Member institutions of Museums10, a consortium of 10 museums located across the Pioneer Valley, are investing more than $600,000 into professional training development for staff members and student interns to promote career advancement in the museum world.

The initiative is being funded by a grant from the Institute of Museum and Library Services (IMLS), an independent federal agency, which awarded $306,115 to Museums10, one of eight grants awarded out of nearly 50 applicants. That amount will be matched by the Five College Consortium, a nonprofit that promotes collaboration between Smith, Amherst, Mount Holyoke and Hampshire colleges and the University of Massachusetts Amherst. Several of the museums that make up Museums10 are attached to the colleges.

“This grant is a natural extension of a long collaboration between the museums, where they share professional development and technology,” said Sarah Pfatteicher, the executive director of the Five College Consortium. “This shows how things can be done across all the colleges and universities in our consortium.”

Of the 10 museums, seven in Museums10 are affiliated with the Five Colleges — the Beneski Museum of Natural History, the Mead Art Museum, the Mount Holyoke College Art Museum, the Smith College Museum of Art, the University Museum of Contemporary Art, the Hampshire College Art Gallery and the Emily Dickinson Museum. The other three are the Eric Carle Museum of Picture Book Art, the Yiddish Book Center and Historic Deerfield.

According to the consortium, there are about 200 staff across the museums, with 100 more interns, most of whom come from the five colleges. Some of the schools, such as Smith and UMass, offer concentrations and programs in museum studies and public history that pertains to museum work.

Jennifer Schantz, the director of the Eric Carle Museum, named after late children’s book author, said the existing collaboration between the museums gave it a better case for receiving an IMLS grant.

“I don’t think [the grant] has been offered in a few years, so when it came up, we really jumped at the chance,” said Schantz, who was also selected to lead the three-year professional development plan. “We thought that we could have a really strong proposal if we went in on it together.”

The new professional training will help existing staff and interns learn more about curating exhibits, the financial aspects of museum operations, promote greater inclusivity in museum spaces and learn to use new technology for content management systems.

Museums10 will also hire an associate director to facilitate the development programs, as well as provide seminars, workshops, and training for museum staff to choose from, based on their work area and interests.

“Running a museum is like running a small business,” Schantz said. “Not only do you need to understand collecting practices and acquisitions and how to curate exhibits and how to tell stories and educate people, but you also need to understand the finances, how to manage a facility.”

Schantz added that the advent of AI as well as ensuring proper diversity and inclusion were two of the biggest issues facing museums today, and that she hoped the new training could help address those challenges, such as working with local Indigenous communities to ensure their stories are properly told through exhibits and collections.

“We all want to have best practices for how we prepare and protect our collections, but also how we prepare and protect our staff,” she said. “The fact that we have funding now to support the work that we’ve already been trying to do is really incredible.”