Many museums across the country pride themselves on their robust internship programs. Internships are a chance for students to learn about the cultural industry, gain valuable skills, and, for students of Museum Studies, earn credit towards their degrees. Stimulating and dynamic internships are also essential to ensuring that the cultural sector is cultivating top talent and attracting young professionals who are prepared to make an impact.
With the ongoing coronavirus closures, however, the state of many museum internship programs is uncertain. Many museums expect to be closed into the summer, potentially disrupting the ability to bring interns on-site. As a result, museums may be considering initiating remote internship programs, which can be beneficial students while providing museums much-needed extra help. However, this is completely new territory for many organizations across the country.
On April 30, 2020 over 1,500 people joined Brendan Ciecko (CEO @ Founder @ Cuseum), Ahva Sadeghi (CEO & Co-Founder @ Symba), Phyllis Hecht (Director, M.A. in Museum Studies @ Johns Hopkins University), Sierra Van Ryck deGroot (Education Programs Manager @ Poster House), & Meagan Mahaffy (Education Associate & Internship Coordinator @ Cooper Hewitt, Smithsonian Design Museum) as they discussed how museums can successfully launch and manage remote internship programs in the age of coronavirus.
View the video recording here.
Read the full transcript below.
Brendan Ciecko:
Hello everyone. My name is Brendan Ciecko. I'm the founder of Cuseum. First off, I want to say thank you to everyone who is joining us today and thank you to our panelists. I hope that everyone is staying safe and doing okay in these very uncertain times. For those of you who have tuned in to any of our past webinars, it's great to see you again. And for those of you that are joining us for the first time, welcome. Thanks for joining us. We hope that today's conversation will be helpful to you and your organization.
For the past month and a half, we've been hosting webinars each week on various topics revolving around engagement, social media, education, and membership in museums, art, and cultural organizations. We've committed ourselves to being a resource whenever possible, and to bring the community together around these very important topics.
The idea for today's webinar sprung up organically. I started to receive a few emails from universities and museums about new questions and challenges that have emerged around their summer internship programs. And then all the while, a thread was evolving on AAM's Museum Junction forum about remote internships. And it was clear that people were looking for answers. They were looking for ideas and looking for a sounding board on the topic. And this was new ground. There's really no real playbook. Because of this, I thought there are probably no experts on the topic, right? Well, that's what I thought, but then the same day I saw a note from another ecosystem I'm involved with about a new remote internship program. And so I figured, there's our expert.
Today we are diving into a topic that keeps coming up, it hasn't been addressed in a comprehensive fashion; remote internships at museums. Many museums and cultural organizations across the globe pride themselves on their robust internship programs and professional development opportunities. Internships are a chance for students to learn about the cultural industry, gain valuable experience, and for their students, especially of museum studies, earn credit towards their degrees. Internships are also essential in ensuring that the cultural sector is cultivating top talent and attracting emerging professionals who are prepared to make an impact.
However with the ongoing coronavirus closures and the global crisis, the state of museum internships is uncertain, and many museums expect to be closed until the summer months, potentially disrupting their ability to bring interns on-site. This is all in addition to changes to their overall workforce budget and resources. As a result, the type of internship program hosted this year is going to be radically different than what it's been in the past. It's going to be virtual. It's going to be remote. Remote internships are completely new territory for a majority of organizations across the globe. Not just museums, but corporations, governments, all types of organizations. It's vital that we talk about what we can do next so that we can ensure successful outcomes for all parties.
Today's topic is; How to Manage a Remote Internship Program at Your Museum. Without further ado, I'm excited to introduce our special guests. Joining us today, we have Phyllis Hecht. Phyllis is the founding director of the Johns Hopkins University online Masters of Arts in Museum Studies program. She has taught at Johns Hopkins University since 2005, and her research focuses on best practices and innovative uses of technology in the museum field. Phyllis has published papers and participated in international panels on the topics of museums and technology, building online collections, and current practices in digital curation. Phyllis has more than 25 years of museum experience, and prior to Johns Hopkins University worked at the National Gallery in Washington D.C. as a manager and art director of the museum's website, serving on the original development team of the site. Thanks so much for joining us Phyllis.
Next we have Ahva Sadeghi. Ahva is the co-founder and CEO of Symba, an all-female social impact tech startup that gives companies access to the best talent around the world through remote internships, and helps them manage the entire experience. She was recently named to Forbes 30 Under 30 and a global entrepreneur scholar by the US Department of State, and holds a Masters from the London School of Economics. Thanks so much for joining us Ahva.
Ahva Sadeghi:
Thank you.
Brendan Ciecko:
Wonderful. And we also have Sierra Van Ryck deGroot. Sierra has her Masters in Museum Education with a specialization in childhood education from Bank Street College of Education. She currently works as the education programs manager at Poster House in New York City. When she is not in a museum, Sierra can be found serving on the New York City Museum Educators roundtable board, as the secretary and peer-group liaison, and also eating, or reading a book she's delayed for months or trying to make a dent in her bucket list. I like the personality that you've included in the bio.
Sierra Van Ryck deGroot:
Thank you.
