Professional Development

Purpose

The purpose of professional development is to promote the growth of staff in their technical and professional skills. It may be initiated by either management or staff themselves.

What "counts" as Professional Development

CSCF considers training sessions, demos, seminars, conferences, professional certifications and other similar activities as "professional development". Any such session lasting longer than approximately 2.5 hours during regular working hours, or requiring time off in lieue, may be considered as Professional Development.

Request to Participate in a Professional Development Opportunity

If a staff person finds an opportunity for their professional development, they should send information to their manager about what it is they want to attend, why it would be beneficial to their work, what sessions (if applicable) they would propose to attend, and what the costs would be (if any). Those costs should include travel, food per diem, hotel, conference or training admission, etc. Approval will generally be decided by the CSCF management group.

Making Professional Development Equitable

The aim of CSCF management is to provide opportunities for all staff to engage in Professional Development activities. When requests are made for a staff person to participate in a session, several factors will be weighed:

• what recent Professional Development has the staff person been engaged in?
• are the proposed session(s) deemed relevant to CSCF, CS or UW?
• does our current budget status permit us to approve the financial cost of the session
• does the timing affect any ongoing work the staff person may have?

Tracking Professional Development

Any time a staff member intends to be engaged in Professional Development they should discuss this with their manager and then send an email notice to "away@csc" outlining the date(s) and time(s) of the session(s) once it has been approved. The dates will be noted in the "away" file and visible on the "Who's Away" page: https://www.cs.uwaterloo.ca/cscf/internal/staff-absences/

The time and any costs associated with Professional Development are also tracked in a spreadsheet by management. Total cost for Professional Development for each person is calculated at $200 per full day of time, plus any actual expenses.

Over time, the weighting of the costs of attendance is decreased. So, costs for the current year are weighted at 100% of their expense, last year's are 80%, 60% for the year before, then 40% and finally 20%. So, if someone attended an expensive session (eg: LISA) a few years ago, it will have much less weighting than if they had attended the year previously.

Note that there is no more concept of the rotating LISA conference list. All requests for any conference attendance will be considered based on the criteria described above.

Expectations for Sharing Knowledge

After attending a session, staff will be encouraged to write up some notes on what they learned of interest at the session and, possibly, provide a seminar to CSCF staff about what they learned. That seminar might be part of a CSCF staff meeting, or a standalone session.