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10:00 am  Welcome

10:10 am  Training and Motivating Frontline Staff – 3 Perspectives
David Marino, Project Manager, The Broad Institute, MIT, Cambridge, MA
Raise the Curtain on Customer Service:  Using basic techniques from traditional and improvisational theater, managers can train their staff in a memorable and engaging way. With no theater background required, managers are given the tools and philosophy to promote dynamic and helpful visitor interactions.

Noelle Foye, Education Director, Fuller Craft Museum, Brockton, MA
Seeing the Big Picture:  The museum’s visitor surveys often praise the helpfulness and welcoming attitude of staff. Ms. Foye will share the museum’s blueprint for building customer service into all departments and the methods it employs to train and motivate staff, encourage non-education staff to be more interactive and welcoming, and cultivate staff teamwork to promote the “big picture” goals of the museum.

Amy Spencer, Education Director, The Children’s Discovery Museum, Acton, MA
Explore a case study of the museum’s new interpretive training program designed to get teenage exhibit staff on the floor and feeling more comfortable interacting with visitors. Ms. Spencer will share lessons learned from this “work in progress” training protocol.

11:30 am  Lunch and Best Practices/Sharing Tips From the Field

12:30 pm  Preparing a Playful Frontline Staff
Kelly Fenton, Visitor Services and Volunteer Manager, and Megan Fischer, Marketing and PR Manager, Providence Children’s Museum
Play is powerful! Learn about the museum’s strategies for training floor staff to facilitate open-ended play experiences. Find out how to build skills in deepening and inspiring play through one-on-one mentoring and group training sessions and how to create a playful environment for staff and visitors. Try hands-on activities that promote creativity, spontaneity and imaginative play.

1:30 pm  Wakanheza: Parenting In Public
Janice O’Donnell, Executive Director, and Megan Fischer, Marketing and PR Manager, Providence Children’s Museum
A child is having a tantrum, mom is getting upset ..what do you do? Wakanheza is the Dakota word for child, translated in English as “Sacred Being.” The Wakanheza Project, created by the Minnesota Children’s Museum and the Ramsey County Department  of Public Health, empowers people to help families in stressful situations – we all have a responsibility to make our museums welcoming places that support families. Learn valuable principles and practical strategies that anyone can implement to diffuse and transform museum visitors’ challenging moments.

3:00 pm  Wrap-Up and Evaluations

3:15 pm  Optional Tours of the Fitchburg Art Museum
Speakers:

Kelly Fenton, Visitor Services and Volunteer Manager, started as a frontline Experience Coordinator at Providence Children's Museum. She now supervises the Museum's frontline staff that consists of 5 paid Experience Coordinators and 100 volunteers who serve 140,000 visitors a year. She holds a BA in psychology and an MA in education. She has managed after-school programs and day care centers, and has worked at the Connecticut Children’s Museum.

Megan Fischer, Marketing and PR Manager, Providence Children’s Museum, previously served as Visitor Services and Volunteer Manager during a transition period in which the visitor services staff was professionalized and use of volunteers was made integral to the daily operations of the Museum. She holds an MA in museum studies from Brown University.

Noelle Foye brings a multi-faceted perspective to her work with Fuller Craft Museum. Having spent time on both the volunteer and the professional sides of museums, she's had firsthand experience in guest services, development and marketing before taking the position of Education Director for the Museum. She holds a Masters in Arts Administration from Boston University.

David Marino has spend the majority of his career as Manager of the Visitor Experience at Boston Children's Museum where he recently helped complete their $47 million renovation project. Over the course of a decade he developed a unique, theater-based, customer service philosophy which is now in practice in several museum across the country.  Currently, he is Project Manager for The DNAtrium, a new museum based at The Broad Institute, a genome research laboratory in Boston, MA. David also consults businesses and individuals to help develop customer service, presentation, and cross-communication skill sets.

Janice O’Donnell, Executive Director, has led the Providence Children’s Museum since 1985, guiding its growth from a small organization to one of the state’s major cultural institutions. Additionally she has been instrumental in the creation and growth of the award winning Families Together Program which is a collaboration with RI Department for Children, Youth and Families serving parents and children separated due to abuse or neglect. 

Amy Spencer, Education Director, has been with the Children’s Discovery Museum since 2006, working to better serve the needs of local families with young children. She manages 3 senior staff and 20 Explorers who serve 64,000 visitors a year. She has been working in the museum field for nine years and holds a MA in museum education from Tufts University.