Mystic Seaport Museum is the nation’s largest maritime museum. Founded in 1929 to gather and preserve the rapidly disappearing artifacts of America’s seafaring past, the Museum has grown to become a national center for research and education with the mission to inspire an enduring connection to the American maritime experience. The Museum’s grounds cover 19 acres on the Mystic River in Mystic, CT and include a recreated 19th century coastal village, a working shipyard, exhibit halls, and state-of-the-art artifact storage facilities. The Museum is home to more than 500 historic watercraft, including four National Historic Landmark vessels, most notably the 1841 whaleship Charles W. Morgan, America’s oldest commercial ship still in existence. With a full-time staff of 150 that swells to 350 during the summer season, the Museum hosts over 250,000 visitors annually. Mystic Seaport employs a diverse staff of scholars, librarians, historic interpreters, educators, scientists, musicians, and skilled artisans. A stroll through the historic village transports visitors back to the mid-1800s where they can experience firsthand from staff historians, storytellers, musicians, and craftspeople just what life was like to earn one's living from the sea. In the Henry B. du Pont Preservation Shipyard, they can watch shipwrights keeping the skills and techniques of traditional shipbuilding alive as they restore and maintain the Museum’s watercraft collection. The Museum’s 41,000 sq. ft. Collections Research Center (CRC) offers access to more than 2 million artifacts and is also home to the G.W. Blunt White Library, a 75,000-volume research library where scholars from around the world come to study America’s maritime history. For more than 80 years, visitors, students, and scholars have turned to Mystic Seaport to preserve and interpret America’s maritime experience. The Museum’s commitment to that mission is as strong as ever.

The Preservation Society of Newport County, Rhode Island’s largest cultural organization, preserves and protects the best of Newport County’s architectural heritage. Its 11 historic properties and landscapes - seven of which are National Historic Landmarks - form a complete essay of American historical development from the Colonial era through the Gilded Age. In keeping with its mission, the Society strives to offer its members and the public a comprehensive view of each property’s architecture, interiors, landscapes and social history. The Society hosts more than 800,000 visits to its properties annually. The Preservation Society was founded in 1945 as a private, non-profit educational organization. Admission charges, membership dues, fundraising events and donations help the Society to carry out its mission of protecting Newport’s heritage for present and future generations. Other sources of income include property rentals for private and corporate events, educational sales and product licensing. Further, its historic properties have served as backdrops for a number of major feature films, advertising and photography shoots. The Society’s central office is located in a former historic home at 424 Bellevue Avenue, Newport. For more information, call (401) 847-1000 or visit www.NewportMansions.org.

How do you get people interested in science? Engage them. The LEED-Gold certified Connecticut Science Center, located in downtown Hartford, sparks creative imagination and an appreciation for science by immersing visitors in fun and educational hands-on, minds-on interactive experiences while maintaining an environmentally conscious presence. Serving more than 2 million people since opening in 2009, the Science Center features more than 165 exhibits in ten galleries and a range of topics, including space and earth sciences, physical sciences, biology, the Connecticut River watershed, alternative energy sources, Connecticut inventors and innovations, a children’s gallery, and much more. Other features include four educational labs, a 200-seat 3D digital theater, function room, gift store, and ongoing events for all ages. The Science Center is a non-profit organization dedicated to enhancing science education throughout the state of Connecticut and New England, providing learning opportunities for students and adults of all ages, and engaging the community in scientific exploration. With an attraction of this magnitude, exhibits rivaling the most unique in the world, programs with the potential to become national models, partnerships with a range of educational organizations, and involvement from global business leaders and benefactors, the Science Center is Connecticut's premier destination for informal science learning, and is well on its way to becoming the state's foremost Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics (STEM) resource. The Connecticut Science Center is also the home to the Joyce D. and Andrew J. Mandell Academy for Teachers, offering powerful Professional Development for educators. More information: www.CTScienceCenter.org or 860.SCIENCE.