Good News York by Growth Mode Content - GNY EP.147 | Visiting The MOST with Lauren Kochian

Episode Date: February 17, 2026

Inside The MOST: Syracuse’s Armory Turned Science Museum, the Micron Exhibit, and How to Get Involved Host Mike Ndii visits The MOST in downtown Syracuse and interviews president Lauren Cochen during the museum’s busiest week of the year while school is out. Cochen explains the building’s history as the original Armory Square armory—over 115 years old, nearly 100,000 square feet, and once used for events like the Bowling Congress, the circus, and Syracuse’s former NBA Nationals—before The MOST moved in during the early 1990s. She shares her career path from sports PR and marketing to nonprofit fundraising, including roles at Syracuse Stage and Arc of Onondaga, leading to her recruitment to The MOST and promotion to president about six years ago. Cochen describes The MOST as a children-focused science museum and a New York State Board of Regents chartered educational institution centered on informal, hands-on science education aligned with K–8 New York State science standards, supported by a 10-person education team. She highlights community-reflective exhibits and partnerships, including Machines and Makers with local manufacturers, a life sciences exhibit, and a new farming and agriculture exhibit, Onondaga Grown presents Grow, featuring a farmer’s market, crop rotation, and indigenous agricultural innovation. The episode details the museum’s size (35,000–40,000 square feet of exhibit space across three levels) and the National Grid Explorer Dome with digital laser projection and hourly shows. Cochen discusses the first-of-its-kind Micron semiconductor exhibit, including a model of Micron’s future campus, interactive touchscreens on chips and memory, chemistry and careers content, and a daily noon “Micron skills bar” led by education staff; she notes the exhibit was built with an advisory committee including engineers and teachers. She also covers exhibit planning criteria, including the challenge of adding math-focused permanent exhibits due to cost. The conversation includes field trip programming (open to the public four days a week but available to schools and groups seven days a week), birthday parties with science demo options, and STEM programs that include museum admission. Cochen encourages membership (four levels, starting around $69/year) with perks like free admission, discounts, and free parking, and notes the nonprofit relies on donations for about half its annual budget. She lists ways to support The MOST via most.org, major fundraisers (Chocolate Discovery, Savoring Science in June, Tap Into the MOST in September), and upcoming events including celebrity bartending at Kitty Hoynes on March 12 with Senator Chris Ryan, Alex Canavan, and Jim Cosey, plus a May the Fourth Star Wars movie fundraiser on May 2. Social handles are @mostsyracuse, and Mike closes with Good News York episode and social information. 00:00 Welcome to Good News York at The MOST (Armory Square) 00:54 Inside the Historic Armory: How the Building Became The MOST 02:16 Meet President Lauren Kochian: From Sports PR to Nonprofit Leadership 04:52 What Is The MOST? Hands-On Science Learning for Kids (and Adults) 06:58 Community-Powered Exhibits: Local Industry, Agriculture & Makers 08:32 How Exhibits Get Built: Educators, Advisory Committees & Micron in the Classroom 10:51 Choosing the Right Topics: Dinosaurs, Space, Nature—and the STEM ‘Math’ Challenge 14:21 How Big Is The MOST? Floors, Exhibit Space & the Explorer Dome 15:29 Micron Exhibit Deep Dive: Semiconductors, Careers & the Daily Skills Bar 17:52 Planning Your Visit: Busy Seasons, School Groups, Field Trips & Hours 19:22 Birthdays, Programs & Member Perks (Including Parking) 20:15 Support The MOST: Memberships, Donations, Fundraisers & Socials 23:31 Final Thanks + Where to Follow Good News York

You're listening to a podcast right now, driving, working out, walking the dog. If you're into podcasts, chances are you have something to say too. With RSS.com, starting your own podcast is free and easy. Upload an episode and we distribute it to Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Amazon Music, and more. Track your listeners, see where they're from, and start earning from ads just like this. If you've been thinking about starting a podcast, this is your sign. Start your new podcast for free today at RSS.com. Welcome to Good News York. It is your host, Mike Brindisi, here, not in our new studios. Not yet. We're close. We're actually in the office of the president of Most, the most museum, in downtown Syracuse, Mrs. Lauren Cochin. Hello, Lauren. How are you? I'm good. Of course, thank you for having us. Good News York brought to you by Ads on the Go. Get Ads on the Go.com.

