I've been doing a lot of data entry the past few days. But let me say this: data entry is not as mind-numbing when you're actually interested in the data itself. I've been entering all of the programs from the past two fiscal years into categories for the AAMD mapping project. My categories are things like schools, colleges/universities, religious, cultural, senior citizens, human services, libraries, businesses, corporate events, etc.
For me, it's been interesting to see where the majority of the groups are coming from. So far, it's been a lot of Royal Oak, Farmington Hills, Bloomfield Hills, Dearborn and Detroit. I expected more Grosse Pointe, but am happy to see the number of Detroit Public Schools that have visited the museum over the past two years.
Yesterday, I sat in on a department meeting, which was very interesting. Apparently, the evaluation department is lumped into the human resources department at the DIA, forming something called "Organization Development and Human Resources" or ODHR. That's where I work. Now, because of this, I learned a lot about evaluation during our department meeting-- which I did not expect.
At the end of the semester, I worked on an evaluation project for the Harn Museum and I really enjoyed it. Also, being in other meetings and hearing about visitor surveys has really piqued my interest in museum evaluation.
Apparently, the DIA has not always made evaluation a top priority, but in recent years, it has really taken off. These days, every school group that comes into the museum gets a yellow envelope (reminiscent of end-of-the-semester evaluations) full of evaluations that both teachers and students complete before leaving the museum. I didn't ask about it, but the amount of information collected from these surveys must be enormous.
Next week, I will be assisting with another type of evaluation-- an "employee engagement survey". I'll be monitoring a few laptop computers in the Kresge court, where employees can take a survey about working at the DIA. For some reason, it never occurred to me that satisfaction surveys could be internal.
I also learned that much of what the evaluation department does is dictated by grants. And on that note, I'm happy to report that I'll be meeting with the DIA's brand new grant writer later this week. He's a really nice guy and I'm excited to talk to him about writing grants. I think I could find a niche for myself in grant writing, but we are meeting to discuss another project I'm working on (the creation of extended program summaries). Sondra is concerned with making the program summaries into a resource that will be useful in grant applications and other campaigns. Thus, I need to talk to the grant writer about what kind of program information would be useful in grants, etc.
On another note, I understand that the museum galleries and collections need to be kept and a stable temperature and RH, but is it really necessary for our office to be 40 degrees? I am not a painting, and I don't enjoy sitting directly beneath an A/C vent.
But so far that is my only complaint about my internship at the DIA... so I guess things could be a lot worse.
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