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Scholarship Program for the Tennessee Association of Museums Conference

Since 2003, Humanities Tennessee and the Tennessee Association of Museums (TAM) have offered a joint scholarship program for TAM's annual conference held every March. This initiative stems for our organizations' commitment to provide opportunities for professional and organizational development of Tennessee's museums and humanities community.

The scholarships are available to volunteers without museum-related backgrounds who work for a nonprofit museum or organization that is starting a museum, and that has no paid professional staff. Each scholarship provides two nights lodging and conference registration fees for two people from up to fifteen organizations.

Over the past five years, well over 100 individuals have attended the TAM conference on this scholarship. Once introduced to the museum community by this program, many organizations remain TAM members and continue to attend each year without a scholarship.

The 2008 TAM winners are:

• McNairy County Historical Museum, Selmer: Thomas Cauley, Brenda Cauley
• Dyer County Historical Society, Dyersburg: Danny Walden
• Hardeman County APTA, Bolivar: Debra Savage, Dianne Mumford
• Big Black Creek Historical Association, Denmark: Harriet Coburn, Billy King
• Overton County Heritage Museum, Livingston: Teri Goode, Ron Goode
• Nathanael Greene Museum, Greeneville: Jack Abee
• Dickson Williams Mansion, Greeneville: Barbara Nyman, Beverly Williams
• LaGrange Cultural Foundation, LaGrange: Alice Allen
• Spring City Historical Museum & Depot Commission, Spring City: Mary Sue Garrison

Each scholarship covers two nights lodging at the conference hotel, registration fees, and conference meals and evening events. The 2008 conference was held March 26-28 in Jackson.

In its sixth year, Humanities Tennessee's TAM scholarship program has sent dozens of volunteers from small or emerging, pre-professional museums and historical organizations to this statewide assembly to become part of Tennessee's museum community.

This year, Humanities Tennessee has developed a series of introductory sessions for the conference, specially designed to address the needs of our scholarship recipients and others like them. Session topics covered: "Museum Basics," "Developing a Collections Policy," "When and How to Use Project Scholars," "Statewide Resources for Programming," and "Statewide Resources for Preservation."

The feedback we receive from scholarship recipients reflects how valuable they find their first TAM conference. This is their initial exposure to this wider community network, to available resources, and to practical information such as exhibit design, museum governance, and artifact care. Almost all scholarship institutions remain TAM members and continue to attend year after year enriching Tennessee's emerging cultural and historical institutions.

The scholarship program is announced each fall, with an application deadline each January. For questions about the program please contact Melissa Davis at Humanities Tennessee by phone, 615-770-0006, ext. 16, or by email, melissa@humanitiestennessee.org. For questions of TAM, please contact John Lancaster, TAM coordinator, by phone, 1-866-390-3638, or email, info@tnmuseums.org.

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