The William Nye Center for Science in the Community
1000 Young Boulevard

The William Nye Center fulfills one of the primary conditions of the network of grants that keeps the Xavier Campus operational, providing a number of exhibits and resources that serve to encourage an interest in science and technology. Part museum and part classroom, the four-story Center -- which is free to the public -- offers permanent exhibits on the history of computing and story of man's expansion into space, a number of temporary exhibit halls in which traveling or semi-permanent science-based exhibits can be housed, an extensive computer lab and a truly impressive planetarium. All of these are staffed by Gamma Lambdas as part of the organization's community service requirement, and all are carefully updated as frequently as possible to keep pace with the latest developments. The exhibits and shows are all accurate to a fault, and the guides and attendants are friendly, helpful and very knowledgeable.

The Center is much more than a free science museum, however. It's also a living classroom that offers a number of resources to even the most underprivileged local children and teens. The Gamma Lambdas offer a large number of school tours, educational talks and multimedia presentations; as well, a number of Gamma Lambdas -- all carefully screened and trained, of course -- teach free courses in computer science, basic chemistry, astronomy and other such subjects. Perhaps most importantly, the William Nye Center hosts an afterschool science club and computing club every afternoon, opening its doors to children aged eight to fourteen until 5:30 pm every day.

In addition to all the aforementioned exhibits and services, the William Nye Center includes a full set of state-of-the-art audio and video recording studios and offices used primarily by WGRU Campus Television and WGRY Student Radio. This represents another condition of the Gamma Lambda organization's continued operation, a goodwill gesture toward the university it calls home. In exchange, the student organizations that operate the studios must agree to provide local high school students with a certain amount of supervised broadcast time, thus giving the teens a degree of practical knowledge and experience where radio and television broadcasting are concerned, and contributing to the Gamma Lambdas' primary charitable effort.

Generally speaking, the William Nye Center is open from 9 am to 9 pm on weekdays, from 10 am to 11 pm on Saturdays, and from 12 pm to 9 pm on Sundays. Though small donations from visitors are certainly accepted whenever they're offered, the Center is a fundamentally charitable organization and does not actively solicit donations from its visitors.