Welcome to Cambio
Each year, Cambio welcomes a new cohort of museums to participate in its year-long professional development experience. Cambio is designed to help museum teams shift internal organizational practice to better create STEM experiences that are culturally relevant and responsive to Latinx audiences.
Cambio’s vision centers on encouraging organizations to shift their practices at all levels by examining the cultural dimensions and intersections of Latinx audiences, STEM, and organizational change. Believing that leaders reside at all levels within organizations, the program helps museum practitioners to explore how they might spark change in their role as individuals, within organizations, and in relationship with communities.
The Cambio experience focuses on incremental change in organizational practice, building on strengths and improving what they do well, with a goal of long-term transformational change that includes examining assumptions and changing structures toward institution-wide change.
The Cambio experience
Our Principal Investigator, Veronica Garcia-Luis, shares what it’s like to participate in Cambio.
- A confidential staff perception survey conducted and analyzed by an outside firm
- A three-day in-person kick-off workshop in Washington, DC. COVID safety protocols will be followed. Vaccination required to attend.
- Monthly interactive virtual meetings
- Resources and tools, including frameworks, models, and topical articles
- Peer networking with other museum professionals
- Coaching for the development and implementation of a yearlong strategic initiative
- A mini-grant to support implementation of a strategic initiative
- A culminating summit in the spring of 2025 for all Cambio alumni
Applying to Cambio
Cambio faculty use an application process to learn more about each organization’s prior work focused on diversity, equity and inclusion.
The application asks specifically about the organization’s efforts with identified Latinx communities and its approach to STEM, and the information is used to identify points of synergy between the Cambio program and the applicant organization.
Our goal is to support and cultivate museum teams as they become a thriving learning community. Please expect to spend internal cross-team planning time putting together your application. Applications are now closed. Sign-up to get updates on preparing for next year’s application.
Leadership Participation
You will be asked to create an internal Cambio leadership team of three people; including the museum’s Executive Director or President and CEO. We’ve found that senior leadership participation is critical for transformational organizational change. Cambio covers the cost of participation for these three required participants.
Team Composition
Your team should be cross-departmental and include representation from various levels within the organization. In your team selection process, think about the staff who are best poised to support organizational change. Consider each team member’s position, length of service, workstyle, knowledge, potential for growth, etc.
Ongoing Support
The Cambio experience is most successful when the team schedules additional internal meetings between the monthly cohort gatherings to address goal making, decisions, homework assignments and presentation preparation. This requires ongoing facilitation and project management within the team, e.g. scheduling additional internal meetings between cohort virtual gatherings, communication, and documentation to complete homework assignments and prepare presentations. Your team should plan ahead for scheduling meetings, team project management and facilitation and how members will take on these responsibilities throughout the year-long experience.
In the application, you will be asked to propose a strategic initiative—a project that your museum’s Cambio team will lead to support shifting internal organizational practice to better create STEM experiences that are culturally relevant and responsive to Latinx audiences. It is expected that your team will meet on their own between Cambio cohort sessions, and they will involve the museum’s larger staff in some capacity.
Strategic Initiative Mini-grant
Participating museums may apply for a mini-grant of up to $5,000 during the yearlong program. The mini-grant is intended to help museums focus on strengthening the organization’s relevance and responsiveness to their Latinx communities. Guidelines and expectations will be reviewed during the program year.
Kick-off Meeting
Each museum will receive a travel subsidy for airfare and four nights’ accommodation, with meals covered by the Cambio project, for three staff to attend the in-person kick-off meeting in Washington, DC in February or March of 2022.
Culminating Summit
Each museum will be invited to send three members from its original Cambio team (if possible) to the Culminating Summit, expected to take place in the spring of 2025 in San Francisco, California. Cambio will provide a travel subsidy for roundtrip travel and hotel accommodations.
- A confirmation of the commitment of museum leadership agreeing to active participation of the CEO during the yearlong program
- Institutional commitment to—and experience with—efforts to attract and serve diverse members of your community, particularly Latinx communities
- Institutional commitment to, and experience with diversity/inclusion and advancing cultural competence
- CEO interview to gauge synergy between applicant museum needs with Cambio curriculum and approach
- Representation of a variety of museum sizes, geographic regions (a maximum of five museums will be selected for the cohort) and strategic initiatives.
- November 15, 2021 -Applications are due by 11:59 p.m. PST
- January 2022 – Notification to museums and selected 5 museums to sign a commitment agreement
- March 14-16, 2022 – Cohort kickoff meeting in Washington, D.C.
