SEMC Leadership Institute: Leading for Today’s Challenges

The Southeastern Museum Conference (SEMC) offers a professional development program for future museum leaders that supports diversity and inclusion. 

SEMC is proud to partner with the the Association of African American Museums (AAAM) on this new program focused on leadership training for staff of small- and mid-sized institutions.

2020 Virtual Leadership Institute Cohort 

The SEMC Leadership Institute: Leading for Today’s Challenges aims to equip a new generation of museum leaders with outward-looking skills and strategies that increase their effectiveness as leaders and ability to create a productive and inclusive environment within the museum and among the museum’s board.

OBJECTIVES

The Southeastern Museums Conference Leadership Institute will develop a diverse and inclusive group of future museum leaders who:

• Can identify and build on their existing personal strengths

• Assess how to maximize these strengths internally in an organization and externally as part of a community

• Identify methods to capitalize on their strengths and their environment to move an institution forward

CURRICULUM AREAS

The curriculum, taught by leaders in their fields, covers six areas:

• Reflecting Your Best Self*

• Building Inclusive Cultures

• Strategic Communication and Thinking

• Leadership Challenges

• Adaptive Leadership

• Creating Your Best Self as an Organization

*Using the Reflective Best Self Tool

Meet the Leadership Institute Faculty.

Sample Institute Schedule

The Institute will take place April 24-29, 2022 at the Duke Mansion in Charlotte, NC. A sample schedule is as follows:

Sunday, April 24, 2022

1-4pm: Introduction and Reflecting Your Best Self

4-5pm: Reflection Exercise

Monday, April 25, 2022

9am-12pm: Digging Deeper into Reflecting Your Best Self

12pm-1pm: Lunch Break

1pm-4pm: Leadership Challenges

4pm-5pm: Reflection Work

Tuesday, April 26, 2022

9am-12pm: Strategic Communication and Thinking

12pm-1pm: Lunch Break

1pm-4pm: Building Inclusive Cultures

4pm-5pm: Reflection Work

Wednesday, April 27, 2022

9am-12pm: Adaptive Leadership

12pm-1pm: Lunch Break

1pm-3pm: Reflecting Your Organization’s Best Self - Board Governance and Organizational Lifecycle

3pm-6pm: Reflecting Your Organization’s Best Self - Guest Panel and reception

Thursday, April 28, 2022

9am-12pm: Strategic Visioning and Planning

12pm-1pm: Lunch Break

1pm-4pm: Reflecting Your Organization’s Best Self - Fundraising

4pm-5pm: Reflection Work

Friday, April 29, 2022

9am-12pm: Closing Reflections - Evaluative Thinking and Action Plan

Closing luncheon for 2022 Leadership Cohort

2022 SEMC Leadership Institute tuition is $1,500 for SEMC and AAAM members and $1,600 for non-members. Tuition includes all instruction,  Institute resources, and a final workshop for Institute cohorts at the SEMC Annual Meeting.

Meals (other than those noted below) and lodging at the Duke Mansion are not included in tuiton. The 2022 Leadership Institute room rate is $179 per night + tax which includes daily breakfast. Lunches and dinners are on own. Restaurants and a grocery store are a short walk from the Mansion.

The Institute does include daily coffee and afternoon snacks, a reception with guest panelists (bar/lite bites) on Wednesday and a closing luncheon on Friday for the 2022 cohort. 

Duke Mansion, Charlotte, NC

Registration for the 2022 SEMC Annual Meeting (Northwest Arkansas) is included in tuition.

Apply for the 2022 SEMC Leadership Institute 

The inaugural SEMC Leadership Institute - Leading for Today’s Challenges - ran as a virtual program November 8 - 16, 2020.

Congratulations to the Leadership Institute Class of 2020!

Adam Alfrey
Senior Curator/Operations Manager
East Tennessee History Center
Knoxville, Tennessee

Kawan Allen
Research Historian
North Carolina Division of State Historic Sites
Raleigh, North Carolina

Kaila Austin
Director of Content Development
New Day Culture
Indianapolis, Indiana

Marcy Breffle
Education Manager
Historic Oakland Foundation
Atlanta, Georgia

Shatavia Elder
Vice President of Education
Atlanta History Center
Atlanta, Georgia

Tafeni English
Director
Civil Rights Memorial Center
Montgomery, Alabama

Cassandra Erb
Curator of Exhibits
Louisiana State Museum
New Orleans, Louisiana

Ruthie Massey
Director of Operations
Mississippi Museum of Art
Jackson, Mississippi

Mari Noorai
Curator of Education and Interpretation
Clemson University Department of Historic Properties
Clemson, South Carolina

Natalie Rodriguez
Historical Interpreter III
North Carolina Department of Natural Cultural Resources/North Carolina State Historic Sites
Raleigh, North Carolina

Kristin Hebert Veit
Curatorial Cataloger
The Historic New Orleans Collection
New Orleans, Louisiana

Instructors:
Robert Bull
Laura Morgan Roberts
Marsha Semmel

Curriculum Designer:
Alison Leithner

Read what members of the 2020 Leaderhship Institute cohort had to say about their experience!

"My Institute experience gave me confidence and empowered me. I now have the tools to make my professional challenges work for me rather than against me."

"I feel more confident in knowing what makes me by best self and am also leading my team to have opportunities to be their best selves."

"The Leadership experience gave me the power to think bigger about my working relatioships and be less affected by pettiness."

"I can better diagnose strengths and weaknesses in my organization, understand the phases of wehre we are and identify areas that need to be addressed. I feel better equipped to make positive changes."

"I loved the instructors and they fit perfectly together. They introduced a culture of positivity and lifting each other up. That's not an across-the-board standard."

SEMC is grateful for the support of our generous sponsors and partners for the

2020 Virtual Leadership Institute

 

L. Carole Wharton

Robert and Nancy Sullivan

Mary Miller 

Susan Perry