Lauren, we are here, we realized on the way here, we're here on probably a very busy week for you because there's no school. Yeah. So this place is rocking right now. It is busiest week of the year for us typically. Yeah, it took us an hour and a half to park, I think. Oh my God. No, I'm kidding. It wasn't an hour and a half.

But thank you for having us. This place is absolutely incredible. One of the first things I realized is that this is the original armory that makes this the famous Armory Square. Do you want to talk a little bit about the building? and the transition into how it became the most. Yeah, we are the Armory of Armory Square. This building really has an incredibly rich history. It's over 115 years old.

It pretty much occupies the whole city block. It's about not quite 100,000 square feet. So, you know, firstly, an armory, a military building. And then it's had a lot of uses since from a convention style, center style with the bowling Congress that we still see today at the On Center. The circus came through here. Our former NBA Nationals team before it was at what is now like the War Memorial was here. So a lot of things have transpired through this building. It's got incredible history. And we, the most, has been here since the early 90s.

Wow. The best time. To Armory to Children's Museum. From Armory to Children's Museum. What a 180. It's a beautiful building. And as soon as you walk in, the kid in you comes out because it just looks like so much fun. First of all, tell us a little bit about your background and how you came to the most. Sure.

Well, my background is either makes no sense or makes perfect sense. Love it. My background is actually in sports PR. Nice. So I guess there's a little like entertainment. Of course, of course. So I studied PR and marketing at SU, and I worked for The Crunch, interned for SU Athletics, interned for what is now the Mets.

My first job was at the Penguins. But it turned out it just wasn't really, it wasn't all that I thought it was going to be. Sports is a huge grind. The pay is terrible because everybody wants to work in sports. And so... A lot of weekends. A lot of nights. It is.

Non-stop. Non-stop. Yeah. And so I thought, you know what, I'm going to come home, get my master's just to give me time to figure out what I wanted to do. And sort of I fell into a job at Syracuse Stage. It was doing marketing, audience development work. So again, similar entertainment type of stuff and still doing marketing like I was doing in sports. And I really enjoyed that, but it was a nonprofit.

And in doing that marketing work at Syracuse State, I ended up also doing fundraising work at Syracuse stage. And it turns out I was really good at it. And what happens when you're good at fundraising for a nonprofit is you keep doing it because it's such an integral part of the nonprofit world. And also if you're really, really good at it, you get promoted really quickly. So I went from that to being the director of development at Arkavana Dogga, which supports people with developmental disabilities.

It's a really wonderful place. and I did that for several years as well. And then I was recruited to work here for my fund development and marketing at ARC, primarily for my work in social media, which this was dating myself so long ago that a lot of people were not doing nonprofit. Right. Social media marketing. And same thing.

I got promoted here from executive vice president slash development officer to president, which was about six years ago. I've been here for a decade this spring. Congratulations. And, you know, it's very fitting because, you know, we were kind of joking about how you went from sports and marketing to this. But you and I both know that, I mean, there's definitely a lot of similarities in this. It's entertainment and it's marketing and PR. So I think you were the perfect fit.

Yeah. The place is amazing. Tell us about what is the most. I mean, obviously we know what it is, but for people that maybe aren't sure, tell us. What is this place all about? So it is a science museum, but it is primarily geared towards children. Though we try very hard to make it something for everyone, particularly so that the adults are enjoying it and want to bring their kids back. But in addition to being a science museum, we actually are a chartered educational institution by New York State Board of Regents.

So our focus really is, and our mission is, informal science. education. So we have fabulous interactive hands-on exhibits. Informal science education, meaning we understand as educators, right, and as parents and as grandparents, kids really learn best by doing. Play is really important for a child's development. And so all the exhibits are hands-on. And all of our exhibits actually align with New York State science curriculum. Somehow through K through eight curriculum for science. So kids are going to be learning something that somehow aligns with what they might be learning in school if they're in those grades, in those grade levels. So we have exhibits from simple foam building blocks to really high-tech Micron

exhibit and we sort of have everything in between. We have an upstate life sciences exhibit where kids can learn about genetics and parts of the body. We have my particular favorite exhibit, which just opened, called Anadaga Grown Presents Grow, which is a farming and agriculture exhibit. Oh, wonderful. It's awesome. And so, you know, it's a really interactive, cool experience with a farmer's market and a field where kids can learn about crop rotation and how our own indigenous community was really

the innovators of agriculture. And so not only is everything hands-on and it aligns with curriculum, but one of the things our museum does so well that in fact we often are going to other museums or going to conferences and teaching other museums about it is, our museum really is a reflection of our community. And so what I mean by that is, you know, we might not have a Micron exhibit if Micron wasn't here. Or, you know, even our agriculture exhibit is really unique to Central New York ag. You'll see a lot of things that are really relevant to Central New York.

