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Here At the Academy

Song, Dance, and Science

Jessie Landau

Public Programs Coordinator Juan-Carlos Solis arranges unexpected educational encounters to enrich visitors' Academy experience. dong lin

You never know what to expect after walking through the doors of the California Academy of Sciences. Maybe bee expert Norm Gary in the auditorium covered with thousands of honeybees. Or a West African dance group drumming and singing in African Hall. Or naturalists accompanied by live bats or owls, or other creatures rarely seen close-up. Whatever program you encounter, it is there to teach and to entertain. And if you look hard enough, you’re bound to find the man behind it all: Juan-Carlos Solis.

As the Academy’s Public Programs Coordinator, Solis is responsible for organizing many of the museum’s public events. He provides curious visitors with the unexpected. For opening day of the Academy’s new blockbuster exhibit “skulls,” Solis recruited biological sculptor Gloria Louise Nusse to demonstrate how skulls are a blueprint for the way living animals appear. Using forensic data to calculate tissue depth, she showed how to reconstruct a human face by applying the technique to an australopithecine cranium.

“I’m always looking for something that puts you to work, activities people can do to learn something,” he says. For the new exhibit, he expects to have about six weekly programs, including “Make Your Own Skull,” building simple skull models out of balsawood and clay; “Bare Bones,” learning to recognize animals by their skulls; and “How Do They Do That?,” uncovering the connections between skulls and animal abilities.

Most of these programs will use real specimens to give visitors a firsthand feel. Solis himself leads a presentation called “Skull Detective,” which has visitors examine mammal, bird, reptile, and fish skulls to find clues to how the owner had lived.

One of the best parts of the job, he says, is having the Academy’s extensive resources at his disposal. When he needed more information on an African lion skull for his detective presentation, he went to Academy field associate Ray Bandar. The major force behind “skulls” (see California Wild, Spring 2002), Bandar could immediately explain the story behind the skull: It was a male with a broken jaw, most likely wild because it had lost part of its mandible from an apparent gunshot. “It’s basically cheating,” Solis says about the abundance of information he gets from onsite experts like Bandar. “I would never have figured all of that out, even after doing hours of library research.”

He hopes Bandar will give a presentation sometime in the near future. “He’s pretty amazing and does his work with passion,” says Solis, who’s always looking for these qualities in educators.

When not chasing down scientists or recruiting natural history buffs, Solis focuses on the Academy’s ethnic heritage celebrations, which link visitors with the history of different cultures. Black History Month, Asian Pacific-American Heritage Month, Latino Heritage Month, and American-Indian Heritage Month have become annual events at the Academy. “I would like people to understand and appreciate that we are different,” says Solis. “It’s something that makes us very rich.”

A native of Mexico, Solis has always taken an interest in having minorities pursue the sciences. In fact, for his commitment to diversity, he received a fellowship from the Association of Science and Technology Centers (ASTC), an organization dedicated to furthering the public understanding of science.

Ever since Solis earned an oceanography degree in 1992 from the University of Baja California, Mexico, he has focused on furthering people’s understanding of nature and culture. After stints as researcher, instructor, and naturalist around California, Solis became increasingly aware of the need for compelling outreach programs. His search led him to the Academy.

“The Academy provides the perfect combination for people to come together and learn about each other, about biodiversity, and about the natural world,” he says.

While he now spends more time administrating than teaching, he still reaches thousands of people each year through the educators he brings to the Academy.

When Solis is not at the Academy, he heads for the water. In his spare time, Solis is a senior naturalist with the Oceanic Society, and often leads whale-watching expeditions. Recently, he led an Academy class on San Francisco Bay to learn about its diverse aquatic wildlife.

While his strength is marine biology, Solis sees himself primarily as someone with “a passion for nature and learning.” These days, he says, it is not enough for an exhibit to be interesting, relevant, and informative. It also has to be intriguing. A good program targets as many senses as possible, he says. “If I could have them hear and smell a blue whale exhaling, that would be really cool. That would blow them away.”