Begin practicing what you have learned through your eCourses and training.
Below are some ideas of activities and projects that you can pursue to enhance your knowledge:
Business and Financial Analysis
- Ask to be cross-trained in basic financial duties in your office.
- Learn to read and analyze your department's financial reports.
- Volunteer to create or redesign department budget spreadsheets to see if there are ways to display information, group budget items, accounts, etc., more effectively.
- Talk with a general accounting or budget and institutional analysis staff member about how money comes to campus, deans' offices and department.
- Monitor one part of your department's budget for a year.
Communication
- Write instructions for a departmental procedure.
- Write an article for the Staff Assembly newsletter.
- Attend faculty meeting w/ current MSO or supervisor.
- Attend a college MSO meeting.
- Write an article for a departmental newsletter.
- Volunteer to give a presentation at a departmental or committee meeting.
- Develop a web page.
- Develop and present training on a departmental process.
Community Building
- Work with Campus and Community Relations department on campus book project.
- Work with Campus and Community Relations on diversity education.
- Attend a Staff Diversity Administrative Advisory Committee (SDAAC) meeting.
- Attend community events on campus such as Picnic Day or Soaring to New Heights.
- Form a network of peers doing similar jobs in other departments.
- Attend student-organized culture/community celebrations.
- Visit an office/person you make referrals to.
- Plan a retreat with colleagues and include team building exercises.
Analysis and Planning
- Study space plans for units and think about different ways space could be used.
- Ask the dean's office for strategic goals and the mission of college.
- Participate in the strategic planning process.
- Create a "process document" or work plan to define on paper one task/responsibility.
- Volunteer for an upcoming or ongoing space survey project.
- Learn more about what each unit contributes to the running of your department.
- Volunteer to create a database and reports to handle a set of data in your unit.
- Analyze a process to look for ways to make it more efficient or more cost-effective.
Leadership
- Join a committee.
- Volunteer to lead a meeting.
- Lead a group project.
- Take a leadership role on a campus committee.
Human Resource Development
- Volunteer to deliver your department's new employee orientation or develop a new employee handbook.
- Volunteer to participate on hiring committees.
- Observe the recruitment process of one recruitment from your department.