Brendan Ciecko:
That is awesome. Then we also have Meagan Mahaffy. Meagan is the education coordinator for programs, partnerships, and internships at Cooper Hewitt, Smithsonian Design Museum. Since joining the team in 2017, she has contributed significantly to a variety of design literacy programs in New York City, and across the nation. Including professional development workshops for educators, the design scholars program for New York City teens, and the museum's renowned internship program. She has also developed and taught object-based curriculum at the Denver Art Museum, the Whitney Museum of American Art, and the Museum of Modern Art MOMA. In her free time, Meagan enjoys exploring nature and making art. Thanks for joining us Meagan.
I'm Brendan Ciecko. I'm the founder of Cuseum. I'll be your host for today's conversation. Let's jump into some various aspects of launching and managing a remote internship program. Meagan, how do you recruit and interview interns? Is it considerably different from real-life interns?
Meagan Mahaffy:
Sure. I would say this summer the process remains largely the same. Cooper Hewitt's summer internship program welcomes interns from across the nation already. We're well equipped to conduct interviews and coordinate with interns digitally already. One thing that was different this year was by the time we decided to move to a remote or virtual internship model, we had already hired most of our internship cohort for the summer. But that point it became really important to communicate with interns, and communicate with staff mentors, and gauge everybody's comfortability with moving to a virtual space.
One positive I would say to including a remote or virtual option for our internship program is that the possibility of hiring interns that may not have had the resources, or been able to travel and live in New York City for 10 weeks over the summer and work full time. This is something that we're toying with in the future of offering virtual internships in addition to in-person internships, even post COVID-19, assuming things go well this summer.
Brendan Ciecko:
That's great. It's really fascinating to hear about your thinking about a hybrid approach. That's wonderful. Ahva, you yourself completed a remote internship early in your professional career, which you describe as a huge opportunity for you. You've now started a company that specializes in facilitating remote internships for managers and students. What do you think are the unique benefits of remote internships, both for employers and students? We would also love to hear a little bit about your own personal story, your own personal journey.
Ahva Sadeghi:
Yes of course. Well, thank you so much for having me. It's such an impressive turnout of your community. As I mentioned, and you described, I'm the newbie here. I’m excited to learn more about the great initiatives that you're hosting and embracing this unique challenge because when you think about museums, you think about so much in-person experiential learning. This is a unique space.
A little bit about myself and Symba, I never thought I would be a tech leader of a startup. My background is in human rights and economics. I was actually a student based in Tucson, Arizona. I was going to the U of A, and all the internships I wanted were in D.C. and New York, and they were only recruiting for the summertime. I landed this amazing opportunity, the State Department had launched this initiative called the Virtual Student Foreign Service. When they brought on 40 students and they were matching them with Foreign Service officers to do remote internships over the course of the year. It was supposed to be a nine-month program, and it was a game-changer for me. Because I was in my dorm room in Tucson, Arizona getting college credit towards my degree, and now I could put the US Department of State on my resume.
I wrote an article, How to Intern at State from Home. It went viral! The Foreign Service general said, "We've never had an article go viral." . I was 17, 18 years old, writing about my experience. Now, it's been 10 years, and it has over 2,000 remote interns every single year with 60 Federal agencies participating, including NASA, CIA, FBI. I thought to myself, the Federal government is creating opportunities for students all around the world. Students who might not, as Meagan mentioned, have the resources and access to be able to live in New York City or D.C. I've done six internships, all of them were unpaid. Who can afford to work for free? So we believe in remote internships as this way of creating accessibility and creating opportunities.
Brendan, when you ask about the benefits of remote internships, well there are so many benefits for employers because now they can recruit year-round. And now they can recruit from schools and places that they'd never had the opportunity to tap into before and they can also understand what it takes to manage someone remotely. Because that's a pretty different experience. We have two remote interns at Symba, and an intern manager, for myself it's definitely been quite the learning experience. But there's also a unique benefit for the students. The students right now are also working remotely and virtually for all their classes. This is a unique benefit for them to gain the skills to work remotely. I always caution people to not compare and contrast an in-person versus a remote experience. We're all living in this new world right now where this is a unique challenge.
Let's understand there are benefits to remote internships, but they're very different. I really commend everyone on this call and everybody who's joining in to learn how to embrace the remote internship. It's a challenge that everyone is going through together in a short time period, but it's a unique time that we can embrace it, and show a lot of great leadership for students everywhere.
Brendan Ciecko:
Excellent. Thank you for that Ahva. I look forward to the parts of the conversation where we can dive a little bit deeper into some of those best practices. It is absolutely a challenge, there's no question about it. We're hoping that through some of your leadership, and the others that have joined us, on this panel, we'll be able to share some of the things that have been working well for them.
Phyllis, as both director of the Museum Studies program at JHU, and a huge advocate for digital and technology in museums, what are some of the most important aspects of an internship from an academic perspective? How can that experience be facilitated, or even enhanced, when interns are working remotely and using digital programs to work as part of that?
Phyllis Hecht:
Thanks Brendan, and thanks for doing this webinar. It's really great, and just join in with everybody saying that. Academically, the hands-on practical experience of an internship is a wonderful way to synthesize the theory and practice that students are learning in the classroom. It's a way for students to be integrated into a museum environment and get to know their peers, get to know mentors. And truthfully, an internship can be a life-changing experience. It allows the students that real-life experience of doing what they're being trained to do.
