MOSI's new name, the Museum of Science and Innovation, was unveiled through a chemical reaction — by melting away the styrofoam "Industry" to reveal the word "Innovation."
At a news conference Tuesday morning, museum leaders introduced the new name alongside a 30,000-square-foot expansion dedicated to science education.
The new Center for STEAM (science, technology, engineering, art and math) Learning includes a computer lab, cooking lab, 3D printers and classroom space. A portion of the center occupies old exhibit space.
"[It's] still MOSI, but changing that 'Industry' to 'Innovation' to better reflect what it is that we do today and in the future," president/CEO John Graydon Smith said.
The expansion comes after MOSI opened the Saunders Planetarium, an eight-story, 360-degree digital dome theater, last April.
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Students will get the opportunity to project their own work — such as a video game or movie they create — onto the dome screen using technology available in the center.
"They can be really immersed in exactly what they made," said Mackenna Wood, the planetarium director.
Wood described how students can use Digistar, software that contains live simulations of the universe, to create their own "tours."
"We can also simulate flying over the Earth with the International Space Station or landing on the Moon or viewing the moons of Jupiter or what the sky will look like on a distant exoplanet system," said Wood.
The museum has already started welcoming kids to participate in camps centered around the popular Minecraft game, where players build their own virtual world using blocks.
"Watching kids create stuff is a whole experience, because they're so creative by nature," said education specialist José Cotayo, "They have these ideas that at first you're, like, 'How are those going to fit together?' And then they make it work."
Cotayo said kids have been blown away by the technology.
"Their reaction was, 'Oh, my gosh,' because a kid knows ... they look at these machines and they're, like, 'Oh, these are nice computers,'" said Cotayo.
With rows of such computers and ample classroom space, Smith said MOSI is able to accommodate hundreds of students.
"Having these classrooms adjacent to the rest of our campus allows us to really go from being able to do one school a day up to four schools a day and have an entire grade level come visit us at one time," said Smith.
"Where MOSI separates itself from other institutions locally ... is through our field trip programs and summer camps, bringing in large groups of kids at a time, whether it's Boy Scouts, Girl Scouts, YMCAs, Boys & Girls Clubs."
The rebrand and expansion mark a turning point after a period when MOSI's future was in limbo.
The facility was downsized in 2017 for financial reasons. There were also talks about the museum moving to downtown Tampa from Fowler Avenue, across from the University of South Florida, but nothing materialized.
"MOSI was the place where every kid came and did their informal science education. We got away from that for a while and maybe lost a generation or two," said Smith. "We're working to get that back now to where the next generation of Tampa Bay scientists will be coming up through the MOSI system."
