Staff Spotlight: Sharon Kane - AmeriCorps Week
This week, March 14 - 18, we are celebrating AmeriCorps Week and recognizing the service of thousands of members and volunteers making an impact on communities across the United States. Shout out to Museum & Theatre Volunteer and Intern Coordinator Sharon Kane, an AmeriCorps VISTA member. She has done incredible work bolstering programs that provide learning opportunities for skill building, and build partnerships between the Museum & Theatre and the greater community. As the Volunteer and Intern Coordinator, Sharon organizes policy and protocols for the program, welcomes new volunteers and interns, and performs outreach and marketing to colleges, universities, and community organizations.
Sharon is an AmeriCorps VISTA member.
“It’s an opportunity for people to give back to the community,” says Sharon. Volunteers must be 14 years of age or older and can volunteer for long term, short term, or for single projects and events. Long term and short term opportunities focus on skill building and connecting to the Museum & Theatre community. Internships are a learning opportunity for current college students and can count for academic credits. Both interns and volunteers work closely with a mentor and supervisor, gaining insight into how and why our mission and programs work at the Museum & Theatre. Internship opportunities cover various fields, including theatre, education, marketing and communications, and aquarium science. Long term volunteer positions offer skills in theatre, early childhood education, classroom management, informal education, and multi-age instruction.
Sharon joined the Museum & Theatre in November 2021, as an AmeriCorps VISTA member. VISTA programs are focused on capacity building activities such as fundraising, grant writing, research, and volunteer recruitment in organizations across the company. As the Museum & Theatre grows as an organization in the new building on Thompson’s Point, having support for capacity building is important and necessary. The Museum & Theatre has partnered with AmeriCorps VISTA for years, and Sharon is the first member to work in our new building. During the height of the Covid-19 pandemic, volunteer and internship opportunities were on hold and Sharon has worked diligently to recover and expand them. Thanks to her coordination, the program has become more structured, focused on elevating clear learning opportunities and partnering with other educational organizations in the community.
Internship opportunities cover various fields, including theatre, education, marketing and communications, and aquarium science.
Sharon has a Bachelor’s Degree in History, and she previously worked as a Regulatory Coordinator for clinical research. Though this may seem like a divergent field to the work Sharon does now as an AmeriCorps service member in a non-profit organization, the skills and work are similar. She explains: “Historical research requires high volume document management, in depth information analysis, and the ability to communicate your findings to an audience. These are the same steps for writing a protocol.” This skill has been a consistent component in Sharon’s work, in researching the suffrage movement as her senior thesis, disseminating trial information to participants, devising engaging take home curriculums, and writing volunteer policy.
While working in clinical research, Sharon expanded and solidified her management skills but it wasn’t her preferred field. “It was a great job, and I learned useful skills. But it was not the field I wanted to pursue. Since college, I've wanted to work in a museum,” she explained. AmeriCorps was an opportunity to pivot and Sharon became an AmeriCorps Child and Family Educator at the Old Stone House Museum & Historic Village in Vermont. The Old Stone House was a dormitory built for Orleans County Grammar School, by instruction of Alexander Twilight, the principal from 1829 and 1855, and claimed by Middlebury College to be the first African-American to earn a baccalaureate from an American college or university. While Sharon was there, she helped with summer programs and wrote educational curriculums. Here at the Museum & Theatre, she’s been able to continue in the field of nonprofits and museum work, thanks to the opportunities provided by AmeriCorps.
A huge thank you to Sharon for her tremendous continued work as the Intern and Volunteer Coordinator and to AmeriCorps VISTA for connecting us with her! We are so glad to have her on board and be able to grow our capacity as an educational organization!