ISEN-ASTC-L is a service of the Association of Science-Technology Centers
Incorporated, a worldwide network of science museums and related institutions.
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Our magical system is an Education Manager and an excel spreadsheet.
The Education Manager is required to have done nearly all of job duties that are put on the weekly schedule, and they directly oversee and schedule all staff cross-training (I feel that is so important). This individual must also possess the uncanny ability not to stay awake every night contemplating the endless scheduling variables and 'what if' scenarios.
And even with good software, which is probably worth every penny, scheduling remains a challenge.
--Jeff--
Jeff Rosenblatt
Director, Science City
Union Station Kansas City, Inc.
30 W. Pershing Rd. Suite 400
Kansas City, MO 64108
Office: 816-460-2218
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-----Original Message-----
From: Informal Science Education Network [mailto:[log in to unmask]] On Behalf Of Fournier, Kathy
Sent: Wednesday, May 16, 2012 10:54 AM
To: [log in to unmask]
Subject: staff scheduling
ISEN-ASTC-L is a service of the Association of Science-Technology Centers Incorporated, a worldwide network of science museums and related institutions.
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For those of you who schedule education staff on a routine basis...this is for you.
We spend an increasingly inordinate amount of time on schedules; daily, weekly; monthly. I am not speaking of when staff actually come into work but what they are assigned to do throughout the day. Our duties include, but are certainly not limited to, greeting groups, going on outreaches, operating our high cycle, presenting at our Shark and Ray touch tank, being present at specific exhibits, presenting reserved programming, presenting public programming, opening and closing certain areas of the museum, etc.
We have 12 full time and 3-5 part time staff, 14 or so college work study staff and our volunteer staff to help us cover these items above and more.
With so many moving parts and so much of it depending on who has been trained on what it can take many hours to make a weeks' worth of schedules. This falls to all of us, which takes a lot of time and coordination, but is concentrated to 2 or 3 managers. It is a frustrating job o the best of days and we have tried a few different ways of accomplishing this but always fall back to a SharePoint and hand written system.
Do any of you know of scheduling software that has been successful in scheduling museum education staff that takes into account all of the human variables? I am hoping there is a system that once the time has been put in on the front end, all staff entered, all items that need to be covered on any given day and what each staff is trained on entered that it would then magically create a schedule that we could live with. Or is this magical system called a program administrator? Which of course is not in the budget. :)
That isn't asking for too much is it? :)
Kathy Fournier
Vice President of Education
McWane Science Center
200 19th Street North
Birmingham, AL 35203
205-714-8254
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For information about the Association of Science-Technology Centers and the Informal Science Education Network please visit www.astc.org.
Check out the latest case studies and reviews on ExhibitFiles at www.exhibitfiles.org.
The ISEN-ASTC-L email list is powered by LISTSERVR software from L-Soft. To learn more, visit
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To remove your e-mail address from the ISEN-ASTC-L list, send the
message SIGNOFF ISEN-ASTC-L in the BODY of a message to
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