A student in our program might write a grant proposal, they might create lesson plans, they might create an exhibition proposal for a course assignment. Working in the real museum can be an eye-opening experience. Not just in the content creation, but also in working with a team, and in understanding the politics of the museum. Truthfully internships build skills and knowledge, but they're also building confidence, and professionalism, and networking in the field.
Just to say how we run our internship program, and I have to give a shout-out to our internship coordinators. Judy Landau who's done this for 10 years and has given us a really solid program. She's retiring in June, but Stephanie Brown is taking it over, right in the middle of navigating remote internships. Just a big thank you. We have a class attached to our internship, so everyone who's doing an internship in a semester is together in a blackboard course. They can be reflecting on their internships, discussing their experiences, and basically enhancing what they're doing.
You also asked about how can that academic experience be facilitated or enhanced using digital platforms. I think that using digital platforms can actually inspire creativity. We're seeing this in general. Right now, with museums being closed, all the amazing activities and resources being created by museums. If you're in a traditional on-site internship, you might not think about using Facebook Live for a program, or creating an Instagram challenge, or instituting a blog, or creating a performance, or an event on Zoom. These digital platforms can really open new worlds. There are so many digital tools out there for experimentation. Students working remotely now are going to go beyond the strict academic goals to learn new web skills and tools. It's a great opportunity.
Brendan Ciecko:
Great. Sierra and Meagan, you were both some of the first people to introduce remote internships at your respective institutions in light of coronavirus. How did you go about launching remote internship programs? Are there any existing models or examples of remote internships in the cultural sector that you used as a guide or a framework?
Sierra Van Ryck deGroot:
I want to say that I looked at existing remote internships, but quite frankly I did not. I went into it with a brand new slate, which is often not the way to go. Why start something completely new? Why recreate the wheel? But I had done a lot of research in the year prior about what made a really amazing internship. And I'd also done a lot of research around how to make remote work really work. I planned ahead to combine those two things since starting this endeavor. I have looked to see who else is doing remote internships and learned from there. Which is a backwards way of doing it. I would recommend for anyone going into it now, to look and see what's out there already.
I just want to briefly shout out the Museum Studies Network for AM, who collaborated with myself and Nick Murr to create the online internship spreadsheet. And that spreadsheet has provided a lot of resources, not just in other institutions who are providing internships, but also providing reference points of how institutions of different sizes have approached doing their online internships, and what kind of projects that you can do. That's where I started. I also have to shout out our director Julia Knight at Poster House, who I said to, "I want to move internships online." Julia was like, "Yeah, let's do it.” I had no pushback whatsoever.
Brendan Ciecko:
That's exciting. You said something that really stood out to me about your investigation moving into remote work. I would honestly think for any organization to have a successful remote internship, it doesn't hurt to be also really proficient and do some of the early legwork around being good at remote work, because the two go hand-in-hand. I think that's really interesting to hear your point there. I think in having both you and Meagan on this, Poster House is less than a year old. It's a baby museum, it's the new kid on the block. You have a lot of flexibility, and agility, and a director who embraces that. Whereas Cooper Hewitt, also a very innovative organization, and forward-looking organization is part of the Smithsonian Institution and a much larger organization. Meagan, can you tell me about some of the existing frameworks? What was already there? What are some of the things that you changed for this upcoming period?
Meagan Mahaffy:
Sure. I am lucky, as Cooper Hewitt's internship coordinator, to be part of the big Smithsonian network. Smithsonian has an essential office of fellowships and internships, and that office has been so responsive to this need to move to a virtual space across the Smithsonian, all the museums. Offering support with getting interns access to the networks, emails, and all of that. I think that, to your point, of making sure that first your department and your museum is able to work effectively remotely. If not that, then how can we possibly hope to mentor interns remotely?
The second thing I did was really go back to the staff mentors who all had requested interns far before the coronavirus appeared as a thing we were going to have to worry about. I talked to them really extensively about how they might shift what they hoped to do, and what their goals for the interns were, to a virtual space. Through those conversations, it became clear that certain departments and certain projects are better suited to a virtual space or a remote internship, at least, for this year. And some projects were not going to be as successful.
I would say too, that one of my biggest goals with the internship is to, rather than trying to just recreate the existing internship program that I've been running, to your point of, earlier, instead of that, it's better to think, "What are the goals? What do we want the interns to learn?" and how can we support the mentors in supporting the interns as well? I don't want to say starting from scratch because there's a lot of great work out there already, but starting from a digital space instead of a let's move this over into the digital space and just hope for the best. That's one thing I've really been thinking about.
Brendan Ciecko:
Thank you. When interns are working remotely, what are you doing to onboard them effectively, and allow them to get up to speed on your organization, your mission, your values, the tasks at hand, the org chart? Ahva, what are some best practices for onboarding?
Ahva Sadeghi:
Yes. To build out Symba's platform we did exactly what Sierra did as far as researching internships. Funny enough, we actually went to students first when we did over 100 focus groups at different universities asking them what they want in their dream internships. We've also done research with over 1,000 HR and talent leaders to ask them about the best practices when onboarding.
