Whether you’re looking to advance your higher ed career, transition to a role outside of higher education entirely, or just looking to gain some new skills for your current role, it’s important to utilize the professional development resources at your disposal. While I personally believe that pro devo funding should be a thing of the past and that we just deserve to get paid more (for many, that $1,000 is better spent on groceries than a conference registration), it doesn’t appear to be going away any time soon. After all, it’s much less expensive in the long run to offer each employee $1,000 with the hopes that they don’t use it all than it is to just outright give each employee a $1,000 raise.
So if you’re someone with access to professional development funding, you owe it to yourself to be using it to the fullest. But with so many conferences, institutes, certificate programs, and courses to choose from, it’s easy to pick something that is the wrong choice for you. Just last year, I attended a conference to learn about a new software that my department had recently purchased, but it ended up being largely irrelevant for me as someone who wasn’t a backend user with large-scale decision-making power on how the software was to be utilized within the department.
Avoiding situations like this is easier said than done, especially since there are various factors at play. Sometimes an online course is advertised as one thing and ends up being something entirely different. Other times, department directors are pressured to ensure that their university is well represented in numbers at a conference. As individual employees, we can also be guilty of performative professional development, seeing a conference as more of an opportunity for a mini vacation than an opportunity for professional growth.
So whether you’re planning to attend a conference with your professional development funds or thinking about other options, here are some questions and considerations to think about:
Attending a Conference?
- Would you still attend if the conference was in your least favorite place? If the location is what makes or breaks it for you, there’s probably a better professional opportunity out there for you.
- What educational opportunity are you looking forward to the most? If you can’t think of anything, doing more research on what the conference is actually about can help you decide if it is really worth going to.
- How many other individuals from your department are attending this conference? If there are enough people already attending and you’re on the fence, you can ask your coworkers to share their notes from sessions you were interested in attending.
- What are the out of pocket costs you might incur? Your funding won’t always cover 100% of the costs of attending a conference, whether you run out of per diem money or your spending is outside of your organization’s guidelines. Budget for all potential costs before assuming that everything is covered. Don’t forget to factor in airport parking, rideshare services, and any personal activities you may want to partake in that aren’t conference-related.
- Is this a top-down directive? If you’re feeling pressured by your supervisor to attend a specific conference that you don’t have enough interest in, this could be an opportunity to discuss whether or not the funding for you to attend can come from somewhere else other than your personal pro devo funding allotment. Sometimes we don’t have the option to say no to a conference, but when a directive is top-down, the funding should be as well.
Not Sure What Else is Out There?
- Talk to your supervisor to learn more about any education benefits your institution provides, and ask whether or not pro devo funds can be used to cover course fees or the purchase of class materials.
- See if pro devo funding can apply to an online course subscription service or certificate program, such as Coursera or Masterclass. In addition to learning some skills relevant to your job, you’ll also have access to loads of educational content that may interest you personally.
- Staying up-to-date about higher education news and trends empowers us to make informed career decisions, so subscribing to Inside Higher Ed or other news sources may also be covered by your funding.
- If there are premium tools you use regularly for your position, such as Kahoot, Canva, or Slidesgo, it will never hurt to ask if your pro devo funding covers their costs.
- Our jobs often require us to use a diverse skill set, but it can be easy to get caught up in the higher education bubble. Consider looking into professional opportunities for fields adjacent to higher education such as counseling, education technology, or K-12 education.
- Look for lesser known conferences more local to you. Eliminating the cost of a flight from your funding can make conferences more accessible.
- Bring a student group you advise to a conference. While you might not need to use your own funding for this one, going to conferences designed for students can give you helpful insights about the modern student experience that you might not get from your everyday interactions with your students.
