The Bean Life Science Museum seeks to serve students and the public.
According to its website, the museum's mission is to inspire, understanding and reverence for the evolving planet.
“It’s just good for those students to be able to expand their own creativity and their own knowledge and honestly also just to explore their passions” Arissa Huffcutt, the education assistant at the Bean Museum, said.
Huffcutt said students from BYU campus come work at the museum and help create the educational programs the museum offers.
“You think about [what you’re teaching] more when you’re making the program versus when you’re just presenting the program. When you’re making the program, you’re thinking about ‘ok, how are people going to understand it,’” Huffcutt said.
Huffcutt explained students are more involved with the process of ensuring that what they are presenting is correct and understandable by their audience.
“One of the things we very much want to do with the museum is help the students [have] the opportunity to grow and to develop their own skills and their own talents and what better place to do that [than here],” Huffcutt said.
Huffcutt shared that as a BYU museum, they serve BYU but they also serve the community as well. One program is the "Creature Feature" where students share about different organisms and the environment the specimen lives in.
Dr. Michael Whiting, the director of the Bean Life Science Museum, said that the museum is full of cool and new things, which is what brings the public to visit.
“When a museum takes objects into their collection, they are held in the public trust. Part of that public trust is that these will be accessible for the public and for scientists to have access to them,” Dr. Whiting said.
He explained that the exhibits tell stories of stewardship and conservation, despite the fact that the remarkable creatures on display are now extinct.
Katy Knight, the education administrator for the Bean Life Science Museum, said the museum has a stewardship to the public to care of the artifacts and collections they own.
“By sharing stories and teaching the science and showing them the objects, we hope they gain an appreciation for the natural world," Knight said.
Knight said the museum hopes the people who visit will gain a desire to take care of the world around them and become better stewards.
The museum was recently reaccredited by the American Alliance of Museums (AAM), the organization that upholds the highest standards of professional museum practice. According to its website, the AAM is the only organization representing every museum field. They seek to provide resources and other materials to ensure growth to those establishments.