We built Symba's platform that took a lot of the learnings from in-person as well as remote. And on our platform, we have a very nice welcome onboarding experience. The more fun and engaging that you can make your onboarding experience if you want to have some of the mentors actually record a fun video, or fun two-minute, three-minute introduction. Have people create a little profile, a little bio about themselves, sharing what they're excited about for their internship, having some fun facts. The goal of onboarding from an internship perspective is to get them excited about their experience.
We recommend that you also, as part of their onboarding experience, have a calendar, and a structure of what is the program going to entail. So they have a clear understanding. When I say onboarding, it's not just for your interns. As Meagan mentioned, you need to be on-onboarding your mentors and other stakeholders that are going to be participating. Make sure you set expectations clearly within the onboarding process of what this remote internship is going to look like. Is it going to be a 40-hour a week and a remote internship? Which I don't recommend. I recommend thinking about a 20 or a 10-hour week internship. Thinking about micro-internship projects.
One successful way of designing that is having the mentors submit the projects in advance, and then you can break them up and have a schedule for the students in advance. Make it fun and exciting, but also make it very informative. Try to send it out before the internship program begins so the intern feels this level of confidence that they're ready to succeed in their internship for the summer.
Brendan Ciecko:
That's great. I love the idea of adding some elements of fun and uplifting them from the very get-go. The video idea sounds great. I hope everybody who's tuned into the webinar takes that to heart and makes that part of their initial introduction for their interns. Also the idea of these micro-internships. I think for a lot of people, even at Cuseum, when we think of internships, they're 40 hours a week. We don't really think too much about micro-internships. I think given the uncertainty, and the shifting priorities right now in the cultural space, that seems like a small step that could be made while people try to figure out what works. That's great advice Ahva.
Sierra, what are you and Poster House doing in this area right now?
Sierra Van Ryck deGroot:
For our onboarding process, we are in the process of, as you mentioned before, we're a brand new museum. We are also in the process of creating all of our internship materials from scratch right now. We're starting a new handbook for interns. We're starting a new handbook for our staff mentors. We're also planning ways for our interns to be as involved. This COVID era, we have no idea when the museum is physically going to be open again. We're also thinking about how the interns are going to get face time with the staff.
Right now, Poster House is doing this really incredible thing called virtual town halls every Monday. All of our staff come in, one staff member leads it. And it's really a giant all-staff meeting virtually. Obviously, if we are still on pause during this summer, we would love to have our interns involved in that. Should the museum be open to staff again before then, we have Museum Mondays now where they'll be sitting in with different staff members to get to know them, ask them any questions, and get that face time that they would have gotten in the office, in addition to having their staff mentor for the internship.
They're also going to have lots of little micro-projects all along the way to get them involved in the things that we do digitally at Poster House and as much on-site stuff as possible. We are also doing our career development workshops, which are going to provide opportunities for our interns to learn a little bit more about professionalism and the things that you would've learned in-house at the internship, but we obviously can't do. They're also going to have check-ins with the internship coordinator, me. They'll be checking in with me at least once a week in addition to having a larger team check-in.
That onboarding process is going to be continuous and it's going to adapt over the summer. We want to make sure that we're meeting the needs of the interns and the mentors and that they feel heard and seen during this process. We're also still trying to make it all happen.
Brendan Ciecko:
That's great. We have a question from the audience that I want to pull in from Daniel Pecoraro. He asks, "How do we make sure interns feel they're part of the team in a remote setting?" Sierra, you touched a little bit on that towards the end. Meagan, can you speak a little bit about the community dynamic? With the social realities changed around virtual interaction and video interaction, how do you make the interns feel like they're a part of a team?
Meagan Mahaffy:
Yeah, that's a great question. And frankly, one of my biggest concerns in moving to a virtual internship, because that's such an important part of the experience for the student, as Phyllis mentioned at the beginning. One thing that Cooper Hewitt staff is doing which I find just so inspiring is we've set up these virtual coffee hours between staff from different departments. It's totally random, and you just do 15 minutes. It gets put on your calendar, and you have a chance to talk about non-work related things that you might not really get to do in a virtual space. That's one way. I'm really hoping that we can include the interns in that experience, where it's trying to simulate that bump, you bump into in the elevator, see you in the staff cafeteria and those kind of encounters. I'm not going to pretend I have all the answers to that question. I think it's definitely going to be trial and error. But the New York City internships community has been really helpful. I've been talking to Sierra a lot about this, actually, too. One thing that I'm finding, to be a silver lining of going virtual in this crisis is that suddenly the channels of communication between the different museums in New York have blown open. I am really excited about the chance to give my interns at Cooper Hewitt the opportunity to now work as Sierra's interns at Poster House, and give them a bigger network of a community for the students, even though they're not all going to be physically here in New York.
Brendan Ciecko:
That's great. Hearing about the creation of new types of communities across all of the New York City museums is really inspiring and probably a great benefit to the interns to have a sense of community. On that sense of community, Phyllis, with JHU you're working with dozens of students at any given time, dozens of organizations at any given time. I would imagine there's a community that you've created for your students that are in these internships. Can you talk a little bit about what that community looks like?
