At the New York Hall of Science, science is not confined to classrooms or laboratories. It lives in everyday experiences—in kitchens, communities, family traditions, and the shared moments where curiosity sparks learning across generations. As NYSCI’s inaugural Postdoctoral Researcher, Dr. Phebe Chew is helping deepen that vision through community-based research that explores how informal science learning can become even more culturally relevant, relational, and accessible.

When most people think of scientific research, they rarely picture it unfolding through conversations with caregivers, in collaborative museum design sessions, or at a bustling neighborhood night market. But at NYSCI, that kind of work reflects a core belief: learning happens everywhere, and the people closest to that learning—families, caregivers, youth, and communities—bring essential expertise to shaping it. For Dr. Chew, that philosophy felt deeply familiar. “I’ve always believed there’s a lot of learning happening outside of school that we don’t always have words for, even though it’s really important,” she says.

Dr. Chew’s work sits at the intersection of sociocultural learning, critical food pedagogy, and informal STEM education. Her research asks a deceptively simple question: What if STEM learning began with the experiences people already know deeply—like cooking, family traditions, and community knowledge? That question has shaped her academic journey for years.

Growing up, food was both practical and deeply relational: a space where she cooked alongside her mother and grandmother, learning not only recipes but ways of thinking. “When I was chopping vegetables or helping in the kitchen, I was already thinking about process—what’s the fastest way, the safest way, the most enjoyable way to do this? I didn’t have the language for it then, but those were the seeds of what became my research.”

That curiosity eventually led her through graduate work in educational counseling, educational psychology, and community-based learning research, where she became increasingly interested in what she calls the “hidden curriculum” of life beyond school. “You have your education in school, and then you have your education out of school—and that’s your life. There’s so much meaningful learning happening there.” That perspective made NYSCI a natural fit. As a science center rooted in hands-on exploration and public engagement, NYSCI offered a place where Dr. Chew could bring research into direct conversation with practice.

Over the past two years, she has worked across departments—including NYSCI’s Explainer Leadership Team and Family Learning and Community Partnerships team—to develop a collaborative food-based STEM stage activity designed not just for audiences, but with them. The project brought together two groups whose perspectives rarely meet in museum design spaces: youth Explainers and members of NYSCI’s Family Advisory Committee.

“We realized this was one of the first times these groups had really worked together in this way,” Dr. Chew says. “And each brought very different expertise. Caregivers brought deep lived knowledge about food and culture, while Explainers knew exactly how experiences would need to shift to connect with visitors on the floor.” The collaboration became a powerful model of participatory design—one that reflects NYSCI’s broader commitment to making STEM learning more inclusive, responsive, and community-driven.

The resulting activity has already been piloted on the museum floor and featured at the Queens Night Market, creating a meaningful connection between NYSCI and the vibrant food cultures of the surrounding neighborhood. For Dr. Chew, food offers a particularly powerful entry point into STEM because it is both universal and deeply personal. “Food is this global cultural practice with deep-rooted history and heritage. If we think about STEM through something so relatable, it opens up entirely different ways for people to connect to it.”

That approach also reflects something she has come to value deeply about NYSCI itself: its culture of collaboration. “People here genuinely care—not just about the work, but about each other and the relationships that make the work possible. That’s rare.” She found it everywhere: among Explainers, researchers, educators, caregivers, and colleagues working across teams.

That collaborative spirit, she says, is what makes it possible to ask bigger questions—not just how we teach STEM, but why.

It’s a question at the heart of NYSCI’s mission: creating experiences that invite all learners to see themselves as capable of engaging with science, technology, engineering, and math on their own terms. As Dr. Chew’s work shows, that future may not begin with equations on a whiteboard. It might begin around a cutting board, in conversation, discovering that learning has been there all along.

Article By Nicole Casamento