Hi Everyone,
You may remember that a couple of months ago I told you that the museum was applying to the University of Washington Tacoma Key Bank Professional Development Center to have the docent program registered as a non-credit certificate. We just found out that this has been approved!
The program will be required for new docents but is optional for active docents. All training and program activities will take place at Tacoma Art Museum, facilitated by me along with Rock, Patricia, and other guest instructors, as previously planned (per the calendar I sent you out last week). The program will award 4.2 CEUs, or Continuing Education Units. Each CEU is worth 10 contact hours. CEUs are awarded for training time only, not for touring or for independent study.
If you are interested in this, please fill out the form I emailed to you and return it to me. I need to sign it to verify that you are an active docent. You then need to return the form with a $30 fee to UWT. This fee is substantially discounted for us; they usually charge $30 per CEU (or $108 in this case), but have lowered the fee to $30 for the entire program.
At the end of the docent training year (June), I submit a list to UWT of who has completed the program, and the participants are then awarded a certificate from the U.
A few things to note:
First, certificates cannot be awarded retroactively. If you want to get the certificate this academic year you need to register by the beginning of the training year (i.e. before August 25th).
Second, you need to attend 80% of the training or you become ineligible for the certificate even if you have registered for it. Of course, I don’t imagine this would be a problem since attendance at training is required anyway. For some of the sessions we can provide make-up opportunities, but that won’t be possible in all cases.
Also, it will be important for you to sign in at training, since I will use that sign in sheet as the basis for my official attendance record that I pass on to the U.
Please let me know if you have any questions. I think this is a really exciting opportunity for us to partner with the University, and for you all to earn some much-deserved official recognition from the University. The director of the Professional Development Center as well as the Dean of Interdisciplinary Arts and Sciences and the Vice Chancellor of the University were all very supportive of our application to the program. I hope many of you will take advantage of this!
Tara Young
Associate Curator of Education
TACOMA ART MUSEUM
1701 Pacific Avenue
Tacoma, WA 98402
253.272.4258 x 3016
Tara Young
Associate Curator of Education
TACOMA ART MUSEUM
1701 Pacific Avenue
Tacoma, WA 98402
253.272.4258 x 3016