Phyllis Hecht:
Sure. One of our priorities in the program is always that people should not feel like they're sitting home alone at their computers. That's a good thing to think about. I think with the internships too, we have our internship class which right away builds community with our interns, whoever is interning that semester. In fact, we have 11 people who are doing remote internships this summer. They will all be chatting with each other on how it's going. The other thing is, we really look at it as a partnership between the university and the museum. Everything you're doing to onboard, and I love the video idea, that's a great idea. We can even be proactive and have them do that.
Our internship coordinator works really closely with the supervisor and we want to be part of what we can collaborate on any of this onboarding because for the class we encourage them to find the org chart of the museum. That's actually an assignment. Get to know your supervisor, get to know other departments, immerse yourself in the site. Go to any staff meetings you can, anything that is accessible to you. If we know there's a virtual town hall happening every Monday, we would definitely encourage the students to go to that if they can. Definitely we're very interested in building communities through whatever means, possible. Through social media, private Facebook groups, anything like that.
Brendan Ciecko:
That's great. What are some of the tools, the software, that you'd recommend, and say are critical for recruiting interns, managing interns, communicating with interns as part of your internship program?
Meagan Mahaffy:
I can start. We actually have a whole website that takes care of the applications and recruitment for interns. In terms of onboarding the interns, and getting them well-versed in Cooper Hewitt culture, and all of those really important aspects of the internship, Ahva, you really inspired me earlier with your idea too. As Phyllis said, traditionally we have a day of orientation where students meet each other. They meet tons of different staff members. They get gallery tours and all of those really fantastic, unique to museum opportunities. This is an example of something that I don't think would be successful to just try to replicate digitally, but having some pre-recorded messages from staff and things like that. Having the students maybe work on the same things, but not necessarily online in a live Zoom call, is something I'm experimenting with too. Instead of a gallery tour, maybe interns are getting 30 minutes to explore the collections website and then with certain prompts, and asked to report back there, and try to build community.
In terms of tools, I've just set up for the interns. We use as a staff Microsoft Teams, for internal communications. That has been, in this period of time where we're all remote, it's actually been really a wonderful tool for our departments to stay connected. The chat function is really easy to use, and it integrates really well into Outlook, which is what we use for email communication. I think that will be really crucial is ensuring that interns are set up in that platform, logged in. We've created a separate channel on Microsoft Teams just for interns so that I'll be on there too. I can post announcements. They can talk to each other and then there's the opportunity there for them to share Instagram handles or phone numbers in case they want to do something social, digital, virtually on their own too, which I've seen from my interns in the past. The cohorts always become really close, and I want to try to give them that experience as much as I can.
Brendan Ciecko:
That's great. Right now you can get your hands on so many remote collaboration and communication tools for free. Whether it be Microsoft Teams or Google Hangout, or Google Meet. Are any of you using Slack for real-time chat communication? Sierra, you're on Slack, your team's on Slack, your interns are on Slack. Do they have channels? What's the cadence? What's going on behind the scenes there?
Sierra Van Ryck deGroot:
We're creating a separate Slack group for our interns because we're not quite at a point yet where we can combine our staff and intern Slacks. We're hoping we're going to have our intern Slack be really focused on what the interns need and what they want to talk about. Our staff will be able to join it there. That will provide a space for, not just the interns to communicate with one another, but the staff members in a variety of different ways. With Slack, we can do so much. There are so many great bots and add-ons that you can add to promote, not just like staying on top of your calendar appointments. I have the Google Calendar add-on that pings me a minute before every meeting. If I've forgotten something, I'm lost in something, I can come back. That's a great add-on. There's the donut one where you can meet with someone else for a coffee break or a brief chat. And Slack has provided a lot of different options for us to promote communication between interns and between staff outside of emails. I don't know about anyone else, but I have serious email fatigue right now. It provides a quicker, faster communication. In addition to Slack, we're also the Google suite. Lots of opportunities for communication, and connection there. I am talking with other New York City, and outside of New York City internship coordinators about what they're using. Our friends over at New York Historical Society are absolutely happy with their choice of moving with Zoom for their interns, and for their programming. We're going to be looking into that as well. We also use Airtable for our staff. It's our bread and butter for all of our databases and everything that we use to track information. We're also going to have our interns using that application as well. Giving them as much access to everything that we're using, and then some.
Brendan Ciecko:
That's great. Let's talk a little bit about the remote training process for the internship program. What systems, what workflows, what programs do you typically use to train interns? And how can this be done effectively while being remote?
Ahva Sadeghi:
Yes. As everyone on the call just mentioned, there are a million ways to go about doing a remote internship. One thing we've learned from all of our research, and tried to derive trends, because my background is at econ, from internships is that not one company or organization does their internship program the same. That means that this is a time to embrace creativity. Be creative, be fun, be open to new projects, but there is no right way of doing an internship, or a remote internship. I'm happy to hear that there is a lot of cross-collaboration happening here, and we're going to be monitoring a lot of these successful trends and fun ideas, and posting them on our blog. Happy to share that with everyone too. About fun concerts, people are going to be hosting virtually for their interns and fun activities.
