Beneski Museum of Natural History, Amherst College https://www.amherst.edu/museums/naturalhistory
Amherst has taken a leadership role among highly selective liberal arts colleges and universities in successfully diversifying the racial, socio-economic, and geographic profile of its student body. The College is similarly committed to enriching its educational experience and its culture through the diversity of its faculty, administration and staff.
Job Description:
Amherst College invites applications for the Director of the Beneski Museum of Natural History position. The Director is a full-time, year-round position, starting at $103,000 per year and commensurate with experience. The College seeks a visionary and dynamic leader to join our community to head this unique institution, homed in a small liberal-arts school – a place where science, history, and education come alive.
The Beneski Museum of Natural History holds over 200,000 paleontological and geological specimens (with additional anthropological, osteological, and taxidermy collections) amassed over the research history of the College. Perhaps our most charismatic materials lie in the Hitchcock dinosaur trackway (ichnology) collection. The Beneski Museum has three floors of exhibition galleries, secure on-site and off-site collections storage, and a conservation lab. The staff includes two full-time positions: the Head of Collections & Operations, and the Museum Educator. The museum receives about 23,500 visitors annually, with an additional 6,000 K-12 school/college/community educational group visits, and the museum typically hosts a dozen short-term visiting researchers each year. The Museum is free and open to the public.
Reporting directly to the Provost and Dean of the Faculty, the Beneski Museum Director will serve as the chief administrator and science director of the Museum of Natural History. The Director is responsible for overall leadership, strategic planning, and ensuring that the operation of the Museum is consistent with the mission of the Museum and the mission of Amherst College. To do this, the Director establishes policies, procedures, and sets both day-to-day and long-term priorities. The Director supervises staff, administers the Museum budget and its modest endowment, and seeks grant funding. The Director provides broad oversight of all collections-based activities, including support for digital documentation initiatives. With institutional support, the Director will play a key role in moving the Museum beyond the baseline compliance threshold of NAGPRA. The Director will advance engagement with the Museum and its collections by promoting research opportunities, overseeing meaningful gallery interpretation and temporary exhibits, and organizing public and educational programs. The Director leads communications efforts and serves as the spokesperson and chief advocate for the Museum as a resource.
The Director will work with students, faculty, and staff to take appropriate actions to support a diverse workforce, and to participate in the College’s efforts to create a respectful and inclusive work environment. The Director ensures that the Museum is a welcoming environment for Museum visitors of all ages and backgrounds, for research professionals from around the world, and for Amherst and Five College students and staff who are diverse in matters of gender, race, ethnicity, nationality, socioeconomic status, sexual identity, political outlook, and religion. The Director will collaborate closely with the College’s Department of Geology, which shares the Beneski Building and offers expertise in the collections and their history. This position will develop relationships across the campus with many academic departments, the College’s Galleries, Libraries, Archives, and Museums (GLAMS) community, as well as the region’s Museums 10 Five-College collective.
REQUIRED CANDIDATE QUALIFICATIONS:
- MS or PhD in a field of Earth Science or Biology. A concentration in Vertebrate Paleontology is preferred.
- Three (PhD) to five (MS) or more years of progressively responsible experience in natural history museum administration, or a comparable depth of experience in the use and administration of natural history museum collections.
- Demonstrated knowledge of standards and best practices for natural history museums.
- Experience that demonstrates
- strong time management skills and the ability to prioritize and manage multiple projects.
- success in supervision and development of staff and in the establishment of a collegial working environment.
- the ability to work cooperatively and diplomatically with a wide range of others.
- success in securing external grants and overseeing their administration.
Interested candidates are asked to submit a C.V, a cover letter, and the names of three professional references online at https://amherst.wd5.myworkdayjobs.com/Amherst_Jobs. Please be sure to upload all requested documents prior to clicking Submit. Applications cannot be revised once submitted. Review of applications will begin immediately and will continue until the position is filled.
ABOUT AMHERST
Amherst College is a small, diverse, vibrant residential community of scholars, with an enrollment of about 1,800 students (https://www.amherst.edu). The College is situated in the town of Amherst, MA (https://www.amherstarea.com). The region has an extraordinary academic community, exemplified by the Five College Consortium (https://www.fivecolleges.edu) that comprises five campuses, 2,200 faculty members, and 30,000 students, as well as rich cultural assets, exemplified by Museums 10 (https://www.fivecolleges.edu/museums10) and including nearby Tanglewood (https://www.bso.org/tanglewood) and Jacob’s Pillow (https://www.jacobspillow.org). Amherst is both near to major urban centers (Boston, Hartford and Albany are all within 100-miles of Amherst and New York City is only 170 miles away) while being close to a wide variety of outdoor activities (https://visithampshirecounty.com/explore/recreation). Excellent public and private K-12 educational institutions are available to choose from.