Museum Studies in Motion Fall 2015 Newsletter

Winter 2015-2016

Be at the center of things.

Volume 8, Issue 2

MUSEUM STUDIES IN MOTION In this issue Director’s Message, p. 1-2 SWAT Announcement, p. 2 Alumni Spotlights, p. 3-4 Catching up with our recent grads, p. 5 Please keep us in mind for your year-end giving. The Edward P. Alexander Endowment is intended to support internships and related professional development opportunities for students completing the Museum Studies Certificate. If you are interested in giving, please visit the University of Delaware Giving site, and please specify that your gift is for the Museum Studies Program Alexander Endowment.

Museum Studies in Motion

Director’s Message Katherine C. Grier kcgrier@udel.edu

I have lots of news to share, so let’s get right to it! The Museum Studies Program is continuing to grow as University of Delaware graduate students see it as an opportunity to build their skill sets beyond the academic training of their home departments. 48 graduate students are currently registered to complete the certificate, the largest number since I became program director in 2008.

MuseWeekly, our electronic postcard of professional opportunities, is also thriving, with over 3,500 recipients and an “open” rate as high as 35 percent some weeks. In January, we will have our seventh Collections SWAT Team, at the Milford Museum in Milford, DE. Fifteen students have signed up to participate. As always, the two weeks will be both challenging and fun.

Our students really like our new one-credit “skill-builder” courses.

Armand Battisti’s one-credit, five-week class on fund-raising and development is particularly popular, and Tim Goecke’s five-week lab on desktop publishing is also thriving. We are also having success with one-time experimental courses shaped by opportunities that present themselves through our relationships with area organizations. This fall, five students worked with the Delaware Historical Society, serving as scribes for focus groups and a planning conference associated with DHS strategic planning activities. They received academic credit for preparing detailed notes and executive summaries of the proceedings. (continued on page 2) www.udel.edu/museumstudies

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Winter 2015-2016

Be at the center of things.

Volume 8, Issue 2

Another of these one-credit “opportunity courses” will take place in February when 10 students will work on proposals for new interpretive content and strategies for the Delaware Historical Society’s George Read II House in New Castle. I’ll use the Museum Studies Program’s Facebook page to share more details about this course as it runs for five weeks beginning on 12 February 2016. Like many people involved with historic house museums, this class is inspired by the Anarchist’s Guide to House Museums by Franklin D. Vagnone and Deborah E. Ryan. And we are very lucky because the authors will join us to kick off the class and inspire the students!

We’re headed to Milford!

We are thrilled to announce that the next location for our Collections SWAT Team is the Milford Museum in Milford, DE. The Milford Museum was established in 1983 in the original Post Office building in downtown Milford. Its permanent collection includes a historic doll collection, Victorian silverware, and early Milford baseball memorabilia.

Executive director Claudia Leister provides excellent leadership for the society and we are looking forward to helping out. The students involved will have the opportunity to learn numerous collections care and management skills during the two-week SWAT program. We cannot wait to get started!

Finally, in October, I submitted a curriculum proposal to create a new undergraduate minor in Museum Studies. It is wending its way through the university bureaucracy right now, but response has been excellent so far. The 18-credit minor has two goals. One is to get undergraduates excited about and involved in museums and related cultural organizations – and not necessarily as future culture workers.

We want to transform Delaware students into what I call “culture vultures,” enthusiastic and knowledgeable visitors and volunteers – and also future advocates, board members and donors. Our second goal is to work with students of color on campus to encourage them to consider graduate training and careers in culture work, from historic sites to special collection libraries. Museum Studies is partnering with a number of departments on campus, including Anthropology, Black American Studies, Art History and Fashion and Apparel Studies, to take advantage of courses already on the books and to develop new ones to serve the minor.

I’ll let you know whether the Museum Studies minor makes it through the approval process this year. If it does, we will begin accepting students in Fall 2016. It’s an exciting time, and you can keep up with current news from our program through our Facebook page and our attractive, new website.