To share a little bit more about the successful training and onboarding, we have a lot of different tools mentioned here. That's really difficult when you're onboarding somebody for 10 weeks, or eight weeks, for a short internship program. What we've done on Symba is we've actually brought all the tools together and students can link out to their Slack, or link out to the Airtable, or link out the Google Drive in one place. I'm happy to sync up afterwards and work on a partnership where we provide Symba for your program this summer, and you can plug in all those pieces so that you welcome your intern in one seamless place. Because the more organized you can make your training, the better for your interns and the better for you, because these interns hate to ask questions. You're asking questions remotely, you're typing up that email, you're redrafting that email about how do I approach my intern manager with these questions? They're probably all going to be having the same questions, but they can't be in an office too you know, come and approach you with them.
Being very organized about the training process, reading through it. Does it make sense? Having a few different stakeholders at the office read through the training and handbooks that you've created. One of the biggest tips of advice that we have is creating a remote internship code of conduct and norms. As you might imagine, your interns might not all be based in New York City or D.C. They might be in the Bay Area where we are. There's a three hour time difference. What does that mean when it is 9:00 AM in New York City? Does your student have to abide by 6:00 am time? What are your working hours going to be? Are they going to be working, if they are working 40 hours a week, do you want the green light of their Slack to be on? If they get an email on the weekend, do you have a policy around that? Small nuances that you don't think about when you're moving remote. You have to share and explain, articulate this really clearly when you're training them.
We've also recommended for some of the partners to host a remote internship welcome. Getting set up and started. Before the internship program begins you can have one-hour training for the interns. Are you set up on all the tools that we're going to be using? Do you have wifi that meets this demand? How can we support you to make sure that you have all the technical resources just to get set up? I find that that's a small part of the remote training that's also really critical and important to keep in mind.
Brendan Ciecko:
That's great. That's so helpful. This question comes from Leslie Ochoa. This is very specific to museums compared to any other sector. It's important that we dive into this. Any advice for collections-based internship. I have a hard time thinking of them as remote internship opportunities. Phyllis, do you want to jump on that one?
Phyllis Hecht:
Yeah, they're all about digital assets. We do have people who, this summer, who are going to be cataloging digital assets for a museum. It just so happens this museum had just had a lot of their archives scanned. The person is going to be cataloging them, and then actually finding a theme, and then creating an exhibition. We've had interns in the past do work on a Wikipedia projects actually. It was to expand collections care in Wikipedia. We do some of this in our conservation class, but this was actually an internship where they did research and put together information on different modes of collection care for the field. So it was helping the field. I can talk about one other one that I can think of. This summer, someone is working with a deaccessioned collection of costumes. Using open soft software, they're going to be creating patterns for these costumes, for the museum. It's a historical museum that has a big costume collection. They'll be putting them on the web, and it'll be for people to use. There's a lot of different types of collection. Certainly not with the object itself, but certainly digitally, you can do a lot of different collections.
Brendan Ciecko:
Great, that's super helpful. I'm seeing a lot of conversation in the chatbox about just some of the different ideas about what can be generated. Whether it be alternative descriptive text for collections, images to improve accessibility, of our collections, online, for the website, in addition to a bunch of other things. It sounds like a big part of that, of course, is having access to the digital images, and digital assets, but there are opportunities. Not all is lost for collection internships this year.
How do you ensure that internship progress is being made? How can you establish a good cadence during the internship, and make sure that expectations are being communicated and met? This is going to vary from if you have a more project-based internship where "Here's the big project that you're going to be focusing on over the upcoming months." Or, "Hey, you're a part of the marketing team. You're coordinating anything that comes our way."
Meagan Mahaffy:
Sure. Our program already requires interns to work on a project from start to finish, and mentors submit ideas for that project ahead of time. We are going to stick to that as part of the internship in this digital space too. I think without being able to check in briefly in person every day with mentors, it's even more important than ever to establish regular schedules for checking in on progress. I've required mentors to check in with their interns via video chat or phone at least one time per week. In addition to that, the group will check in with me every week as well. I really encourage mentors to invite interns to everything that's going on in their department, so that they're still getting that face-to-face or voice-to-voice engagement with their staff. Just to help bring them into the working day, and working with them there.
I would say too that it seems that working through these projects with mentors and thinking a little bit more about how to make sure they're successful digitally, that being really clear with expectations, as Ahva said, is seeming to be just the most important part. Just keeping the communication channels open, and giving interns the space and the tools to check-in and ask questions, and have access to other members of their department that are not necessarily their mentor, that they would perhaps be more comfortable asking questions to, and those people that are involved.
I think that's where my role is going to be important too, as the internship coordinator, having a lot of contact with the interns all the time. We'll be on chat in the Microsoft Teams channels I mentioned, and making sure that there are opportunities for them to be checked in a lot. Not in a way of, "Are you working? We want to make sure that the green light is on in your Outlook all the time." I don't think that's realistic. I have certainly not found that to be realistic in terms of working remotely myself, that I would not require that of interns. But just the biggest thing being, communicating. I think that's where, regular check-ins, between interns and me, interns and mentors, and me and mentors will all be really, even more, important than ever.
Brendan Ciecko:
Sierra, given the size of your institution, what do you see as an adequate cadence of frequency for these check-ins between your mentors, and your interns, and your team at large? I'd love to hear your thoughts on this.
