My Professional Development Plan

My Professional Development Plan

I have to be honest here. I never really put together a professional development plan. My plan was to work hard. I have to say that this approach has paid off, especially at UTEP, but it also left me wishing I had done things differently.

I still am painfully aware of how much a good mentor could have helped me early on in my career. My career path would likely have been completely different had I had the support I needed at that time. I scrambled to get publications and presentation and it did not matter whether my efforts were focused. I just worked hard to get those pubs out, which left me without focus and little expertise in any area.

A good development plan would have helped me lay out my path (especially important during the pre-tenure years) that I could have sustained after tenure. The lack of focus, not having developed a core research group of graduate students, and consequently a well-functioning lab, my research program did not amount to much. If I had to do it again, I would do it very differently. It's not use crying over spilled milk, therefore I now try to help young faculty establish a better career path early in their profession through the UTEP Collaborative Faculty Mentoring Program.

My professional development plan for the future is somewhat ill-defined. I have numerous goals related to the tasks in my portfolio as an Associate Provost that are important for UTEP. Maintaining the current mentoring program, growing CETaL and making sure its events help faculty, establishing a sustained leadership development program, and ensuring that our interim report to SACS is of high quality are foremost in my mind.

As many of you have commented, I am too busy taking care of business to be able to think where I want to go or achieve over the next 3-5 yrs. To be honest, a personal retreat and vacation would be nice about now to help me prioritize and set some goals.

From Your Personal Development Plan

I read your blogs on your personal development plans and distilled a few themes.
1) Create goals and put them in a schedule, a timeline, focused on achieving the tasks necessary to accomplish those goals
2) Stick to your schedule and complete the tasks needed to achieve your important goals first
3) Dedicate substantial quality time and effort to your most important goals
4) Update your current documents and maintain them in your electronic portfolio
5) Rewarding yourself for your accomplishments
6) Some of the things you have to do may not contribute to reaching your goals (like some of the elements covered in this course)
7) It’s difficult to think beyond one year and identify targets to work towards
8) It is difficult to create a plan for TA responsibilities because they change from semester to semester and even within one semester.
9) Thinking about all the uncertainties can be overwhelming, but you can handlge it by taking one step at a time.
10) Set regular meetings with your advisor to make sure your progress steadily towards graduation.
11) Collect essential information that will help you in your decision making processes.
12) Making a plan is difficult, but sticking to it is even more so.
13) Identifying the smaller tasks and steps needed to complete larger goals is even more difficult than identifying those goals.
14) The really difficult thing is to manage time effectively on an hour to hour basis.
15) Grading responsibilities are taking a toll on educational responsibilities, balancing all activities is difficult
16) Take concrete steps towards completing goals for graduation; Get an advisor, narrow down your topic of research.
17) The most difficult part is deciding on 3-yr (long term) goals, because they don’t align you’re your current education or you can’t see beyond the daily responsibilities that need your attention
a. Taking time to develop a plan to manage time is a waste of time. Focus on what needs to be done now and take things one semester at a time. The future will present itself.
b. No plan, just do what needs to be done now, but some organization will make life better
18) What does a professional development plan look like?

So what is your next step?
In your philosophy statements many of you identified what was important to you and what you would like to accomplish. Reflect on that again. Your values and beliefs can point you in the right direction. If you love teaching, for example, you may not want to consider a position at a research institute no matter how good you are at research. Your values can be your guides in determining your longer terms goals. Similarly, if you have longer term goals you’re passionate about, see whether your current activities will allow you to achieve them. If you perceive mismatches, you may want to adjust your plan.