Community-driven, Competency-based Certificate Programs for Professional Development

In the SUNY Center for Professional Development, we are moving away from a reactive “responding to requests” approach to programming towards a more proactive approach of community-based needs assessment and deliberate program development to drive and project offerings. To accomplish this, we are developing a series of competency-based professional development certificate programs for faculty and staff in key roles throughout our university system. A hallmark of our program development is the way in which we are engaging communities of practice across our campuses to determine where programs are needed, to define the competencies required for faculty and staff to be effective in the specified roles, and to determine what the instructional activities are to achieve the competencies. We believe this will increase the relevance of the programs and will ensure that there is a built in audience for the programs once they are developed. We are also using a consistent program development template for all of our programs and have a common set of parameters for the program delivery and support to ensure scalability, allowing us to manage multiple simultaneous program offerings. This paper will describe the processes and steps taken to assess the professional development needs of our target audiences, determine which programs to offer, and engage the stakeholder communities in program development, delivery, and assessment. Examples of specific programs developed and delivered will be shared along with challenges and lessons learned.