On the Weekends, Students Lead Tours of the Zimmerli Art Museum
After weeks of training, part-time workers known as student educators help visitors engage in conversation
As a third-year doctoral student in the microbial biology program at Rutgers University-New Brunswick, Megan Mauriello missed her connection to art.
She found a way to fill that void at the Zimmerli Art Museum, where Mauriello works part time as a student educator, a paid position. Part of her experience there includes being a guide for the Highlights Tour program, in which Rutgers students lead groups of visitors to free, curated tours throughout the museum’s galleries on select Saturdays and Sundays.
“I've always been art inclined,” said 28-year-old Mauriello, who earned bachelor of art degrees in biology and art from Lafayette College in Easton, Pa., and a master of science degree in microbiology from the University of Delaware in Newark, Del. “My grandmother was an art teacher. My dad and I both had an interest in art throughout my life, even if informally.”
She spotted the student educator position in an email of Rutgers job listings.
“It sounded like a nice change of pace from constantly being in my lab” or working as a teaching assistant, said Mauriello, who hails from Lebanon, N.J.
Over the past several years, weekend tours at the museum have increased in popularity, said Claire D'Amato, associate curator of education at the Zimmerli. Museum officials started offering a monthly Highlights Tour led by a student educator in the fall of 2024, but upped the tours to twice a month in spring 2025, she said. This academic year, the museum is offering 16 such tours.
“There really was a demand for bringing back these drop-in tours on the weekend,” said D'Amato, adding there are 17 student educators on staff this year. “We've seen a huge increase in our audience. So, we've doubled the number of tours essentially and the number of student educators offering them.”
The Zimmerli is here for everyone, but especially for Rutgers students. And now with our gallery attendants, our student educators and our internship programs, we have really integrated students into the fabric of the museum.
Claire D'Amato
Associate curator of education at the Zimmerli
She added, “We've been really pleased with the reception thus far and the interest. I think it's fun for our students because they get to develop different tours. As exhibitions change, as pieces rotate, it gives them a lot of ownership over creating their own museum experience for visitors in a different way than, for example, offering a requested guided tour to a school group or a community group where they have a more focused agenda. This is, I think, just a lot of fun for them to be creative.”
Student educators undergo semester-long training facilitated by members of the Zimmerli’s education and curatorial teams.
When Brandon Truett, who heads learning and community engagement at the Zimmerli, joined the museum staff in spring 2023, “we started revamping the program and also rethinking the curriculum for training,” he said. “This is in line with trends in museum education and gallery pedagogy across the nation, where tours are less focused on content dumping and being very lecture-based. Instead, these tours are designed to help visitors look more closely at specific artworks and create conversations.”
Truett said that by the end of a semester, student educators design their own Highlights tour and then conduct an evaluation tour before museum staff.
Students are the only ones staffing the Highlights tours, “which is exciting,” Truett said. “It gives them ownership over a part of the visitor experience at the museum.”
Michael McCulley, a member of the Zimmerli’s Advisory Board of Directors, liked the student educator program so much that he is sponsoring it.
“It seemed like a great opportunity to expand the student learning experience,” said McCulley, adding that one “need not be an art student” to apply. “I hope the program provides a hands-on educational experience in art, public speaking and interpersonal interactions with the general public and museum experts.”
As with Mauriello, Roshan Kenath sought a connection to art when he came to Rutgers. The day he moved to campus, he happened upon the Zimmerli.
“I was walking around College Avenue and I got lost, and then I eventually ended up here,” said Kenath, who started working at the art museum during his freshman year and began leading tours as a sophomore. “I walked in right before closing.”
Now a senior, Kenath attends the School of Arts and Sciences, where he is working on a bachelor of arts degree in information technology and informatics with a minor in art history.
The 21-year-old from South Plainfield, N.J., said he initially faced “conflicting interests” in terms of whether he wanted to pursue studies in science, technology, engineering and math “or something more in the humanities,” but now understands how studying art can be applied to information technology matters and improve the user interface, or the point of human-computer interaction.
“A lot of it focuses on visual analysis or composition, which are very key aspects of user interface design,” said Kenath, who is the vice president of the Rutgers Art History Student Association.
Kenath said he enjoys the camaraderie he has with fellow student educators and that his understanding of art has “exploded.”
“I've learned so much more about areas that I didn't really know about, such as Soviet nonconformist art,” Kenath said. “It's completely changed the way I look at art as well as art history.”
He added, “Before I joined here, I'd be pretty shy giving out presentations or just speaking to large groups of people, but obviously that's a general skill that you should have both in the workforce and also just in life.”
D'Amato said there has been a long history at the Zimmerli of employing Rutgers students.
“Initially, Rutgers students were primarily employed as gallery attendants, and that's still a very popular position here at the museum,” she said. “As time has gone on and social media has expanded, students are finding out more about the museum and the resources available to them. The Zimmerli is here for everyone, but especially for Rutgers students. And now with our gallery attendants, our student educators and our internship programs, we have really integrated students into the fabric of the museum.”
Student-led Highlights tours are scheduled from 2 p.m. to 3 p.m. on Saturdays on Oct. 11, Nov. 15 and Dec. 6 and Sundays on Oct. 19, Nov. 2 and Dec. 14.
