ZOOMS STEM Design Challenge
Exhibition Week

Presented by Flint Hills Resources

March 3-7, 2025
#STEMattheZOO, #ZOOMS

The ZOOMS STEM Design Challenge offers students in grades 3-12 a chance to develop a solution to a real problem faced by zookeepers and staff at the Minnesota Zoo. This year, students were challenged to apply their science and math knowledge, creativity, and problem-solving skills to engineer an innovative enrichment or exhibit design solution for the Minnesota Zoo’s white-cheeked gibbons.

Of the 4300+ students that developed over 1370 enrichment and exhibit design solutions, only 121 projects were selected to give students the opportunity to present their design solutions to Zoo staff and Flint Hills Resources engineers during the ZOOMS STEM Design Challenge Exhibition week.

Best of luck to all ZOOMS student engineer presenters!

ZOOMS Design Challenge Exhibition Awards

Virtual Awards

Middle/High School Awards

Elementary Exhibit Awards

Elementary Enrichment Awards

Welcome to the ZOOMS Design Challenge Exhibition!

A special message from John Frawley, Director of the Minnesota Zoo & President of the Minnesota Zoo Foundation.

A special message from Geoff Glasrud, Vice President and Manufacturing Manager, Flint Hills Pine Bend Refinery

ZOOMS Exhibition Week Schedule

March 3

Virtual Exhibition Day
Virtual Judging
9:30 am – 2:30 pm
Awards announced Friday!

March 4

Middle School and High School Exhibition at the Zoo
Judging
10am-12pm
Awards Ceremony
1:45pm -2:15pm

March 5

Elementary Enrichment Design Exhibition at the Zoo
Judging
10am-12pm
Awards Ceremony
1:45pm -2:15pm

March 6

Elementary Exhibit Design Exhibition at the Zoo
Judging
10am-12pm
Awards Ceremony
1:45pm -2:15pm

March 7

Virtual and In Person ZOOMS Exhibition Award Winners announced on website

Student Project Gallery

Check out the innovative enrichment and exhibit design ideas that students developed for the Minnesota Zoo’s White Cheeked-Gibbons this year!

Elementary Schools

Middle Schools

High Schools

ZOOMS Exhibition Participating Schools

Elementary (Grades 3-5)

Avail Academy
Baxter Elementary
Ben Franklin Elementary
Burnside Elementary
Carondelet Catholic School
Centerview Elementary
Concord Elementary
DaVinci Academy
Eden Lake Elementary
Friends School of Minnesota
Garlough Environmental Magnet School
Gibbs Elementary School
Heilicher Minneapolis Jewish Day School
Highlands Elementary
Highwood Hills
Holy Spirit School
Independence Elementary STEM School
Jefferson Elementary
Lincoln Elementary
Longfellow Elementary
Montessori at Franklin Elementary
O.H. Anderson Elementary
Oak Crest Elementary
Prairie View Elementary
Star Elementary
St. Jude of the Lake
Valley Crossing Elementary
Washington Elementary

Middle School (Grades 6-8)

Benilde- St. Margaret's
Carondelet Catholic School
Century Middle School
Cottage Grove Middle School
Davinci Academy
E-STEM Middle School
Friends School of Minnesota
New Richmond Middle School
Owatonna Middle School
Salk STEM Magnet Middle School
South View Middle School
St. John the Baptist
St. Jude of the Lake
Zimmerman Middle School

High School (Grades 9-12)

Cretin-Derham Hall
School of Environmental Studies
SPPS Online High School
St. Louis Park High School

About the ZOOMS Design Challenge

Exhibit Design Challenge

The white-cheeked gibbon habitat, or ‘gibbon island’, is a favorite spot for Zoo guests to stop along the Tropics Trail. The exhibit features Tia and Bailey, a bonded gibbon pair, along with a variety of Tropical birds including flamingos. Because of the moat design and the high-level needs for these intelligent primates and mixed bird species, caring for the exhibit and the animals is a challenge for Zookeepers. This space has also existed since the Zoo opened in 1978, and Zoo leaders have identified the exhibit for an upgrade as part of a future project. They would like to start gathering creative ideas and solutions to consider as they begin to plan what the new space could look like. As part of those solutions, they are looking for ways to make more efficient husbandry solutions for Zookeepers, expand and improve the habitat for the gibbons to brachiate more dynamically, and ensure our guests continue to enjoy the habitat and learn about the conservation issues facing these species in the wild in engaging and immersive ways.needs while highlighting our prairie conservation work with these species, including prairie butterflies which are bred and raised behind the scenes.

