Applications closed Monday, December 10, 2018, at 11:45 p.m. ET
Leading complex, diverse, multi-organizational teams working to broaden participation in STEM is a challenging mission with potentially life-changing outcomes. Having a plan doesn’t mean a project will be successful. Individuals and organizations are diverse in their experience, cultural perspectives, personal motivations, and priorities. Properly understood and leveraged, they can be the key to a career-building experience, organizational capability advancement, and the overall STEM mission.
With thanks to the National Science Foundation (NSF) for a small conference grant, ASTC is partnering with the ICS Group, a project management consultancy, to present a two-day institute, Thursday–Friday, February 14-15, 2019, to provide a highly interactive workshop for informal science institutions and their research and community partners.
The Collaborative Project Management (CoPM) Institute will be an intimate, facilitated working session aimed at learning collaborative project-management practices with and among your colleagues in the field. These practices—proven across diverse business teams and tailored for our field’s unique partnership environments—will be applied directly to your current grant project.
An opportunity to gain the project and team collaboration skills that matter the most.
Team leaders must overcome the challenges of ambitious and complex collaborations among university, museum, and community partners. Learn how you can lead your team to
- Understand, respect, and incorporate everyone’s organizational priorities, practices, and cultural norms into your team interactions and project plan.
- Gain clarity on roles and responsibilities on key project task ownership and decisions.
- Ensure you’re involving and communicating with key people who can greatly help or hinder the project.
- Jointly identify risks to your joint success and plan concretely how to address them together.
- Constructively address issues that arise from different communication methods, requirements, and styles.
Leave with insights into cultural perspectives, enhanced working relationships, new collaboration skills, and a Playbook for ongoing use.
You’ll leave with an updated plan and a clear, custom roadmap for taking the highest-leverage new techniques back to your project and partnership team. You’ll be able to use the Collaboration Playbook as a guide for this and future efforts. After the CoPM Institute, you’ll have the opportunity for a one-on-one session with one of the workshop facilitators serving as a virtual mentor, to ask questions about techniques or challenges.
A limited number of spaces are available—apply to learn and contribute to the field.
The carefully selected mix of teams will ensure opportunities to learn from each other’s positive experiences and challenges. The two days will be focused on advancing your team’s collaboration skills through an introduction to a business-proven Team Alignment process, Collaboration Playbook, and direct work on your project.
How participants will be chosen:
- Teams must include two to three applicants from at least two different organizations who are collaborating on a project with an emphasis on broadening participation in STEM.
- One applicant from each organization must be a PI, co-PI, or Project Director.
- The third applicant may be a project team member, evaluator, or other colleague.
- Applications are particularly welcome from first-time PIs and more experienced PIs seeking new strategies and techniques for partnership collaboration.
- Awardees will be required to obtain approval from appropriate senior leadership in their organizations.
Dates: February 14–15, 2019 (Travel alert—immediately following the February 11–13 NSF AISL PI meeting in Alexandria, Virginia – think about combining the events!)
Location: Association of Children’s Museums, Arlington, Virginia
Developed and Led by:
- Cinda Voegtli, Senior Consultant with the ICS Group, a Project Management Consultancy
- Judy Brown, Senior Vice President Emerita, Phillip and Patricia Frost Science Museum
- Laura Huerta Migus, Executive Director, Association of Children’s Museums (Advisor and Evaluator)
- Lesley Markham, Association of Science-Technology Centers
- Inese Kaufman, ICS Group
Fees: Registration charges will be paid in full by a Small Conference Grant from the NSF’s Advancing Informal STEM Learning program (DRL# 1836963), a value of $800 per registrant.
Travel Stipend per Team: $1,000
Applications closed Monday, December 10, 2018, at 11:45 p.m. ET
For more information, please write to ASTC’s Lesley Markham.