The Cooperstown Graduate Program

The Cooperstown Graduate Program (also known as CGP) is a two-year graduate program in Museum Studies located in Cooperstown, New York, United States. The program offers Master’s degrees in both History and Science Museum Studies [CGP Website]. It is affiliated with the State University of New York at Oneonta and the New York State Historical Association [NYSHA link], and is one of only two museum studies programs in the United States located on a museum campus [CNY article]. In 2002, the National Endowment for the Humanities deemed the Cooperstown Graduate Program to be the “premier program for the training of museum professionals in the United States.” [Exhibit? NEED SOURCE] There are currently over 900 alumni of the program who have worked in museums and relate

Mission and Values

The mission of the Cooperstown Graduate Program is to train “creative, entrepreneurial museum leaders committed to generating programs and services for the public good.” Their core values are integrity, diversity, service, teamwork, scholarship, and innovation. [CGP Website--about]

History

The Cooperstown Graduate Program was founded in 1964 by Louis C. Jones, who was the director of the New York State Historical Association at the time. Interested in creating a program to train the next generation of museum professionals, Jones partnered with the State University of Oneonta to offer a History Museum Studies program on the campus of the New York State Historical Association. He then hired folklorist Bruce Buckley as the first director of the program. [CGP website--About/History]

In 2010, the program moved into a newly renovated building, the only in the country which was designed specifically for a museum studies program. [Exhibit? NEED SOURCE] In 2015, the Cooperstown Graduate Program’s curriculum expanded to include a Master’s Program in Science Museum Studies. [CGP Website--home page/CGP Science website] The program celebrated its 50th year in October of 2014 with a series of events. [Cooperstown Crier Article]

Projects and Affiliations

CGP Community Stories

Students in the Cooperstown Graduate Program have been collecting oral histories since the program’s beginning. To this date, over 1,800 recordings have been collected [AllOtsego] and archived in the Archive of New York State Folklife and the New York State Historical Association. In 2008, the program created the CGP Community Stories website, a database which offers access to some of these oral histories. Oral histories focus on capturing all aspects of the Cooperstown community, and include topics such as farming, family, healthcare, traditions, and the environment. [CGP Community Stories Website] [AllOtsego Article]

Institute for Cultural Entrepreneurship

In 2009, the Cooperstown Graduate Program began a collaborative program called the Institute for Cultural Entrepreneurship (ICE). CGP Visiting Professor Brian Alexander serves as the Director of the Institute for Cultural Entrepreneurship. [ICE Website? Exhibit? NEED SOURCE] The ICE offers immersive training sessions for “mid-career museum, preservation, historic site and other arts and culture projects to introduce business applications and principles of entrepreneurial thinking with the goal of expanding vision and leadership skills.” [ICE website]