April 12, 2007
Free money and training for professional staff members!
Do we have your attention yet? Good. And now the news …
The Professional Staff Organization (PSO) offers Professional Development Scholarships of up to $350 to its members, and Professional Development Grants of up to $500 for groups — but few people tend to apply for these benefits.
“I’m surprised,” said Ethan Allen, education manager of the Center for Nanotechnology, who is a member of the PSO’s Scholarship and Professional Development Committee. “I’ve been on the committee for a year and I’m surprised how few applications we get. I’m sort of stunned.”
Each quarter, including summer, the PSO has money available to help Professional Staff pursue development and training that might not otherwise be available to them. The deadline for summer quarter is May 6.
The Professional Development Scholarship, as the PSO Web site states, is money that may be used for professional development opportunities offered by the UW Professional and Organizational Development Office or other organizations, on or off campus, “and may include expenses for classes, conferences, meetings and workshops.” The awards are limited to $350 per person per year.
Then there are the Professional Development Grants of up to $500 each, open to groups of professional staff members — staff associations, schools or departments or other informal professional groups. The grants can support “on- or off-campus classes, programs, or speakers that contribute to the professional development of a group of UW professional staff members.”
Suzanne St Peter, who heads the PSO Scholarship and Professional Development Committee, agreed that the funding offered is valuable to employees, and encourages staff to think of themselves as lifelong learners.
The PSO also offers the Greg Stark Memorial Scholarship, which was created to remember a well-liked Web computing specialist with the Northwest Center for Public Health Practice in the School of Public Health and Community Medicine who died in May 2005 in a snowstorm on Mount Rainier. This scholarship, also of amounts up to $350, is given quarterly, the Web site states. Applications should “address how the proposed training or activity works toward enhancing team-building or collaborative leadership skills,” which are qualities that Greg Stark personally exemplified.
Across the campuses, more than 6,800 UW employees are professional staff, according to the PSO Web site, including advisors and counselors, administrators, managers and budget analysts, computing specialists, continuing education employees and many more. To learn more about the organization, its scholarships and grants and its work, visit online at http://depts.washington.edu/psoweb/.
