Monterey Bay Aquarium to open new children’s center

The Monterey Bay Aquarium attracts visitors from around the world, but for many kids on the central coast, it’s a place to study marine life. Now the non-profit will be putting a lot of work and a lot of money into a new building aimed at educating children from all over the region.

In about two years, the aquarium plans to open a new K-12 ocean education and leadership center. The aquarium currently offers a few free educational programs, but only the means to host a limited amount of students at a time.

The new center will offer classes to potentially hundreds of students a day featuring science, technology, engineering, and math learning labs, a large multi-use space for workshops and presentations, offices for 35 education staff and volunteers, and much more.

The biggest plus will be how many more students the center will be able to accommodate.

“Right now, I would say about 35% of all students that come to the aquarium get a facilitated program and the rest of them have only the opportunity of a self-guided experience…now with this new building, once it opens in 2018, we’ll be able to provide those facilitated programs to all 80,000 students,” said Rita Bell, Director of Education Programs with the aquarium.

Since it’s opening in 1984, the Monterey Bay Aquarium has hosted more than two-million school kids through its free educational programs. When the new center is open, that number is expected to go up fast.