Expanding
Curiosity!
COGNiTiON is driven by a bold vision to secure and expand our community impact for decades to come. Over the past nine years, exponential growth in visitation has transformed our science and discovery center from a small local initiative into a 4,000-square-foot destination serving more than eight Michigan counties. To meet this surging demand and continue providing dynamic, accessible educational resources to all, we are embarking on a vital physical, experiential, and educational expansion.
Since our inception in 2017, COGNiTiON has created memorable experiences for more than 64,000 attendees — with over half of those visits being in the past three years! Bringing much-needed STEM learning opportunities to children of all ages in a screen-driven world. While we crave to extend our reach, our resources are limited. The campaign to help COGNiTiON expand is now underway; this endeavor will bring intentional expansion to a vital community resource.
We hope you’ll read on to learn more about how you can get involved!
The Possibilities Are Endless!
We have located a facility to meet the needs of our expansion efforts. Enter the Meyers Granary building. The Granary is near our existing building in the middle of the village of Beulah, and would more than double our current exhibit space. The Meyers Granary building once served the community as the regional mill for farmers to bring their grain and mill it into flour. We hope to repurpose this building into something meaningful for our community once more.
Actual construction may differ from renderings
Campaign Goals
PEOPLE
Cognition was built by a dedicated part-time team, and growing sustainably requires expanding that team. We plan to strategically add administrative, educational, and planetarium/VR staff to strengthen our operational core, maintain our high standard of quality, and launch the high-demand programs families want.
PROGRAMS
Building on nine years of hands-on STEM education, Cognition is actively planning on expanding its interactive exhibits. Upgrading our custom exhibit spaces, live animal displays, and hands-on zones will allow us to launch new, regionally focused programming across our daily visits, camps, and field trips.
PLACES
Expanding to a larger venue allows us to welcome twice as many families and deepen our local accessibility and community collaborations. A larger footprint will be more conducive for hands-on engagement around our exhibits as well as allow more than one space to handle a multitude of different groups.