Enrichment Design Challenge

The Tropics Trail is home to a variety of endangered species, including the Zoo’s resident pair of white-cheeked gibbons, Bailey and Tia. Bailey is a 30-year-old easy going male who moved to the Zoo in October 2001, while Tia, a 27-year-old female, was born at the Minnesota Zoo and is more particular about what she likes and dislikes. As primates, they are highly intelligent and their need to be challenged through enrichment requires Zookeepers to provide a wide variety of enrichment that provides stimulating experiences to encourage their natural behaviors and senses. While their habitat at the Zoo, Gibbon Island, provides branches for brachiating, Zookeepers are looking for unique enrichment that not only encourage this behavior, but also challenges them to forage more frequently. Even more ideal, Zookeepers would love to find ways to provide enrichment in easier and more efficient ways throughout the day!

Meet The Minnesota Zoo’s White-Cheeked Gibbons

Tia

Stats: Female, Born October 21 1996

Personality:
.• Described by Zookeepers as having lots of personality and bolder than Bailey.
• She is smart and easy to train. She picks up on things very quickly.
• She tends to initiate stealing of food from Bailey.
• She is very particular about who she likes and who she will let be her trainer. Very hesitant with new people.
• Can often interfere with Bailey getting trained. She expresses her dislike through vocalizations and display behavior (staring and furrowing her brow)

Bailey

Stats: Male, Born March 1, 1994 at the National Zoo in Washington D.C.

Moved to the Minnesota Zoo in 2001 to pair with Tia when he was 7.

Personality:
• Described by Zookeepers as very easy going.
• He enjoys training with Zookeepers
• Very sweet and even tempered.
• Can be frustrated if trainers are teaching something new.
• Bailey is less confident around water than Tia.
• Bailey does not like mice!

White-Cheeked Gibbon Preferences

Favorite Food:
Alfalfa cubes and leaf eater biscuits are used as training rewards. Sweet potato is a favorite too!

Favorite Activities:
Both love training and enrichments that are more experiential and multi-layered, like puzzle feeders. They are less focused on treats and more focused on what they ‘get to do’.

Favorite Enrichments:
• Zookeepers describe their favorite style of enrichment is multi-layered. For example: Putting a paper bag in a box within another box holding a treat. They love to shred and rip things open!
• Enrichments are less about the treat and more about the experience! Puzzle feeders are always preferred!
• The gibbons love to shred things. Zookeepers place a paper bag with a treat inside a box within another box. The gibbons love this enrichment and ripping it open to find what is inside.

Least Favorite Enrichments
• They dislike ‘large’ new things put in their space. For example, a tire swing was placed in their off-habitat enclosure and Bailey was hesitant to enter.
• Anything that requires them to be near water or get more than part of their arm wet to retrieve.

Saving Wildlife

Gibbons in the Wild and Conservation

There are 20 species of gibbons, including the northern white-cheeked gibbons found here at the Minnesota Zoo. Seldom coming to the ground, these long-armed apes are made for life in the upper canopy of the trees of Laos, Vietnam, and southeastern China. They travel through brachiation, an acrobatic movement where they suspend their bodies in the air and swing easily from one branch using their hands form a loose hook around branches to move swiftly through the canopy.

Gibbons live in small family groups made up of a mated pair and their young offspring. Early in the morning, the group often “sings” in unison to claim their feeding area. Instead of physical conflict, the adult pair defends its territory with a loud vocal duet that can be heard for miles through the forest.

Gibbons also play an integral role as 'forest engineers’ in the Southeast Asian tropical forest ecosystem, aiding in plant seed dispersal and maintaining ecological balance.

Unfortunately, the vast majority of gibbon species are critically endangered or endangered, making them one of the most threatened primate groups, in large part due to deforestation and poaching for the illegal pet trade. It is believed that white-cheeked gibbon numbers have declined as much as 80% in the last 45 years.