We have an exhibit called Machines and Makers. And it's all about manufacturing. Central New York is a huge manufacturing community. But within that exhibit, Tessie has a setup. Marquart has a setup. Morse manufacturing actually built a drum, a rotation thing for kids to try. It's so community relevant,

which also from a business model perspective is so helpful to the museum because we're getting this financial or support to build exhibits from community partners, which is incredible. That's amazing. I love how you incorporate, not only the learning aspect, which kind of, you know, that's going to happen when you have a science center,

but I like that you also cultivate it, you know, or tailor it to local. I think that's wonderful. And I'm wondering, you said, you know, you kind of work, do you work with the local educational institutions? Like, do they have to approve any of this because, you know, you have to include stuff that is things that they are learning in school? or is this kind of something that you do on your own? We largely do it on our own. We have our biggest department is our education department. We have about 10 people that work in the education team,

and they are well-trained and well-qualified in New York State standards. We do have a lot of programs with schools, and we do use schools as a resource. We're a nonprofit. We have educators on our board, several of them. So we certainly use them as a resource. particularly if things are changing in schools, changing in education, and they are wonderful resources. We also rely on some of our community partners for support. Certainly when we were building the

Micron exhibit, we actually had, and this is really the first time we did this, we actually had an advisory committee to build that exhibit. So it wasn't just Micron Engineers, but it was community leaders and teachers in particular, Like, how do we make a semiconductor engaging? That was a challenge. Right? What would a teacher want to do in this exhibit? Or how do we bring chips into the classroom, right? Because teachers want to know.

There's going to be how many thousands of jobs that Micron is going to have over the next decade or more? We know we want kids to have those jobs. They're high-paying jobs. They have great benefits. There's this tremendous opportunity and what we found was our local educators really, really want this opportunity for our children. The most really saw that firsthand and it was actually really inspiring to see how much teachers wanted to be a part of this, particularly because they really just saw it as this tremendous opportunity that maybe in their careers they have not seen before. And so to be able to put a committee together like this that we hadn't also done before was a really incredible experience.

That's amazing. I want to definitely talk about the actual exhibits themselves, but I was wondering if you could peel the curtain back. I'm curious. How much goes into deciding what type of exhibit to have and when are we going to turn that over and which ones are going to stay permanently? Talk about that process a little bit, if you don't mind. There's, I always say that, with my non-science background, so take that with a great assault, I always say that every good science museum for kids particular should have dinosaurs, should have outer space, should have some kind of like nature slash rocks.

Yes. And I say that because that seems to be what is what I call like the fan favorites. That's what kids sort of cling on to when they're little. that's what they're fascinated by. And that's what we want. We want kids to get excited about science at a young age in the hopes that they will continue to be excited about it forever. And so to get them excited, you know, those are the things I think every good science museum should have.

Absolutely. Right? How many kids do you know, like love dinosaurs at some point? Right. You're listening to a podcast right now, driving, working out, walking the dog. If you're into podcasts, chances are you have something to say too. With RSS.com, starting your own podcast is free and easy. Upload an episode and we distribute it to Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Amazon Music, and more.

Track your listeners, see where they're from, and start earning from ads just like this. If you've been thinking about starting a podcast, this is your sign. Start your new podcast for free today at RSS.com. or we thought our space was so cool or wanted to be an astronaut at some point. Or just love to go out and play in the mud, right? Love nature. Absolutely.

