UT Tyler Office of Marketing and Communications

Discovery Science Place Announces New Executive Director

June 4, 2021

Media Contact: Beverley Golden
Senior Director of Media Relations
Marketing and Communications
The University of Texas at Tyler
903.566.7303

The University of Texas at Tyler recently appointed Lacie Ballinger as the new executive director of the Discovery Science Place. Ballinger was most recently the director of collections and exhibits for the Tallahassee Museum in Florida.

“We are pleased to have Lacie join the Discovery Science Place,” said Laura Jackson, PhD, UT Tyler associate vice president for strategic initiatives and community affairs. “Her wide scope of knowledge and experience will be an asset to the museum and to East Texas. We are excited about the future of Discovery Science Place under Lacie’s leadership.”

As Discovery Science Place executive director, Ballinger will oversee the non-profit science museum that serves the East Texas, Northwest Louisiana and Southwest Arkansas regions. DSP also includes a mobile science education program that extends the reach of the museum.

Ballinger has worked in museums for the last 20 years. She joined the Tallahassee Museum staff in 2018 where she worked with science, history and archival collections. She managed exhibitions, programs and collections as well as the strategic, interpretive, and master feasibility plans for collections and exhibits.

Since 2008, Ballinger has been a peer grant reviewer for the Institute of Museum and Library Services, where she evaluates grant submissions for the Museums for America grant program.

Other museum experience includes 10 years as the Fort Worth Museum of Science and History collections manager and eight years as the Sixth Floor Museum at Dealey Plaza concept development and collections coordinator.

The Discovery Science Place operates in unique partnership with UT Tyler. The museum features more than 20,000 square feet of hands-on exhibit space, a 12,000-plus square-foot annex to house traveling exhibits and diverse educational programming designed to ignite curiosity in young minds through hands-on exploration.

With a mission to improve educational and healthcare outcomes for East Texas and beyond, UT Tyler offers more than 80 undergraduate and graduate programs to 10,000 students. Through its alignment with The University of Texas Health Science Center at Tyler and UT Health East Texas, UT Tyler has unified these entities to serve Texas with innovative medical research, medical education and excellent patient care. Classified by Carnegie as a doctoral research institution and by U.S. News & World Report as a national university, UT Tyler strives to fulfill our primary missions of education, research and service.