Orientation Week

The Cooperstown Graduate program in Cooperstown, New York, began training "creative, entrepreneurial museum professionals committed to programs for the public good" in 1964. (http://www.oneonta.edu/academics/cgp/about/history.html) My class, to graduate in 2011, consists of fourteen women and three men all working to become those entrepreneurial professionals. Interests of the group range from Dutch immigrant history to solving the problems caused by No Child Left Behind for museum education programs. We will spend the next two years challenging ourselves to learn everything there is to know about museums, about ourselves, and about this place we're calling home until graduation.

We spent the last week going through the process of orientation and getting settled into our homes. After unfortunately having our fourth roommate put off coming to the program due to illness, my house is composed of two other girls. Mandy, from Minnesota and Ginny from Virginia. Mandy is very interested in bringing history and museums to the Web. Ginny's interests lie in textiles, especially clothing from the Civil War era. For myself, I love living history, and am hoping to find out how to do it well. We were in temporary housing until Thursday, displaced by the Glimmerglass Opera Company. We finally got moved in, and have spent what free time we've had sorting our spices into alphabetical order, organizing the junk drawers and moving ourselves into our rooms. We're finally settled, and are now able to turn our attentions to the reason we're here.

Last week we did a tremendous amount of work learning about the program, expectations, team building, conflict resolution and many other things. A lot of what we did was learning how we, as a group of seventeen, will work together. We're just a smidge too small to have representatives attend council meetings on behalf of their classmates, but too big to have everyone have all of their opinions be heard in an orderly manner. We worked very hard over the course of several days to record class bylaws to help us maintain order throughout the course of our next two years.

Of all the sessions we attended, the most interesting one discussed the changing role of technology in museums. We were introduced to Google Reader, as well as the currents uses of blogs and Twitter in museums. As a result of that session, I have decided to keep a blog for my time here. My primary goal will be to record my thoughts on our readings, our professional seminars and the impact that the program is having on my goals as a museum professional.