Graduate School Buyer's Guide for Museum Studies

Last week's New England Museum Association conference was amazing, and my head is still spinning from all the thinking, networking, and partying. (Okay, not really that much partying, but the hors d'oeuvres at the JFK Library were out of this world.)

I co-hosted two panels: the Conference Preview on Wednesday morning, and The Graduate School Conundrum on Wednesday afternoon. It's the latter that I'd like to take just a few minutes to talk about. I'll continue to follow up on this with additional thoughts over the coming weeks, because this is a topic that needs to be considered at length and with some really deep thinking.

Many, many ideas and tough questions came up during the session, but one cohesive subject that came to the top was whether museum studies graduate programs need a "buyer's guide," and what that would entail. I was taken aback not only by how little people knew about the graduate programs they were choosing but also by how little articulation there was about what people even wanted to know about their graduate programs. The overriding question so far seems to have been "will it get me a job?" That is a fine question. Answering it will not tell you much about the graduate program, however, and we don't even know all the moving parts that make up the answer to that question, though we have some good theories.

With that in mind, one of the excellent panelists, Linda Norris, has kicked off the conversation about a graduate school buyer's guide on her blog, The Uncataloged Museum. She poses some excellent questions and pokes at the bigger picture. We've also been having a good conversation on Twitter about some of her big questions, namely the positive and negative implications of a tight professional network.

NEMA 2014 Conference Panel: The Graduate School Conundrum

I've written here before about the panel I will be chairing at the New England Museum Association's annual conference this fall.

The survey that will lead off the panel is now open and seeking responses.

It can be found here, and I'd appreciate if you, gentle reader, could share this link as widely as possible. I'm hoping for a good cumulative mass of responses to start to get some good commonalities and statistical groupings. So far it's humming along nicely, and there's some fascinating (and depressing) information coming back.

Thank you for your help!

The Graduate School Conundrum, Part 2

I mentioned earlier in the week that I had a proposal accepted for the New England Museum Association's 2014 Annual Conference. I talked about the first half of that proposal, the survey to gather information.

The second half, after the presentation of the survey findings, will be an informed conversation between two brilliant thinkers in the museum world, both of whom have graduate degrees and are still intimately involved in professional development and learning. I'm beyond lucky that they agreed to work with me on this.

Our conversationalists are Linda Norris, of The Uncataloged Museum, and Cynthia Robinson, of the Tufts University Museum Studies Program.

I've known and admired them both for many years and our email conversations so far have been thoughtful and enlightening.

Some of the questions we'll consider:

- how graduate programs can be improved;

- how the level of commitment from the college or university affects the quality of the program;

- what graduate programs can provide that work experience in museums cannot (and vice versa);

- what the museum field needs of its newest employees ;

- whether graduate programs are flexible and innovative enough to produce the next generation of great thinkers;

- whether they encourage and increase diversity or homogeneity;

- what the future of professional education in the museum field should look like.

The Graduate School Conundrum

I'm excited to announce that a panel I proposed for the New England Museum Association's 2014 Annual Conference has been accepted.

My idea for the panel has been growing over the last few years, as I meet young & emerging professionals from all over the country. It seems like every conversation I have leads me to discover a graduate program I've never heard of - and too often, students aren't prepared for the real world of museum work.

I'm designing a survey right now aimed at two audiences: first, museum graduate programs themselves, to see what kind of degrees & classes are offered, how the program is structured, and essentially attempt a snapshot of what's out there.

The second audience is museum professionals and will attempt to discover how many currently working professionals have graduate degrees; how useful they've found them; what skills have transferred; what skills have been useless; whether they hire graduate students.

The basic question is this: if graduate school is becoming the new gateway to the museum profession, what's it really teaching us? Is it really that important?

I'll share my reading and thinking here on the blog as I continue through the project, and will publicize the surveys when they go live.

In the meantime, I'd greatly appreciate any links to reading about museum studies programs, whether published, online, or unpublished, and would appreciate any feedback about what questions you think need to be asked or what issues should be addressed. Comment here or shoot me an email at amanda.gustin[at]gmail[dot]com.