Faculty Development and Retraining

by Sarah Gutowski, Chair, New Member Mentoring Program

Not sure if you remember, but back in October I wrote about Conference Attendance and Reimbursement. Hopefully, some of you applied for funding already. If you didn't, don't worry -- you have until September of 2015 to spend your $1500.

 

In my defense, breakfast in Seattle
 came with a pretty cool view.

If you did apply for funds already, you may have noticed that while $1500 is a lovely and substantial amount of money, it can . . .um . . . disappear kind of quickly when one has to buy a plane ticket to say, Seattle, and one wishes to stay in the conference hotel for nearly, oh, $200 a night. 

 

*Cough*

 

Anyway, so what if you use all of your available conference money before the two year period is up -- and you have another very important conference to apply for?

 

You apply for Faculty Development and Retraining funds, that's what!

 

Every year, the county provides up to $30,000 in funds for faculty retraining and development assistance. You may remember receiving an email about this earlier in February. You'll get a similar one every year around the same time -- but don't ignore that email! This is a good way to apply for retraining funds for the following year. Take note of the deadline for application (it's April 15), and note that all applications must be submitted, via email, to the Office of the Vice President for Academic and Student Affairs -- no more paper copies!

 

It's good to note, too, that faculty retraining is given first priority. Then, if money remains in the pool, it's awarded for faculty development. And if money is still left over, faculty are allowed to apply for summer development funds -- for the current academic year, not the following.

If that's a little confusing, see this page on the FA's web site. I think it may make things more clear.

This year, the administration wants to encourage the following areas, in particular, to apply:

 

Chemistry

Communications (Speech)

Computer Science

Culinary Arts

Geography

Mathematics (Developmental)

 

 

So for those of you who still have conference attendance funds left, relax but think about where and when you might want to spend that money before September 2015 arrives. And for those of you who have blown it all on one fabulous professional development opportunity on the other side of the country (ahem), consider that you can still defray costs for future conference attendance by being diligent and filling out a Faculty/Guild Retraining Application. The worst that can happen is that your request is denied and you'll have wasted a few minutes on extra paperwork -- but if it's granted, you'll be able to hang on to a little more of your paycheck AND be super current in your field.

 

Yay!