Dear Friends of the University Museum & Rowan Oak,
Warmest of greetings from the Museum, where I’m sitting in my office on one of the most exciting days of any academic year, Commencement 2021. Reflections on this particular day give me the opportunity to mention here the many University students who make our Museum a success by their manifold contribution across several departments, whether as volunteers, student workers, interns, or graduate assistants. Each calendar year as many as 30 University of Mississippi undergraduate and graduate students fulfill key functions while concurrently advancing their skills, and their career and graduate school pathways.
Each year we find multiple modes of expressing our deep gratitude to our many students, and each May also at this particular moment we reflect on our continuing commitment to and advancement of student involvement in both the Museum and Rowan Oak. The University’s newly-launched Museum Studies Minor is the most recent manifestation of our serving and mentoring ever-growing numbers. To all of our 2021 graduates, our most sincere Congratulations!
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I want to continue this celebration of our people, who remain one of the Museum’s greatest assets, by sharing with you news of the three Position Hires we will be accomplishing this Summer, 2021. Each of these positions fulfills a distinctly critical range of duties and responsibilities and we are exceptionally eager to identify and onboard our newest colleagues.
One of the three has just been hired, and her start date was Monday, May 3 – we extend a heartfelt welcome to Rachel Hudson as our first-ever Assistant Curator of Rowan Oak. This position was recently created and classified by the University and after a national search Rachel emerged as the most qualified and distinguished candidate, in no small degree due to her two years already in service to Rowan Oak as a student worker and then an independent-contract visitor services specialist. Please see further word of Rachel’s hire from her own perspective and that of Rowan Oak Curator Bill Griffith in this newsletter.
The second position to be filled this Summer will be that of Collections Project Manager, a position which serves as the right-hand integral assistant to Collections Manager and Curator of Exhibitions, Melanie Antonelli. A substantially qualified candidate pool responded to our position posting of early April and the Search Committee anticipates making an offer to a selected finalist by mid-May. We greatly look forward to introducing you to our new collections specialist during the Fall semester!
The final open position is that of Membership, Events, and Communications Coordinator, an essential tri-partite set of roles and responsibilities across a wide spectrum of the public-facing dimensions of the Museum and Rowan Oak. This position also serves as a primary liaison to our fundraising auxiliary, the Friends of the Museum and to their annual evening gala event, Harvest Supper. We anticipate this posting going live on or around May 15, and we’ll keep you fully apprised of those developments.
As with every museum where I’ve served in my 25-year career, our people are an essential and transformative component of our mission-fulfillment. When we complete these hires we will have a full-time team of 10, eight at the Museum and two at Rowan Oak – always augmented each semester by the student workers and interns noted above.
Please enjoy these warming May days as we roll toward a wonderful summer!
With sincere regards,
Robert Saarnio
Museum Director