literacy initiatives, Clark says the museum has partnered with school districts around the state, including Jackson Public Schools. MCM hosts a weekly program where under-served JPS kindergarten students come to the museum with their parents and do hands-on literacy projects.

Clark also enjoys what the museum has to offer, particularly playing on the largest Scrabble board she has ever seen, completing Mad Libs on the mushrooms in the Literacy Garden and touring the larger-than-life digestive system. "It's just a really fun way to learn about human anatomy that kids could otherwise be unable to understand," she says.