NoVa Maker Educator Meetup - Lori Ann Terjesen, Children's Science Center

Lori Ann Terjesen

Lori Ann Terjesen is the Director of Education at the Children’s Science Center where she leads a team of professional education staff to support both the Center’s outreach and onsite educational programming, serving over 80,000 visitors annually. Lori Ann has directed the museum’s education program on a full-time basis for the past four years, growing the outreach program alone by 400%. She has leveraged her extensive museum background to design and implement numerous successful hands-on activities and mobile exhibits including Great Shakes!: Understanding Earthquake Basics, Physics Playground: Engineering in Motion, and the Family Science Night and Early Childhood Handson Science (ECHOS) school outreach programs. 50% of the museum’s outreach programming specifically supports Title I schools and underserved audiences in order to level the playing field for these underrepresented children and their families, and make STEM enrichment learning more accessible to all. Lori Ann’s previous professional experience includes curatorial fellowships at the Cleveland Museum of Art and the John and Mable Ringling Museum of Art in Sarasota, Florida, as well as collections management and development staff positions at the Newark Museum and the Museum of Modern Art in New York (MoMA). At MoMA, she supported the most recent capital campaign totaling of $858M. Lori Ann is an active community leader, and currently serves as the President of the Junior League of Northern Virginia. The Junior League of Northern Virginia is celebrating 60 years of service in the Northern Virginia region, and is dedicated to promoting voluntarism, developing the leadership potential of women, and improving local communities. Other nonprofit experience includes serving as a past member of the Loudoun Arts Council Board of Directors, and as a member of the Three Birds Foundation Board of Directors, an organization that provides hands-on learning experiences centered on renewable energy education at underserved schools. In line with her advocation for underserved children, Lori Ann currently serves as an Advisory Board Member for the Science, Technology, and Engineering Academy for Disabled Youth (Project S.T.E.A.D.Y.). Lori Ann completed her Ph.D. in art history and museum studies at Case Western Reserve University. She received her MA in museum studies from Seton Hall University, as well as a post-baccalaureate certificate in nonprofit organization management. She completed her BA in art history at the University of Tennessee, Knoxville. Lori Ann is a member of the American Alliance of Museums (AAM), the National Association for Museum Exhibition, the Association of Children’s Museums, and the Association of Science and Technology Centers. She is a graduate of the Leadership Fairfax class of 2016, and was recognized as a “Forty Under 40” honoree by the Leadership Center for Excellence in 2016.