In a renovated textile mill in Lawrence, MA, lab coats hang to the floor and hands reach up trying to grab glassware from towering cabinets. The shiny beakers look familiar to anyone who attended Simmons before 2022. Most materials in the room came from Park Science.
According to Laura Brink Pisinski, lead of the One Simmons project, Phase 1 of Park Science’s deconstruction involved Boston’s partnership with RecyclingWorks. RecyclingWorks facilitated removing over a dozen tons of material cheaply and contacted schools, organizations, and vendors to collect the items from Park Science.
From these efforts, materials from the demolished academic building now serve a new purpose at the Youth Development Organization (YDO), a nonprofit in Lawrence. Founded in 2006, YDO supports primarily youth from low-income and underrepresented backgrounds with enrichment programs.
How the materials made it 40 minutes from Simmons can be traced back to Nancy Lee, a retired Simmons professor and a volunteer at YDO.
Lee and Mark Kampert, the executive director of YDO, moved two trucks with 4,000 pounds of material, about 20% of what was donated from Park Science, with help from hired movers.
“For all the experiments that we do, [the equipment is] more than good…the lab program got a big jumpstart by having this donation,” stated Lee.
Before the donation, the space had makeshift tables and lacked essentials like cabinets, glassware, pipettes, and hot plates. “[Simmons students] don’t know how expensive it is because we don’t charge [them] for everything that [they] break,” Lee laughed. Lab benches to replace the makeshift tables cost over $400 each.
The impact manifests in the curiosity of Lee’s students. While university students roll their eyes and yawn at a 3-hour filtration experiment, elementary students get excited learning that filter paper exists.
Lee emphasized that having proper equipment in the lab makes it easier to work and helps students visualize themselves as scientists.
Before YDO, Lee worked with older scientists at Simmons. She described the deconstruction of Park Science as losing a home. Although she took the most useful items, she wished she had grabbed a brick.
As her students draw the metamorphosis of a butterfly, Lee recalls her organic chemistry students using the same whiteboards to solve problems.
“I have a fond memory of the fourth floor because I raised my kids there.” Lee changed diapers while her students drew mechanisms, demonstrating to her students that she could excel as both a mother and a professor, becoming a symbol of empowerment.
Lee’s kids are grown up now, and she retired in 2022 after working at Simmons for 28 years. But Lee’s love for teaching hasn’t diminished, “hopefully, I am making some difference in some of the [YDO] kid’s lives and sparking their interest.”
The One Simmons project is scheduled to be completed in the fall of 2026. Returning to Simmons, Lee will see a building she’s never stepped foot in. But as she organizes glassware and scribbles “Hungry for Science ” on YDO’s whiteboard, parts of her past home have created a new one.
