To: The College Community
From: Dr. Michael Mills, Vice President of E-Learning, Innovation, and Teaching Excellence (ELITE)
Subject: ELITE Transformation
Date: March 28, 2018
In August 2016, the Center for Professional and Organizational Development (CPOD) was moved under my leadership, and I was charged with aligning CPOD and E-Learning, Innovation and Teaching Excellence (ELITE), to evolve our business model, create greater synergy for professional development, and to ensure continuous improvement that addresses the College's present and future needs. This memorandum is an update to the reporting changes made within CPOD, which will further align staff and faculty training and development needs.
The first step in that direction was the creation of a Professional Development Master Plan that can be seen in the pdf below. This master plan aligns with the College's Strategic Plan, the Academic Affairs Master Plan, the Student Affairs Master Plan and the Achieving the Dream Institutional Change Assessment Tool. A committee of faculty, staff and administrators began work on the plan in the spring of 2017. Following numerous sub-committee meetings, benchmarking against other institutions and discussions with various governance councils, recommendations were presented to Dr. Janet Wormack and Dr. Sanjay Rai in order to seek feedback from the President's Executive Cabinet (PEC). These recommendations aim to "create an institutional environment of life-long learning which supports employee growth, increases organizational effectiveness, and promotes student success."
Second, CPOD staff were aligned under Dr. Caroline Toscano, director of professional development. Dr. Toscano leads the instructional designers in ELITE, creating a synergy between the two staffs. This unification of training and development personnel allows the College to offer its workshops not only to College employees, but also to businesses and other governmental entities in Montgomery County when appropriate. This new ELITE business model also presents an opportunity to partner with Workforce Development & Continuing Education (WD&CE) and may create additional revenue sources to the College. WD&CE will provide staff to conduct professional development training on an as needed basis. Classes will be offered in the newly created Center for Training Excellence in the Mannakee Building (MK) on the Rockville Campus.
Lastly, to further unify and synergize training and development at the College it is essential that a rebranding take place. As a result, effective July 1, 2018, the name CPOD (Center for Professional Development (CPOD) will be phased out and will be referred to as Office of E-Learning, Innovation and Teaching Excellence (ELITE).
I want to thank the committee for their contributions and excellent work on the professional development master plan and, my personal thanks goes out to all ELITE/CPOD staff members for looking toward the future to provide excellent professional development to all employees at Montgomery College.
cc: Dr. Rai
Dr. Wormack
