Professional Development Committee
The mission of the TELS Professional Development Committee is to support the professional learning of faculty, staff, and students in the department. Whenever possible, it is also an aim of this committee to support greater socialization across the department through professional learning by selecting and informing faculty, staff, and students about promising events, encouraging small groups to register for events together, and weaving socialization activities around professional learning (e.g., coffee, lunch). Committee members are not responsible for creating or offering professional development, rather they aim to leverage the considerable professional development opportunities that already exist on campus. When committee members are interested in promoting professional learning opportunities that may overlap with TELS' Diversity and Social Justice or Well-Being Committees, committee chairs will discuss co-sponorship of said events to avoid duplication of effort across departmental committees (e.g., cultural competency training, work-life balance training).
Members of the TELS Professional Development Committee may be involved in the following activities related to promoting professional learning events and related socialization on campus:
- needs assessing with faculty, staff, and students regarding professional learning events they are most interested in attending
- meeting monthly or bi-monthly during the academic year to select professional learning events for the department; the committee aims to promote a minimum of one event per month (September-April); events drawn from such groups as DELTA, the university libraries, and the Office of Faculty Development
- announcement of promoted events and associated socialization opportunities with a sign-in sheet to indicate departmental participation, as well as links to register for said events formally (e.g., campus Reporter tool); if there is enough expressed interest in an announced topic, the committee may request a special section of the event be offered in Poe Hall; announcements to route through common channels (group-tels-faculty@ncsu.edu Google group, TELS GSA)
Members of the TELS Professional Development Committee are also involved in the following activities related to selecting recipients for travel awards/funds with an eye toward promoting professional learning off campus:
- following the procedure for departmental travel support for TELS students, the committee will review student applications for travel support twice per year in late September and late January, to select students for $500 travel support awards to attend conferences
- in addition to the annual distribution of department travel funds for faculty, college-level travel funds may be made available in certain years to support high-visibility faculty travel to national/international conferences for presentation and/or keynoting; should applications be submitted for this purpose, the TELS Professional Development Committee may also be called upon to review and select recipients of these awards
Membership on the TELS Professional Development Committee consists of at least one representative from each doctoral concentration in the department, and is open to all program coordinators pending their interest. Current members include:
- Valerie Faulkner, ELMS concentration
- DeLeon Gray, Ed Psych concentration
- Jill Grifenhagen, LELA concentration
- Shiyan Jiang, LDT concentration
- Joanna Koch, MAT
- Amato Nocera, Ed Equity concentration