Sierra Van Ryck deGroot:
As I shared, this is our first go around, and so this might change as we shift and adapt. Right now we are planning on at least one check-in with me, the internship coordinator. Then one check-in with their mentor a week. Then we'll have one team check-in. That's already three check-ins that you have during the week. I'm also considering adding a Slack check-in channel, where there is a bot that automatically pops up a prompt and is like, "What have you worked on today? What inspired you today?" And having interns answer that as their check-in for the day. And then they can see one another's answers. Myself and the staff can pop in there as well, so they can see that we're also involved in that process.
We're thinking about three check-ins a week is a pretty solid number. We're also keeping in mind that this is a really unprecedented moment, and folks have had their lives disrupted in various ways. We're going to try to keep the check-ins as not sparse, but we're trying to keep them as realistic as possible so that students don't feel overwhelmed to keep checking in. Depending on what's going on at home, what their needs are, we just want to meet them where they are. If they need more check-ins, they're more than welcome to message us. We all practically live on our Slacks. But they're also welcome to manage, tell us that, "I only want to check in with Sierra." Or, "I only want to check in with one person."
Brendan Ciecko:
Sierra, you brought up something really interesting that I want to dig a little bit deeper into. It's just the notion that you'd have a Slackbot. A daily automated bot that is asking the intern what they worked on today. I want to open this to you, and to Ahva, the idea of what can be automated? Obviously most of it is not going to be automated, but what are these little hacks or automations that you can have in place that will save you time, and ensure that a check-in or some touch-point is happening? That either gathers information or delivers a message. Sierra can you talk a little bit about what is a Slackbot, for those of us who don't know? What types of questions can you ask on that? Ahva, I'd love to hear your ideas or your thoughts on things that could be either streamlined or automated. Knowing that there is no silver bullet, but these things can save people a lot of time on things that are otherwise redundant.
Sierra Van Ryck deGroot:
Prefacing that I am not a Slack expert in any stretch of the imagination. A Slackbot is an automated add-on that you can add to your Slack workspace, and it provides for that level of automation for your group, depending on what the bot is for. I shared before that my Google Calendar is automated and linked to my Slack. Before a meeting, I get a pop-up that's automated. I get a little reminder at the beginning of the day that this is my schedule for the day, these are the Google Hangouts that I have, and the link's attached, which is incredibly helpful. I also would say that this one that I'm talking about, you can automate questions, or ask folks to answer in particular ways, which is helpful. I haven't used it with our team, but I've used it in other Slack spaces. I'm excited to see it take its own life and take on a life in the Slack channels for the interns. I do want to preface that this one level of automation is not to make things impersonal, but rather to level the playing field. In the sense that everyone is being asked the same question, and everyone is going to answer them. It provides that we're all in the same space.
Brendan Ciecko:
That's really helpful. Ahva, what are your thoughts on any types of automations or short-cuts, or things that can make the intern program manager's life as easy as possible?
Ahva Sadeghi:
Yes. Well, I wouldn't necessarily call it a short cut but I would say that definitely as I honed in about pre-loading as much of the organization of the program before the program starts is going to lead to infinite success. Meaning that if you can make sure that they have all the resources they need before they get started, that will save you so much time answering a million questions. We recommend that as you're getting questions from students, go in and update those articles, or the pieces that you have. Make sure they're living documents, that they're in Google Drive or other tools. And you're getting 5 or 10 students asking you the same question, you can quickly go in and update that within the handbook, or the guide.
As Sierra mentioned, feedback is critical. We recommend at least three times of feedback a week. In my second remote internship, I was ghosted by my manager. That can happen, right. The intern is not in the office. The manager gets overwhelmed with work and forgets about their intern. You need to make sure that you are checking in with the interns. Even having anonymous surveys and quickly back on Symba's platform we do have poll surveys. I think there's one called Tinybot or different poll surveys you can put into Slack. But just is a happy face, a sad face, a neutral face. Just see how your internship is going? Do you have all the tools you need?
Having a clear plan of action if things are not going well. How are you going to step in and mediate? We talked about this being an experiment and a trial run. This is the first time everyone's doing it. You need to take it up a notch when it comes to feedback. Typically programs do mid-program and end-of-program evaluation. Get program evaluation and feedback. Also from your mentors and managers, make sure you're asking them for feedback. You can ask the same questions you asked their interns, and design them in a way for the managers.
For managers, I would not recommend doing three feedback sessions with them, maybe once a week. We've learned that even when we designed Symba's platform, how can we make it as easy as possible for the managers, but at the same time for interns, get as much involvement and as engaging as possible. The more questions you ask them, the more feedback you can ask them, the more they feel involved and engaged. They love it. Usually, the star players who are going for internships this summer are the ones who are going to be creating, innovating, and, and bringing more projects to you. We've noticed that the interns are creating projects for their intern managers to review. Think about that, but then also, automating is important, but the more personalized you can make the experience, the better. So automate the onboarding process and the feedback, but everything else should be very organic, and as personal as possible.
Brendan Ciecko:
That's great. That's incredibly helpful. One of the most important aspects of an internship is mentorship and opportunities for professional development and networking. We talked about this a little bit earlier. Remotely, it's even more challenging for this to happen organically. What are some ways to establish remote mentorship programs and opportunities to connect with professionals across departments and across the field? I'd love to hear from Phyllis on this, as you've built a pretty robust network around mentorship, and around cross-institutional collaboration.
