Indianapolis Zoo

Getting to the Indianapolis Zoo made me start to realize the concentration of zoos in the Midwest. Gone were the two days with eight hours of driving each between zoos, suddenly I was traveling from one to the next with barely a day in between, and soon it would take me only four hours to get from one zoo to the next. This became more apparent when learning more about the Indianapolis, or Indy, Zoo - it had to deal with a lot of competition from the many zoos in the area, including some that I would later visit. One of the ways it approached this was by being a very customer-driven zoo which focused on serving its visitors and providing for what people wanted from their zoo.
This rung very true within their education department. The Indy Zoo focuses much of their programming on what is desired and what has been most popular. Part of this is because they are an entirely private zoo, with no funding from the government on any level, so the programs that create income are also prioritized. This includes some of their star programs, such as an extensive overnight program and a dolphin-in-water encounter. These programs, as well as smaller ones such as their Elephant Bathings and Art Adventures, reached huge numbers of people from all age groups. But their education department went far beyond the normal set of programs and was actually very integrated throughout the zoo. Their education department oversaw all "keeper" chats (in fact, they were usually the ones doing the chatting while keepers or trainers interacted with the animal), helped design educational programming and interactive sections for all new exhibits, and were in charge of interpretation at the zoo's shark touch tank. It seemed that all visitor interaction and interpretation on site, no matter if it was a teen volunteer interpreting at a Discovery Cart or a keeper chat with the tigers, was managed by the education department, even in areas that would normally be handled by area-specific or animal care employees. This more holistic view led to an education department which knew exactly what was being taught in all areas of the zoo, in ways from signage to direct interpretation, and seemed to be able to follow the visitor's journey easily and understand what they were learning at every step of the way.

One of the curious monkeys who I saw on my way to the Tiger Keeper Chat.

The zoo, like many that I visited, was in somewhat of a transitionary period. They were in the process of restructuring their educational programming, which included steps such as doing away with their education animals after the collection itself was seen as no longer relevant (most of them went to other zoos, and some retired to their caretakers). They were deciding how new programming would be developed and how that would work with their new exhibits.
But there was still a central idea that followed through this transition and shaped all that they did. If people don't love the animals, they won't care. The Indy Zoo worked tirelessly and catered to visitor's desires with one overarching idea in mind: inspire them to genuinely love an animal. Any way that people could interact and bond with this animal was seen as legitimate, and many different methods of doing so were included. They constantly evaluated their audience to see what was working and took all evaluation into account. Overall, they used a holistic educational approach throughout the zoo which I could feel even as an observer.
As a side note, Indianapolis will not have an accompanying video blog because the footage for it has been unfortunately lost due to a memory card mishap. It was beautiful to see however, and you'll just have to view it for yourself.