Graduate Program Overview

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The Department of Art, Music and Design at Seton Hall University offers a Master of Arts (MA) in Museum Professions. The program prepares students for professional careers in museums and other cultural institutions through challenging coursework in:

• museum history and theory
  
• museum management
• resource development
• legal issues in museums
  
• collections management and care
• museum education
• museum technologies
• exhibition development
• museums and community
  

Annual summer seminars in Paris, Rome, or Berlin further enrich the curriculum.

The maste'r degree in Museum Professions is designed for individuals interested in pursuing careers in museums or related cultural institutions. Combining structure with flexibility, this 39-credit program offers four professional tracks:

I. Museum Education
II. Museum Management
III. Museum Registration
IV. Exhibition Development

These diverse offerings are provided through cooperation with other departments and schools at Seton Hall University, and through collaboration with museums and museum professionals who serve as advisers and faculty for the program.

Museums have become complex, multipurpose organizations. The MA in Museum Professions is designed to meet their need for professionally trained employees. This program is designed for recent college graduates, people seeking a career change, and museum employees who wish to improve their skills.

Courses are offered in the evenings and on Saturdays to accommodate both full-time and part-time students.

Students are required to complete a Masters Thesis to receive their master's degree.

The Museum Professions program accepts full-time, part-time, dual degree, and non-matriculating students. Non-matriculating students must complete an application to be accepted as program affiliates. 

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Student Designations

Full-time Students are defined as students taking 3 courses (9 credits) in a semester.  Students need special permission to take more than 3 credits in any one semester.

Part-time Students are defined as students taking 1 or 2 courses (3 or 6 credits, respectively) in a semester.

Dual Degree Students are students who are currently undergraduate students in Seton Hall University’s College of Arts and Sciences and who have been accepted into the Dual Degree program.

Non-Matriculated Students are students who are not currently accepted into either the MA Program or the Dual Degree program and have successfully applied for permission to take courses offered through the Museum Professions program.

Student Body Information

In November 2003, the American Association of Museums named diversity as one of the eight strategic issues. Even before then, museums had begun to pay serious attention to diversity, both in their hiring of personnel and in their programming and marketing. Seton Hall University’s MA Program in Museum Professions has been committed to diversity since its inception. Its goal is to meet the needs of today’s museums by training students from different national and ethnic backgrounds, from many parts of the country and the world, of different ages, and with different talents and points of view.

While the majority of applicants to the program have graduated from college within five years, about one quarter are career changers or parents who have stayed at home to bring up their children. Seton Hall’s master's degree in Museum Professions has enrolled students who were previously occupied as lawyers, teachers, accountants, corporate executives, and naval officers. Its students also include museum professionals who want to better their chances for career advancement.

Roughly one half of our student body comes from the tri-state area (New Jersey, New York, and Pennsylvania). The remaining half comes from other states or abroad. Over the years students have originated from nearly all states in the United States, as well as from China, Japan, Korea, Puerto Rico, Spain, and Taiwan.

Students in the program have majored at the undergraduate level in fields ranging from accounting to zoology. The program requires, however, that all students have taken at least four undergraduate courses in one of the “museum fields,” i.e., anthropology, archaeology, art history, biology, or history. Students who have not taken four courses in either one of those fields can complete them while being enrolled in the graduate program.

• Institute of Museum Ethics