The State of Professional Development in Higher Education: February 2016

woman with a headset participating in an Academic Impressions webcast

Professional development is a strategic asset to an institution, as it is a key engine for increasing the capacity of your team and for bringing in proven strategies from other organizations—allowing you to both avoid “reinventing the wheel” and to revitalize your work with fresh ideas.

In late 2015, we surveyed 971 managers and frontline faculty and staff at colleges and universities, both to score this year’s investment in professional development against last year’s, and to uncover new findings and emerging stories of what teams that are leveraging professional development (PD) to move their institutions forward are doing differently—and what you can learn from them.

In this report on our second annual survey, we will present:

  1. A year-over-year scorecard of 8 critical professional development (PD) metrics.
  2. Evidence that institutions need to raise the bar of what they expect from professional development.
  3. Two key findings that can help you maximize the return on your PD in 2016.
  4. A template for a written professional development plan.
  5. Ten tips for optimizing the return on a professional development event.

We hope you will enjoy this report and share it with your colleagues!

Read the report.