How Can You Help?

Sponsor the Zoo's White-Cheeked Gibbons- Sponsor the Minnesota Zoos gibbon pair! In doing so, your gift will provide the necessary resources and support to Bailey and Tia, as well as all of the animals at the Zoo receive the best care, while also supporting conservation efforts at the Zoo and around the world.

Shop Smart with the Palm Oil App! -Use the app to help you make gibbon friendly choices that at the grocery store that do not contribribute to the palm oil demand impacting wild gibbon habitats.

Recycle for Rainforests- Donate old cell phones to raise money to save wildlife who depend on their rainforest homes for survival. Help reduce the demand for minerals found in cell phones that cause destruction of rainforest habitats through mining.

Celebrate International Gibbon Day on October 24th each year! Plan a way to help spread awareness in your community by educating your family, neighbors, and friends about the importance of conserving this endangered species right here in Minnesota.

At Home Activities

Check out the variety of fun activities that kids can explore at home to learn more about White-Cheeked Gibbons!

Create your own Gibbon Mask! Northern White-Cheeked gibbons are black if they are male and blonde if they are female. Do you want to be Bailey or Tia?

Learn how to draw a gibbon!

Test Your Gibbon Knowledge with a Gibbon Word Search

Gibbon Coloring Sheets

Visit your Local Park and Swing like a Gibbon! Gibbons are amazing at swinging through the branches. While gibbons are considered apes and not monkeys, find the ‘monkey’ bars and see if you can swing like a gibbon!

What is Exhibit Design?

Zoos are frequently welcoming new animals, whether it be in a brand-new exhibit or in an existing one. Whatever the case may be, the zoo exhibit designer’s job is to design the best environment for the animals as well as the keepers and the visitors. 

Designing an exhibit starts by researching the animal’s natural environment to learn all they can about the animal’s habitat, including the plants, climate, and topography. Research might also include a consideration of the animal’s behavior, such as how much space it needs, if it climbs, jumps, or swims, and how strong it is.

Working cooperatively with curators, zookeepers, educators, artists, engineers, and many others, exhibit designers must also consider the needs of the keepers, through creating functional and easy to clean spaces, and the visitors, by creating exhibits that are educational, interactive, and deliver an important message about conservation. Balancing these needs in one design is a difficult job with many differing opinions and constraints!

What is Enrichment?

Animals in zoos do not have the same opportunities for physical and mental stimulation that wild animals do, so zookeepers provide the animals with objects or changes to their environment that will stimulate the behaviors of healthy wild animals.

Enrichment gives animals something to think about, encourages exercise, and gives animals a degree of control of their environment by giving them choices. Basically, enrichment helps keep life interesting and challenging.

Enrichment can come in a variety of forms including environmental, novelty, sensory (scent and sound), behavioral training, dietary, and social.

• Providing live and artificial plants for shade and barriers
• Using trees, ropes, or rock work to increase and enhance living space
• Using puzzle feeders that offer a challenging method of obtaining food
• Housing a variety of compatible animals from the same habitat together
• Applying scents (spices, food, animal-lure, dung) around an exhibit
• Simulating or using real prey items in predator exhibits to encourage stalk-and-chase behaviors
• Playing predator or prey sounds to encourage instinctive responses

Check out the videos below of our animals having fun with enrichment!

Virtual Minnesota Zoo Visit

Explore the Minnesota Zoo virtually through videos of fun animal encounters, zookeeper talks, and take a peek behind the scenes to stay connected with our animals and staff!

Join the ZOOMS STEM Design Challenge, presented by Flint Hills Resources, next school year!

If you are a grade 3-12 teacher looking for ways to engage your students in authentic integrated STEM, join the ZOOMS STEM Design Challenge presented by Flint Hills Resources next school year! Participation is completely free! Teachers will receive access to a free training, design challenge supporting curriculum resources for both in person an digital learning formats, and ongoing implementation support throughout the school year from Zoo education staff. Registration will open for the 2025-2026 school year this spring.

If you missed out this year, follow us on Minnesota Zoo for Educators Facebook Page and sign up for the MNZOOEDU Times to be notified when registration opens and to hear about the latest Zoo education news and events for educators.

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