Tracey Tomme Email & Phone Number

Dayton, Ohio

Two years now in Dayton and I couldn’t be happier. We have faced and continue to face many challenges but the Boonshoft Museum and SunWatch grow dearer to me daily. Our team is strong and clever! I am so impressed with the ability I see around me at work and in the community.

Hutchinson, Kansas

Hutchinson, Ks

Coming to the Cosmosphere has been a great next step in my career path. My duties here include developing, planning, directing, and coordinating all educational activities. The main areas I work with are school programs, Scouts, outreach, the planetarium and Goddard's lab, adult education events, teacher trainings, guest speakers, and our Cosmosphere Camps. The school programs are for preK-12 which will see about 12,000 students each school year. These have typically been very classic field trips. I have added grade-level specific, standards-aligned curriculum packages to help prepare students for their visit as well as lend relevance for classroom lessons. I am currently working on creating more inclusive programs that serve a wider variety of learners including those with physical or mental challenges. I am also adding internet based programs that allow us to interact audio/visually with classrooms around the globe. Our Scouting programs serve Boy Scouts, Girl Scouts, American Heritage Girls, and 4H primarily. We have specific programs for each of these groups many that include an overnight stay in the museum. Camps are a huge are for us and are growing after experiencing several years of declining attendance. Last year we added sections just for girls as well as aviation camps. This year we added space medicine and camps for students of migrant families. I'm thrilled to see our numbers increase especially with more diverse populations in attendance.I have a strong team of 5 direct reports, around 30 part-time staff, and 20 volunteers who make the magic happen. They are very creative, motivated, and passionate individuals who truly care about children and the quality of Cosmosphere programs.It has been interesting to move away from my CEO position and I do miss the responsibility but I am considered part of the executive leadership team here and am learning a lot about the museum world.

Colorado Springs, Colorado Area

Challenger Learning Centers were formed to honor and continue the mission of the lost Shuttle Challenger crew. As the CEO and President of the CLC of Colorado, I never forgot this reason for our being. Each day I spent a few minutes reflecting on how the crew members would approve or disapprove of the direction the Center was taking. I never wanted to let them down! Nor of course would I want the disapproval of June Scobee Rogers or of my mentor and predecessor Carol O'Leary (and if you know these two ladies, you love them both).My duties ranged from business development to soldering. Having started as a flight director, I had the advantage of knowing every little nuance of the million dollar simulator that served over 5,000 excited middle school students each year. A simulator that includes a whole room devoted to Mission Control and another for the spacecraft. These simulators are no longer new and used things like 15" monitors that you can't find anymore. I had the privilege of researching what yearly upgrades and maintenance we needed, finding the funds through grants and donations to afford to do the work, and digging in to help do the work myself along with other staff and volunteers. I must say, we stayed on top of things and the simulator always lived up to the standards Carol taught me, "Each child who comes here should have the sense that they are the first to use the equipment." My greatest accomplishment was closing a gap of about $45k a year in operating budget, referenced in *every* board meeting as the "hole in the fence" that needed mending and fast, to almost one year of operating funds in the bank. This was no small task! Our budget was around $600k when I took over and over $1.1M when I left with about two thirds of that coming from grants and donations. Very quickly I mastered P&L managment, HR, sales, and marketing.I also enjoyed growing a great team that continues to thrive and building really solid educational programs.

Colorado Springs

Flight Directors work with students in simulated space missions to inspire, engage and encourage them to set high goals, stretch themselves, stay in school, and consider careers as engineers or scientists. This was my first experience educating outside the walls of a traditional school setting. I began as a rookie who was nervous to speak in public but over a few years worked my way to lead flight director, guiding the development and activities of four fellow educators, and found my voice and confidence. I was responsible for the training, scheduling, and quality of educational programs and staff. I learned how to manage students and head-off discipline issues before they were even noticed. I was able to add programs and new equipment and I even began to write for grants and meet donors. This was a huge growth period for me and one that changed my career focus from educator to educational leadership.

Texas, Colorado, California, And Dept Of Defense

My early career started with a passion for the welfare of animals and children. During college this looked like part-time work as a veterinary assistant for both large and small animal facilities. After college, I went into the classroom. What an adventure! As my husband and I moved from place to place during his military career, I was able to meet so many interesting students. I started with a position teaching elementary school, spent some time in both public and private schools, and then concluded my classroom experience teaching middle school science at Fort Carson Army base in Colorado Springs. Each assignment I had was a new learning experience and all of them were important to help me gain the broad knowledge I now have of education. I am able to respect the differences of educational environments as each place has its own set of challenges and goals. I do not think there is any one "fix" for education. I do think it has a lot of improvements that need to be made and always will. Our educators are amazing and some of the hardest working people I have ever worked with. I applaud them! I also still consider myself one of them but hope that through my current work, I can help give them the tools they need to do what they want to do to better serve their students. My current work is based very soundly on my time in the classroom. I feel that through our informal, out of the school building, educational opportunities we must always ask, "How well am I serving students and teachers?" Mostly I like my answer but it is a process that I will always continue to improve.

I am truly an educator at heart and in my soul, but a sabbatical into the business sector proved very informative for me. Western Pacific Airlines was a small, rather short-lived, airline based in Colorado Springs. It was an incredibly fun place to work with a lot of forward thinking, young professionals. Through this experience, I was able to learn about accounting practices, corporate work cultures, and to my delight, got to travel cheaply. I remain friends with many of my former co-workers as we had that unique relationship of working hard to create something new and successful but also surviving the sense of loss and failure as it closed its doors. Failure is not always a bad thing! I wouldn't trade the experience and am very grateful for all I learned there and the people I now call friends.

Master Of Arts, Educational Technology

Strong emphasis in Special Education which led to degree in Educational Technology. The combination of these two areas have certainly.

Bs, Animal Science

Core science and math courses as a pre-veterinarian interested student. Worked at small and large veterinary clinics including emergency.