Course Information

Professional Skills - 1 credit

Meeting Location: CHHM 7th Floor Boardroom, as needed

Learning Objectives

1. The students will be able to formulate a professional development plan that is based on their expected career direction.

2. The students will develop skills in a range of professional development topics that will include subjects such as communication, management, teaching, and ethics.

3. The students will reflect on the professional development topics in which they have studied and they will assess how these topics have influenced their thinking about their future career directions.

Class Format

Students will attend periodic group sessions for discussion of the concept of the course and for reflections on their professional development experiences. The students will attend a series of workshops that are aligned with their professional development plan (minimum of 60 hours total). They will also perform an integrative and reflective assessment that articulates how this experience has influenced their thinking about their future career directions.

Prerequisites

None

Textbook

There is no required text for the course.

Assignments

At the end of their program, the students are to submit a written integrative and reflective assessment of how their professional development activities have influenced their thinking about their future career directions. This assessment should be approximately 1000 words in length, and should include, either inline or as an appendix, a table of all PD activities in which you have engaged (please use three columns: Activity title, date, hours claimed). The assessment itself should have two main parts: (1) a brief review of your original PD plan (i.e., what you were hoping to achieve) and (2) a reflection on how the activities you engaged in helped you address these goals. See sample assessment here.

Course Grading

The course is graded pass/fail. A pass requires attending an appropriate number of workshop hours (minimum 60 hours) and submitting an acceptable integrative and reflective assessment at its conclusion. The course requirements need not be completed within one year, but may be satisfied at any point prior to completing the student's program.