Subscribe to MuseWeekly, our email update with conferences, internships, and job opportunities. Read archived issues. Follow us on Twitter.

Friend us on Facebook. Join our LinkedIn group.

Museum Studies in Motion

www.udel.edu/museumstudies

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Winter 2015-2016

Be at the center of things.

Volume 8, Issue 2

Alumni Spotlight on Tabitha Pryor Corradi ‘09 This fall, we are spotlighting Tabitha Pryor Corradi, Curator of Collections at the BannekerDouglass Museum in Annapolis, MD. She is a 2009 graduate of the MA program in History and a recipient of a Museum Studies certificate.

What are your major responsibilities at the Banneker-Douglass Museum?

At small and medium-sized museums, everyone wears a number of “hats,” and the Banneker-Douglass Museum -with just seven full-time staffers- is no different.

But my day starts and ends with our collection. As Maryland’s official African American history museum, we’ve acquired a set of objects, art, and photographs whose sheer variety always keeps me on my toes. So my number one responsibility is analyzing, documenting, and preserving the objects we’ve been tasked with caring for.

I also serve as our museum’s in-house graphic designer, exhibit installer, and social media manager. With budgets as tight as they are, it’s critical that our fulltime staff is able to do a lot of the work that a larger museum might outsource.

What do you feel has been your biggest achievement since joining the BannekerDouglass Museum?

My biggest accomplishment has been bringing our collections management practices into the 21st centurydoing everything from storing our objects in a better, more sustainable way to digitizing our records so that scholars and community members have a better understanding of our holdings.

Museum Studies in Motion

How did you initially become interested in history and material culture? How did this lead you to curatorial work?

Where I grew up and went to school, loving history meant one thing: becoming a teacher.

So that’s what I studied and trained for, even though I wasn’t 100 percent certain it was what I wanted to do. It wasn’t until the last few years of college that my academic advisor sat with me and showed me the things I liked best about studying the past-rediscovering “new” old things, working with my hands, and finding creative solutions to tricky problems-could lead to a life outside of the classroom in a museum career. So I took my first museum internship and never looked back.

What advice do you have for emerging museum professionals?

There are two pieces of advice that have always suited me well: start early and find your fit.

Starting early is simple-don't wait until after you’re finished with school to work. Time feels tight at UD, but the reality is that you’ll never have a better opportunity to reach out to museums and other institutions than you will right now.

Don’t worry about finding an established internship or fellowship program. Just find a museum you’re passionate about, and then reach out and offer help.

Finding your fit is all about keeping an open mind. You might think you know what kind (or size) museum is the best fit for you, but you generally won’t know until you live it first-hand. My first summer after I started at UD, I couldn’t decide if I wanted to work in a large museum or a small museum, so I just did both! So keep an open mind, try things out, and then do your best to be honest about what makes you happy.

www.udel.edu/museumstudies

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Winter 2015-2016

Be at the center of things.

Volume 8, Issue 2

Alumni Spotlight on Stephanie Corrigan ‘12 This fall, we are spotlighting Stephanie Corrigan, an Education Specialist at the Computer History Museum in Mountain View, CA. Stephanie is a 2012 graduate of the MA program in history and a recipient of a Museum Studies certificate.

What does a typical day as an Education Specialist entail?

As an education specialist at the Computer History Museum, I am responsible for all of our school-day planning. This includes building long-term strategies; planning, developing, and testing new curriculum; coordinating program logistics; and delivering some of our education programs. My role allows me the opportunity to work on lots of different programs at different levels. I love researching and developing new programs, but as an education it’s also really important for me to be coordinating and executing plans and interacting with students and teachers.

What attracted you to the graduate program the the University of Delaware?

I was very drawn to the fact that at Delaware I could study both history and museum studies. And I think the combination is valuable for Delaware graduates who gain experience in both museum work and academic research.