Phyllis Hecht:
In fact, I was thinking about this in terms of how they can get this mentorship thing. As you were saying, you assume the supervisor is going to be a mentor, but they may find a mentor in another department. Possibly if somebody's willing to create and maintain a private Facebook group of people who want to be mentors, and people who want to be mentees, there would be a time for relationships to develop. It could be just completely career-focused. Are you interested in learning more about the field? Relationship building, networking, and possibly be able to find a mentor that way. We have a private, student, and alumni Facebook group. There's no faculty there. I'm not on there, but I hear it's really valuable. People mentor each other, and advise each other, and tell each other about jobs. It's a really great opportunity if you could do that within your museum if somebody's willing to be the admin for it.
The other thing I was thinking about, which maybe somebody out there has done already, or knows how to do. But now there is this speed-dating. So mentorship, can we do virtual speed mentorship? I don't know if there's a system out there for this, or could we create it in Zoom? Or how could we do this? Brendan, maybe you know, or maybe you could create a system. Or Ahva, maybe you have this already. It seemed like that's another possibility. Or certainly, these virtual town halls that Sierra mentioned for Museum Mondays, and if everybody goes, and eventually you get to know each other. If it's very freeform and people are talking, you start to get to know each other, in the other departments.
Brendan Ciecko:
That's great. I imagine it's going to either happen in New York City, or it's going to happen in Vegas because I feel like you're describing a little bit of mentor roulette if I had to call it something. That's wonderful. We have four minutes left to go, and I want to leave on one big takeaway from each of you about how remote internships can be as successful, as effective for this upcoming period and into the future. What is one big takeaway on remote internships that you'd like everybody to know? Let's start with Sierra.
Sierra Van Ryck deGroot:
Sure. I'm going to cheat, and I'm going to do two. My one big practical takeaway from remote internships is that you can't plan it like a regular internship, a regular on-site internship. They are completely different, they have a completely different set of needs, a set of ways to respond and cooperate with their mentors and the students themselves. You're getting a wide breadth of students, so you want to be mindful of that. My second biggest takeaway is, make sure you're paying your interns. Collaborate with colleges, collaborate with grantmakers, funders, get it underwritten. Do whatever you can to get something for your interns, because the labor they're doing is incredibly important.
Brendan Ciecko:
Thank you. Meagan, what is one big takeaway that you would leave everybody with today about virtual and remote internships?
Meagan Mahaffy:
Yeah, I think in the same vein as Sierra, you can't just retrofit your existing program to be virtual. It's really important to go back to the goals of your program and think about how you might support those goals, but virtual. Then I just want to add that, if you're in this process, I want to encourage everybody to be really kind to themselves. It's something that I've been practicing myself. This is such a weird time that we're all living through. I think we should be kind to ourselves as coordinators in figuring out how to plan these experiences for our students. Be kind to our mentors, our staff mentors, and kind to the interns too. Keeping the communication channels open, as we navigate this new normal.
Brendan Ciecko:
Thank you. Phyllis?
Phyllis Hecht:
Yeah. I think I'm going to be repeating a little bit, but maybe in different words, that it's a collaboration between the museums, and the Museum Studies programs, or whatever programs your interns are coming from. I have learned so much from hearing from Meagan and Sierra, and then hearing from Ahva. It is a collaboration, and it's good to know what tools you're using. We could be teaching them if we know what tools you're using, so it's really great. But really I'm just going to go back to the, make sure the remote intern does not feel like they're home alone at their computer. I think the way you've all been talking about it, they would not feel that way. I think that's really important, that they're part of a team, they're part of the immersive experience, they want to come away with a really rich experience because it's such a great opportunity to intern.
Brendan Ciecko:
Thanks Phyllis. Ahva, what is one big takeaway that you'd want to leave everybody with today about remote internships?
Ahva Sadeghi:
Thank you so much. I've been truly honored to join all you leaders today. I would say, embrace this as an opportunity to learn, and be creative, and be fun. I think that this community knows more about creativity than any other community. Really embrace it. You are all leaders, in stepping up to embrace the new challenge. We are here for you at Symba, you can definitely stand to learn more on our website, so we can share more about the resources. But embrace it, this is an opportunity, and students are going to be learning with you. This is a unique challenge facing everyone at this time. So collective collaboration is so important.
Brendan Ciecko:
Excellent. Well thank you Ahva, thank you Phyllis, thank you Sierra, and thank you Meagan. It's been really inspiring to hear about how you'll be reinventing or rolling out your virtual internship programs for the near-term. I really enjoyed this conversation. I hope it was helpful for everybody who tuned in. Again there are over 1,500 people who registered, and there'll probably be hundreds more that watch this after the fact. I really appreciate everyone's dedication to ensuring that the museum and cultural field is as successful as it can be and that these internship programs are as effective, and successful, and meaningful, and inspiring to the interns, and to the museums at large.
Thanks everybody for joining us. I hope everyone is staying safe, healthy, and happy during these really uncertain times. Until next time, I'll see you later. Thank you.
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