I sure hope so! Professional development is important for faculty. If you don’t believe me, read Dr. Alan Altany’s, the director of the Center for Teaching, Learning and Scholarship at Georgia Southern University, article. He wrote “Professional Faculty Development: The Necessary Fourth Leg” in which he shares a list of the reasons why professional development plays a critical role in the ongoing growth of teachers.
Good teaching is not just a “you have it or you don’t” skill, nor is it an automatic companion of terminal, disciplinary degrees. It is an action, process, and way of thinking and as such it constitutes serious, complex intellectual work. It requires regular reflection and exposure to new ideas and information that are inherently a part of good professional development activities (Altany, 2012).
Well there’s no better way to gain “exposure to new ideas and information” than to attend a teaching conference. There are so many to choose from, Google can’t even give me a number. We’ve tried to help by offering a list Fall, Spring and Summer to choose from. And we’re taking it one step further by offering you two options that the CTLE Advisory Committee thought might be great for a few of us to attend as a team. We’ll provide the documentation you’ll need to submit for approval, and I made a video showing you how to submit the travel authorization. Let us know if you’re interested, and we’ll send you the documents you’ll need.
- April 22-25th, 2017 97th AACC Convention (American Association of Community Colleges) – New Orleans, LA
- April 7-9, 2017 Promoting Positive Mindsets: Using the Science of Well-Being to Increase Student Success (Learning & The Brain) Arlington, VA
If you need a bit more convincing of the importance of professional development in teaching, check out: Setting the standard for faculty professional development in higher education.
