Our Philosophy for Professional Development 

The Center for Teaching, Innovation, and Research offers faculty and staff a variety of opportunities to engage in professional development. Professional development includes both faculty and staff-specific programming, broadly based on professional competencies and areas of growth (adapted Neal & Shellgren, Michigan State University Educator Development Framework, 2021).

Professional Competencies– refer to the specific types of knowledge needed for day-to-day work. 

    • Organizational & Institutional Knowledge: understanding institutions and their processes through a systems lens 
    • Specialized Knowledge: learning about and using discipline-specific concepts and theories
    • Pedagogical, Administrative, & Practical Knowledge: learning and using evidenced-based techniques to improve teaching and learning experiences 
    • Technological Knowledge: learning to use and adapt technology skills in informed and ethical ways 
    • Data-Informed Knowledge: designing, collecting, and interpreting data to make informed and ethical decisions 
    • Culturally-responsive Knowledge: understanding and responding respectfully to differences in cultural ways of knowing, communicating, and being 

Areas of Growth– refer to ongoing themes that staff, faculty, and employees can use for their development.  

  • Justice, Equity, Diversity, and Inclusion: developing skills to work toward antioppression 
  • Collaboration– developing skills and workflows to engage with others individually or as part of a team 
  • Communication– developing skills and practices for listening, engaging, and expressing ideas across modalities 
  • Leadership– developing skills for developing and implementing guiding priorities 
  • Policy– knowledge to create, implement, and design infrastructures for learning and working 
  • Research– developing skills in collecting, interpreting, and making decisions based on data and observations
  • Lifelong Learning: developing skills for practicing inquiry and reflection for ongoing learning 

2023-2024 Professional Development Threads  

Based on a needs assessment conducted in Summer 2023, this year, professional development workshops have been identified along three threads: core work, equity & justice, and leadership development. These threads bring together areas of growth and professional competencies.

Core Work, the building blocks to effective teaching-learning work here at Adams State University, including workshops on university pedagogy, Blackboard, curriculum design, building professional relationships, holding challenging conversations, campus resources, and high-impact practices (among others).

Equity & Justice: a focused series of workshops based on areas of antiracism, accessibly, culturally-responsive pedagogy and administration, among others, including practical applications in teaching and learning contexts 

Leadership Development: a series of workshops designed to develop leadership competencies including communication, developing others, and collaborating on teams, among others.