So, you know, we have all those things, right? We have a dino zone. We have a planetarium. And outside the planetarium, we have a lot of space things, including we're a designated NASA community site, which is very cool. We have a lot of things with nature throughout exhibits. And then we, you know, every month we do a huge Earth month,

sort of celebration and festival. And then in addition to that, you know, for us, there are certain criteria we have for exhibits. I came into a permanent collection that really touched on a lot of topics, and I think the most in particular has a robust collection. So we do have sort of the engineering base build types of things. We have, you know, the farming exhibit. We have, you know, the farming exhibit. We you know life sciences all of those kinds of things so it's pretty it covers a lot of topics in STEM some of the things we didn't have of course the Micron exhibit one of the things that we kind of have we're still working on we sort of struggle with is them and the math part of STEM so right now we have what we call play it's just

games computational thinking that kind of a thing To get the M in a museum, to make math fun, to meet our criteria, fun, engaging, the community relevance piece, the curriculum piece, to meet all those criteria, especially meeting the fun and engaging piece would probably cost us between half a million and three quarters of a million dollars for a permanent exhibit. So we're not doing the M right now. So the board games suffice. So yeah, the board games suffice.

The good thing is the kids love it. It's just that, so something like that, I would say, is lacking or missing. But other than that, we really do have a pretty robust collection that I think meets what I would call the standard for a science museum. That's wonderful. You've touched on some of the exhibits. Let's get into the details. What are some of your favorite exhibits? And how large is this place, first of all?

The exhibits on the floor and our Explora Dome take up about 35 to 40,000 square feet. Wow. So, yeah, it's a pretty big museum, covers, you know, sort of covers about three floors, lower level main floor and mezzanine. And then we have a National Grid Explorer Dome. So that is a theater with a domed screen. It's got a digital laser projection system. So the image on the screen is incredible.

The sound is incredible. And the dome, you know, makes it this immersive experience. It's like the sphere in Vegas. Yeah. It's at the armory right here in church. Almost as cool too, right? It is almost as cool. And on that we do, you know, we do documentaries,

but the dome obviously is very cool for planetarium shows. And so we do shows every hour on the half hour. That's amazing. Yeah, it is. It's very cool. Let's talk about the Micron exhibit because that's exciting. Everybody's talking about Micron around here for obvious reasons. One of the biggest things to happen in the area in a very long time.

What can we expect from the Micron exhibit? It is really cool. It is the first of its kind in the world. So we really had a fun time making this with Micron. You get to see actually what that entire huge campus is going to look like. I think they have like four to six buildings, each one of them the size of, you know, six football fields. So the campus itself is going to be extraordinarily large. And you, we have sort of that, we have the site, the original site that they built right there in the exhibit.

And like I said, it's sort of hard to make that interactive. So what we have is, you know, you can walk in and you sort of take a tour of what the inside of a chip looks like. We have a lot of huge touch screens where you can learn about different things about chips, memory making, the manufacturing of it. The idea was behind this was let's deconstruct what memory is, what semiconductors are. Let's help kids understand that everything that you do in your everyday life has a chip in it. Right? And so really, everything they touch, everything they use from, you know, health care to video games to their phones.

And then we get a little bit into sort of the chemistry behind it in the exhibit. And a little bit about the careers, too. Obviously, you know, the job piece is really important to them. It's important to the community. Workforce development in general is huge to our museum because, you know, We live in what I consider a STEM region as far as careers go. So that's a huge focus for us on all of our programming. So there's a little bit of that in there too.

And then because the interactivity piece was a bit of a challenge every day at noon, we have what we call the Micron Skills Bar, where we send actually one of our education staffers in there to do some games with the kids. Oh, I love it. A couple more questions we'll get out here because I know you're very busy. This seems to be a very busy time because school is off. What is your busiest? Like, what's your Super Bowl?

What is your like, we're preparing for this time of the year? You're here for it. This is it? Yeah, we consider ourselves. Yeah, you're right in time. Perfect. We planned it that way. We, yeah, right.

We consider ourselves, we call ourselves sort of the cold weather destination for kids. You know, this is a great place for parents to, if they're looking for something to do with their kids or grandparents are looking for something to do and even schools. You know, a lot of schools will bring their students in the spring for field trips, you know, to avoid snow days, to avoid, you know,

hauling all the kids on the bus and wild weather. But we are open, even though we're only open to the public four days a week, we are open to schools and community groups seven days a week. So we do have school groups in here every day all year long. I was going to ask, if you get a lot of field trips, I assume. We do.

