Reengaging the Partner Advisory Council

As our internal museum team sat down for our regularly scheduled biweekly meeting, we wanted to start with a very specific question: how do we want to begin utilizing the expertise of our Partner Advisory Council (PAC)?

Given the cycle of IMLS funding, this group had a higher level of engagement in the Fall of 2013. This was the time that the grant was being written, that we were combing research articles and journals to demonstrate the need for this project, all while getting support and advice from these experts to help strengthen our proposal. Once the grant proposal was submitted in early December of 2013, there was little interaction with the PAC until the notification of the award was received in September of 2014. Receiving the grant is fantastic news, but it is also simply the beginning of a labor intensive 3 year project.

Some of our advisors we have long standing relationships with, and some relationships were developed specific to this project as we found expertise to be remarkably relevant. Additionally, we have some advisors that live just down the street from us and some that live across the country. Given this swath of expertise and geography, our advisors have never met face to face and are largely unfamiliar with each other’s work. We put together a Doodle poll to try and get everyone together, but unsurprisingly have found significant differences in availability.

As we thought about the lack of an all group on-site meeting, Neil mentioned, “But logistics are not our biggest challenge I don’t think. We should spend time defining what it is we need them to do.” This means our real challenge is how to virtually create this work culture where there are clear expectations of role and responsibility, how their work will fit into the larger work of the project, the timeline of events, and how to have the PAC feel connected to the museum and to each other.

We began thinking about some introductory general questions to bring to the group. The group consists primarily of early educators, museum professionals, experts on early brain development, and family services specialists. As much as these groups may differ from each other, we were curious about if any similarities would arise. Denise wondered, “Where is the overlap? There may be key things that arise from the development that benefits more people.”

Thinking more about the role of the PAC, Neil began drawing a picture of how he imagined the relationship (written with page mostly upside-down, forgive legibility).

“We have the parent and the child in the middle, and our advisors are out here – the brain researchers, and caregivers, and educators, and museum people, and the rest of the list here. And each of them has a perspective on what you would like that parent to know about that child. And what that parent might help that child do to help them grow up successfully.”

This view of the child has similarities to Bronfenbrenner’s Ecological Systems Theory. The macro world is all the research on early childhood education and brain development, the exosystem is our panel of advisors that interpret and translate the macro world, the Museums are the mesosystem connecting and translating the larger systems to the parents (microsystem) and individual child.

We brainstormed lots of questions for the PAC. What should parents be aware of? What perspectives are we missing? What misconception do you think parents have about early childhood development? This also brought up the interesting distinction between good parenting skills and ways of encouraging healthy brain development (the latter being the focus of the project). We will likely be constantly reminded that the two are intertwined, but we are being cautious of losing focus of our message so early in the process. All this discussion helped to start the drafting of a letter to be shared with the PAC. I look forward to sharing correspondence with the PAC as it progresses.

Questions to the Community

Have you run an advisory board? What did you find the best way to keep the group engaged and productive?

Have you been an advisor? What made you feel engaged and part of the larger group?