Just as the second annual and statewide Virginia Science Festival debuted on the last Saturday of September here in Roanoke, the executive director of the Science Museum of Western Virginia – which helped get the event off the ground – was calling it quits.
After four years in the job Jim Rollings has retired and will move back to his home in Hampton with his wife. He is a native Roanoker and taking the museum position gave him the opportunity “to come back full circle” to his childhood roots.
Rollings was lured to Roanoke four years ago from a museum in Arkansas that focused on world hunger and came aboard when the Science Museum had been displaced temporarily to Tanglewood Mall while its permanent home at Center in the Square underwent a major refurbishing. That makeover also left it with more floor space – and new attractions like the butterfly garden.
Rollings has been a willing participant in several splashy events designed to publicize coming attractions related to the museum – even dressing up as Doc Brown from the Back to the Future movies, arriving in a DeLorean to call attention to the Pi Miler race run in the middle of the night just before the November time change – so that runners actually appear to finish before they start (the second annual Pi Miler is coming up.)
“We have been able to install a brand new list of good exhibits at the Science Museum, they are unique and only exist here,” says Rollings, “they were designed just for us. That’s really cool. ”Several others are still in the works, he adds, and fundraising for an upgraded, fully-digital planetarium is about one third towards the goal of $300,000, he said recently.
“It’s still the original technology that was installed in that planetarium in 1983,” marvels Rollings. “Can you imagine having some technology in your home from 1983 – you wouldn’t be able find anything to play on it – and that’s exactly our situation [now]. It’s like you have a Sony Walkman. We’re going to completely digitize that thing and it’s going to be spectacular.”
Rollings is proud of the Virginia Science Festival, which kicked off in Roanoke and runs at various venues around the Commonwealth through the end of October: “We thought of it first,” says Rollings, who originally conceived of it as a Roanoke-only event. U.S. Senators Mark Warner and Tim Kaine then heard about it and led the charge for a statewide science festival; both Democratic senators are now honorary chairs for the event and recruited Governor McAuliffe to the cause.
“Much to our surprise,” in 2014 Rollings said he found the Science Museum coordinating a statewide effort that focuses on “STEAM” – as in science, technology, engineering, arts and math – a slightly different twist on STEM. “We’re really happy with it,” says Rollings, who notes that the museum is in “pretty good shape.” He’s also pleased with museum outreach school programs that have worked to excite young minds in the valley about the various aspects of science.
Moving back to Center in the Square several years ago “was a major thing” for the Science Museum, providing more space for programs and exhibits. It now has space on two floors at Center in the Square, which reapportioned all of its floor space after the renovations – divvying out acreage left over in part from the departure of the art museum in 2008.
There are no major plans in retirement for Rollings at this point; he returns to Hampton after renting out his home there for “many years” while he spent time in Arkansas and elsewhere.
Gene Marrano
