Establishing a Professional Development Certificate Program at Illinois

Poster presented at the National Postdoctoral Association's 2014 Annual Meeting in St. Louis, Missouri. The Postdoctoral Affairs Office conceptualized two certificate programs to enhance professional development: one that could be completed in 6-9 months and an advanced certificate that could be completed in 6-12 months. These programs have been designed to assist postdocs’ pursuit of training experiences that address one or more of the NPA’s core competencies by providing easily accessible and timely events. While the postdoc appointment provides additional research training, the certificate programs are designed to augment fundamental skill sets that will help the postdoc to become a more effective leader of a research team, business enterprise or classroom. A challenge to engaging postdocs in the certificate programs is the intense focus on their research responsibilities, which makes it difficult to break away from the lab for a supplemental training activity. We address this challenge in several ways. First, all new postdocs are offered an orientation program at which our certificate programs are introduced as a way to develop, inform, and refine an individual development plan. We then support these certificate programs by programming an ongoing series of breakaway events that support professional development in areas such as communication and grant writing, scientific management, and teaching. Tracking engagement and outcomes are the next steps in improving our program offerings.unpublishednot peer reviewe