Remember that as part of the college-wide belt tightening this year, CIE’s budget has not been funded. Instead, we are using the money that we have left over from last year to fund our needs for this year. As a result, we will need to think about and do things a bit differently–we will have to plan ahead for conferences, be frugal and discriminating with our outside PD choices, take advantage of the many free webinars out there (such as the Michigan Student Success Summit or the SUNY Innovative Instruction Technology Grant Webinar Series), and–for those of us who are frequent users of CIE-funded PD–maybe take a break this year and let others take advantage of the limited resources.

However, if there is a conference you’d like to attend this year, the time to act is now. Here is a document explaining the entire process, but this is the short version: if you would like to request PD funding for this year, full time faculty will submit that request in the Faculty Evaluation Plan as part of the PD goals (due Sept. 18). Adjunct faculty are being asked to limit PD experiences this year to in-house PD unless they are required to participate in outside PD because of area needs. These needs will still need to be submitted at the same time as full time faculty’s requests. Chairs will then meet to prioritize and fund all of the requests given the amount of money available.

Feel free to reach out to CIE with questions.