Catalyst Grant Final Report
“New School Programs at the Oneida Community Mansion House”
Please provide a brief narrative explaining your project and its outcomes.
Throughout 2025 the Mansion House embarked on a project to develop new education programs for school groups. While this initially was a project to develop 4th grade programs and field trips, it turned into developing a top rate virtual program that could be more accessible to middle and high school groups both locally and across the country. The details of this change are outlined below. In the Fall of 2025, OCMH partnered with Source Squad, a curriculum development company founded by working teachers in Delaware that uses OCMH collections and primary sources to develop a lesson/virtual field trip that adheres to multiple state standards. Grant funding went towards compensating Source Squad for their work and time in testing the module with their students. The second part of the funding went towards school program supplies, which OCMH is woefully deficient in. This included a new phone gimbal for the virtual tours, crayons, screen, clip boards, markers, colored pencils, paper, and bins to safely organize these materials and keep them intact strictly for school programs. These supplies will be used for both in-person and virtual field trips throughout the school year and beyond. As of the close of this grant, OCMH is well prepared to launch the new virtual tour and related activities for school field trips.
The major obstacle we encountered was a lack of desire/availability for elementary school teachers to assist in developing a program and the curriculum. Attempting to partner with folks from the Central New York Council for the Social Studies, local teacher contacts, and local BOCES proved unfruitful. In addition, there have been significant leadership changes at OCMH over the Summer of 2025 which shifted priorities. Prior leadership had prioritized 4th grade field trips, which did not have much traction at OCMH. Due to the subject matter of the museum, OCMH attracts more students from middle, high school, college, and graduate school — often times from classes across the country. Therefore, OCMH pivoted to developing a virtual program and stocking up for supplies for other new programs that were developed for other new middle and high school audiences over the last year.
First, OCMH partnered with Delaware-based curriculum company Source Squads to develop a new virtual field trip program. OCMH gets many requests each year for virtual programming for teachers who cannot get to the Mansion House in person, for geographic or — more often — financial reasons. Therefore, OCMH recognized this need and developed a virtual program for middle and high school students that utilizes video conferencing, primary source activities, and interactives to bring OCMH to classrooms nationwide. The module includes a live virtual guided tour and a primary source exercise that uses OCMH collection to facilitate students mounting virtual museum exhibits. OCMH also partnered with local teachers in 2024 and 2025 to redevelop other school programs for middle and high school students. CLRC funds were used to actually purchase the supplies for these programs including clipboards, markers, crayons, screen, colored pencils, paper, and bins for these new programs. They are now fully stocked for the foreseeable future. Overall, the results were a new virtual school program at OCMH as well as fully supplied programs for field trips on site at OCMH.
What is the most remarkable accomplishment or finding of your project?
The biggest accomplishment was finally developing a virtual tour option for school groups. The story of the Oneida Community is one that is included in almost every history textbook in the country. It is a chapter in American history that fascinates people nationwide. The vast majority of schools do not have the funding or time to visit OCMH to learn more about the Community and its contributions to American history. As such, we get requests each year that we have been (to this point) unable to fully accommodate. Therefore, having this virtual program that adheres to multiple state standards and can be adapted for a wide array of classes is a gigantic win for OCMH.
How did your project differ from what you originally proposed?
The biggest difference was that OCMH pivoted from an elementary school program to a virtual program for middle and high school students. The rest of the proposal to purchase supplies for programs remained unchanged.
Please provide a brief summary of your evaluation activities and/or results, if available.
We are currently beta testing this new virtual program and will have more results later in 2025. Photos will be provided as the programs are presented.
Thomas Guiler
Director of Museum Affairs, Oneida Community Mansion House
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