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 science, technology, engineering, and math (STEM) experiences that are culturally relevant and responsive to Latinx communities.
Cambio’s aim is to advance equity by building museums’ capacity to support Latinx communities’ full participation in STEM. Cambio’s vision centers on encouraging organizations to shift their practices at all levels by examining the cultural dimensions and intersections of Latinx communities, STEM, and organizational shifts. 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 interrogating practices, systems, and structures towards equity.
The Cambio experience
Our Principal Investigator, Veronica Garcia-Luis, shares what it’s like to participate in Cambio.
- One-day virtual and two-day, in-person Kick-off workshops in San Diego, California
- 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 year-long strategic initiative
- Mini-grant support for the implementation of a year-long strategic initiative
- Administration of the Intercultural Development Inventory (IDI)
- Culminating Summit in April 2025 for all Cambio alumni
Applying to Cambio
Cambio uses 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 a cohort of museum teams toward becoming a thriving learning community. Please expect to spend internal team planning time putting together your application.
Leadership Participation
You will be asked to create an internal Cambio leadership team of three people, including the museum’s Executive Director/President/CEO. We’ve found that senior leadership participation is critical for transformational organizational change. Also, some museums have included two additional team members; however, Cambio only covers travel costs for the in-person kick-off meeting for the three required participants.
Team Composition
Your team should be cross-departmental and include representation from various levels of the organization. In your team selection process, think about the staff who are best poised to support organizational change. Consider 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 setting, decisions, assignments, communicating Cambio efforts back to staff, and presentation preparation. Your team should plan to set aside the appropriate amount of time for scheduling meetings, project management and facilitation, as well as 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 leadership team will lead to support shifting internal organizational practice to improve the development of STEM experiences that are culturally relevant, equity-focused, and responsive to Latinx communities. 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.
Kick-off Meeting
Each museum will receive a travel subsidy to help defray costs of airfare and accommodations for three staff to attend the in-person kickoff meeting in San Diego, CA during April 2024. Meals during the kickoff are covered by the Cambio project.
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 spring 2025 in San Francisco, California. Cambio will provide a travel subsidy for roundtrip travel and hotel accommodations.
Strategic Initiative Mini-grant
Participating museums may apply for a mini-grant of up to $5,000 during the year-long program with a focus on uniting the themes of Cambio to advance equity in relation to the organization’s Latinx communities. Guidelines and expectations will be reviewed during the program year.
- Confirmation of the museum leadership’s commitment to active participation of the CEO during the year-long program
- Institutional commitment to – and experience with – efforts to attract and engage diverse members of your community, particularly Latinx communities
- Institutional commitment to – and experience with – diversity, inclusion and equity and advancing cultural competence
- Representation of a variety of museum sizes, geographic regions and strategic initiatives.
A maximum of five museums will be selected for the cohort.
- September 6, 2023 – Applications open for Cohort 4
- November 1, 2023 – Applications are due by 11:59 p.m. PST
- January 2024 – Notification to museums and selected 5 museums to sign a commitment agreement
- April 2024 – Cohort kickoff meeting