I loved working with people from other departments and specialties through my Museum Studies classes. I thought it made for a more open, inclusive, and valuable program.

Museum Studies in Motion

Could you describe your experience taking Museum Studies classes?

I enjoyed the opportunity museum studies classes gave me to explore different aspects of museum work.

I found the practical aspects of the classes particularly valuable-the opportunity to develop a finding aid for an actual archival collection, to design part of an exhibit for a historic house museum, etc. These practical and diverse experiences really helped me learn about and develop a familiarity with different aspects of museum work, and to explore what areas I liked best.

What advice do you have for emerging museum professionals, especially those considering going into museum education?

Teach! There are many paths to a career in museum education, but I came to mine through classroom teaching. I would definitely recommend that anyone interested in museum education spend some time teaching-whether in the classroom or in informal settings. It’s a great experience. Familiarity with how schools work is also really helpful if you’re working with school programs.

It’s also helpful to be curious and interested in learning new things. A museum education career can take you many places and to many types of museums. If you are excited to learn and teach about new and diverse topics, it definitely helps.

www.udel.edu/museumstudies

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Winter 2015-2016

Be at the center of things.

Volume 8, Issue 2

Catching up with our recent grads Sarah Leach Smith , MS in Public Horticulture, ’15

Gregory Hargreaves, MA in History, ’15

Since graduation Sarah has attended and presented at several conferences including the American Public Gardens Association Conference and the AmericanHort Cultivate Conference. Recently, she has started working at the Sarah P. Duke Gardens at Duke University as a Visitor Services Coordinator. Sarah explained, “This is a bit of a ‘catch-all’ role, and I overlap with several departments including public programs, marketing, education, volunteers, and horticulture. My mandates include managing the information desk volunteers, creating and posting our social media content, obtaining visitor experience data through surveys, and working with the interpretation committee to identify and implement new interpretive strategies.”

Gregory is currently the oral history project manager at the Hagley Museum and Library in Wilmington, DE where the documents the history of American innovation in business and technology through recorded interviews. Gregory is happy to report that “the Museum Studies program prepared me for my job by offering a diverse range of courses that equipped me with a variety of skills and tools which I use on a daily basis. The program’s emphasis on project work has served me particularly well; it gave me practice taking an idea from conception, to research, to revision, all the way through to a finished product. As a historian practicing in a public forum, the training I received at UD was invaluable.”

Della Keyser, MA in History, ’15

Jennifer Ferris, MA in History, ’15

Della is currently the Records Coordinator at the Center for Art and Historic Artifacts, a Philadelphia-based nonprofit that specializes in paper conservations and provides services to museums to help them with collections stewardship. When asked about her daily work, Della noted, “I create and manage the object records for every artifact-photographs, works of art on paper, historical documents, books-that arrives at the center, while also serving as a contact person for clients. Because our staff is relatively small, I perform some odds-and-ends jobs as well, including managing our membership program, serving as the IT liaison, and providing HR assistance.”

Jennifer is currently a World History and Civics teacher at First State Military Academy in Clayton, DE. In addition to her teaching responsibilities, Jennifer directs the school’s acapella ensemble, Oorah-Capella. She happily notes that she is able to incorporate project-based learning into her classes. “For our last unit, my World History students assumed the role of curators, creating proposals for a hypothetical museum exhibit on ancient Greece,” Jennifer explained.

The Museum Studies Program at the University of Delaware 77 East Main Street | Newark, DE 19711 (302) 831-1251 | museumstudies@udel.edu Katherine Grier, Director Tracy Jentzsch, Program Coordinator

Museum Studies in Motion

www.udel.edu/museumstudies

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Winter 2015-2016

Museum Studies in Motion

Be at the center of things.

www.udel.edu/museumstudies

Volume 8, Issue 2

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Winter 2015-2016

Museum Studies in Motion

Be at the center of things.

www.udel.edu/museumstudies

Volume 8, Issue 2

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