Thank you for supporting our efforts to bring engaging hands-on STEAM education to the Border Region!

Our Story: Insights Science Discovery was founded in 1979 to offer interactive science education experiences to the Border Region. Insights operated in downtown El Paso until being demolished to make way for a baseball stadium. Exhibits were stored in an unused school in the Segundo Barrio, the Alamo School, and gradually were rebuilt into a museum format. Before opening to the public in Alamo School in October of 2015, Insights launched a dinosaur themed pop-up museum exhibit in Bassett Mall. Running a museum in the Alamo School posed multiple operational challenges. Following many stakeholder meetings, Insights board made the decision to pivot to a 100% mobile outreach model, with a focus on meeting the public where they are.

What has Insights been doing as a mobile museum? In science centers, at schools, on trails, at parks under tents, and in your homes - Insights has been providing hand-on STEAM education in the Border Region for over 40 years. Since we have ‘taken the museum out of the box,’ in 2017 we have moved full STEAM ahead with a variety of new programs for all ages:

• Provide year-round afterschool and summer camp programs for over 500 students on all 4 Clint ISD middle school campuses.
• Over 1,000 participants are expected to participate in the 2021 3rd annual, week-long El Paso Space Festival.
• Since 2017, Insights has provided 18 total weeks of in person and virtual STEAM summer camp programming for over 510 students.
• Provided 12 different STEAM teacher professional development sessions in the past year.
• Over 2,850 students and families have taken a guided DinoTracks hiking tour of Insights’ 211-acre dinosaur trackways site.
• Insight is building an augmented reality tour of our DinoTrack site that will allow families to take a self-paced tour of the site in English or Spanish.
• The Friends of DinoTracks volunteer and advisory support group was established in 2021 to advocate for the DinoTracks site.
• Provided transportation engineering workshops for UTEP Upward Bound highschool students.
• Collaborating with UTEP’s Geology Department to provide outreach educational programming for the NSF-funded Critical Zone Dryland Ecology program.
• Broke ground on two year-long environmental restoration projects as a part of our environmental leadership initiative in area high schools.
• Our monthly adult education series, Nerd Nights, has provided engaging evening learning opportunities to over 2,068 adults since 2017.
• Over 6,434 individuals have interacted with hands-on science at Insights’ Pop-Up Museum.

We know that 60% of today’s students will be employed in technical jobs that do not yet exist. This is why Insights mission to promote STEAM education through exploratory, interactive learning experiences in the Border Region is critical. Operating as a flexible, lean, mobile service has enabled Insights to serve hands-on engaging STEAM education to over 16,703 individuals since our transition to a ‘museum without walls.’ In addition to providing safe STEAM educational programs during the pandemic, Insights will continue to grow our afterschool programs, Pop Up Museum mobile exhibits, educational events, and outdoor STEAM education program.

Help us inspire our next generation of engineers, programmers, and astronauts.