Committee on Museum Professional Training (COMPT)

The Committee on Museum Professional Training (COMPT) strives to assist museum professionals and pre-professionals in their career learning experiences, to address the continuous need to develop and enhance professional skills and to engage proactively with pressing concerns that affect all professionals across the field.

COMPT plans, promotes or supports a variety of activities and resources for museum colleagues at all stages of their careers.

Activities

• Annual Meeting programs

• COMPT Marketplace of Ideas: An open-air forum in which museum professionals participate in informal discussions and exchange ideas on timely issues.

• Emerging Innovators Forum: A showcase of creative programming ideas from emerging innovators representing museum professional training programs.

• Career Management Track: Offers several sessions on career-related topics

• Networking events: Provide an informal opportunity for colleague to meet, share ideas, information and inspiration

• AAM online professional development programs: Focus on helping museum colleagues build skills, gain information and share professional practice

• Museum Career Lab: A day-long program designed to help emerging and mid-career professionals gain or build career skills and strategies

Resources

• Career Management Resources

• Best practices for museum professional training programs

• A Life of Museums: Managing Your Museum Career (2012, The AAM Press)

• MuseumJunction online community

COMPT Leadership

• Polly McKenna-Cress, The University of the Arts (Chair)

• Phyllis Hecht, Johns Hopkins University (Past Chair and Representative to AAM Program Committee)   

• Stephanie Brown, Johns Hopkins University (Secretary)

• Cindy Falk, The Cooperstown Graduate Program (Treasurer)

• Sarah Chicone, Johns Hopkins University (Chair, Marketplace of Ideas)

• Christina Kreps, University of Denver

• Carlo Lamagna, New York University

• Tina Lent, Rochester Institute of Technology

• Phaedra Livingstone, University of Oregon

• Janet Marstine, University of Leicester

• Wilson O’Donnell, University of Washington

• Kym Rice, The George Washington University

• Kristin Szylvian, St. John’s University

• Lise Dubé Scherr, The Richard H. Driehaus Museum