Yeah. Some are like the good old fashion, just book a field trip and hop on the bus with your students. And some are actually really set programs where we are, you know, instead of a school just sort of running through and having fun, some of them are really sort of pre-planned where we provide a program or a workshop in addition to all the good field trip fun that you expect. Sure. Do you guys host any private events or birthday events? parties, do you do anything like that? Yep, we do. We host really fun, I'm a little biased, of course. We host really fun birthday parties. We have four a day on weekend, and they're a lot of fun because

kids get to pick their little science demo workshops, so you can do bubbles, you can do slime, you can do dinosaurs. The birthday party admission is all day long, so we always have a lot of kids running around from a birthday party here on weekends. And every program that we do, you know, we do a lot of programs outside of the exhibits. Usually admission is free if you register your child for one of our STEM education programs. So if your kid is signed up for something, let's say, on a Saturday morning from 10 to 11, they can stay all day and have fun at the museum. That's amazing.

I want to get the plugs from you before we go, but also, is there anything you want to mention, any events or special events coming up or anything that you want? to kind of advertise a plug or market? You know what? Well, I think the most important thing that I always want to make a plug for is to become a most member. Membership, there's four different levels of becoming a member, individual, all the way through the household premiere. So when you become a member, you get in free to the museum all year long, and there's all kinds of extra perks, discounts on camps, discounts on birthday parties and on the National Grid Explorer. It comes with free. You couldn't

find parking. Guess what? You would have had free parking in the lot behind the museum. What the heck. Which is good for our hours when we're open. So there's tons of great perks to being a member and all of that revenue really helps support the most. We are a nonprofit and half of our annual budget is through donations. And so memberships are really, really, really, an important part of our annual operating. These are yearly memberships? Yeah, they're good for 12 months. Great.

And memberships are as low as, I think, $69 to start, and they're good for a year. Awesome. In addition to the regular plugs, I want you to give us websites, any information you want, social media, but also, how can people get involved and help donate to this amazing place? Well, you know what? The best place to donate is Most.org. there's lots of ways to donate. You can just give us your cash. That's fabulous. You can come to one of our fundraisers. We have three fabulous fundraisers. We just had chocolate discovery where in sort

of a Valentine's Day type of celebration, we have a chocolate and champagne tasting followed by a, right? I am addicted to chocolate. This is the best. Sweet on chocolate provides this incredible chocolate tasting, thousands of samples. And then we have a Star Cross Lovers Planetarium show in the National Grid Explorado. The next one up is in June, and that is savoring science. That is our sort of gala that we host at Lemongrass. Our beer tasting is one of the best in town, tap into the most in September. And then we have other smaller fundraisers. Celebrity bartending is coming up. We always celebrate St. Patrick's Day at Kitty Hoynes. That one is on March 12th. Our Celebrities are Senator Chris Ryan, Alex Canavan, who runs the CNY Women's Network, and Jim

Sirosi, who is the COO of the Syracuse Crunch. Love Jim. So fabulous lineup. We keep the tips. We always celebrate also, of course we do because we're science nerds, pretty geeky over here. We always celebrate May the 4th with a Star Wars movie. Love it. So that one will be Saturday, May 2nd, this year.

So we do a movie, a happy hour. and again that's sort of a smaller fundraiser but all great ways to support the most that's awesome and give us your social media handle so because we know you can go to the most dot org yeah give us your social media everything is at most syracuse that's perfect nice and easy easy loren cochin president of is it the most museum or just most most president of most science center museum just amazing all of it everything right in downtown syracuse thank you so much for your time. I really appreciate it. This was so much fun. Mike Rennessy's signing off on this Tuesday. Is it Tuesday? Yeah. Tuesday edition of Good News York. You can find us at Good News York

on all social media. Good NewsYork.com. New episodes air at 5 p.m. Eastern Monday through Thursday, and you can follow me on socials at Mike B TV. Brought to you by Ads on the Go, get Ads on the Go.com. Thanks for joining us here at most. You're listening to a podcast right now, driving, working out, walking the dog. If you're into podcasts, chances are you have something to say too. With RSS.com, starting your own podcast is free and easy. Upload an episode and we distribute it to Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Amazon Music, and more. Track your listeners, see where they're from, and start earning from ads just like this. If you've been thinking about starting a podcast,

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