Power-Up with a Professional Development Plan
Kelly White, Director of HR Engagement & Operational Strategy
Ranelle Maltas, Training, Technology & Comm Coordinator, Human Resources
Location: Room 010
A Professional Development Plan (PDP) is a valuable document that establishes both your career development goals and a strategy for meeting them. In this hands-on session, you will learn the three steps to creating an individualized professional development plan. You will have time to use worksheets in the session to start the process of documenting a plan. By the end of the session, you have started creating a useful roadmap for your growth and success.
How to Be Happy at Home and at Work—Mindfulness for All
Patrick T. Randolph, Independent Researcher, Materials Writer, Freelance Speaker and, Writer
Location: Room 018
This highly interactive and spiritually enhancing workshop on mindfulness practices and their benefits focuses on helping participants better understand themselves, their relationship with their cognitive and emotional states, and their immediate physical environment. The theme is “How to Be Happy at Home and at Work—Mindfulness for All.”
First, the presenter will briefly discuss three perennial issues that plague the modern adult: (1) work-burnout, (2) inattentiveness, and (3) loneliness. These issues have been researched extensively by the neuroscience community, and they have discovered that simple mindfulness practices are the best solution for each one.
The presenter will then define mindfulness and offer practical tips for the participants, showing how easy it is to implement the different activities in their lives to reduce stress and anxiety, and, most important, embrace life’s magic! Next, the presenter surveys the cognitive, physical, spiritual, and emotional benefits of mindfulness; these include promoting longevity and an enhanced memory.
The third part of the presentation is a workshop that focuses on practical and easy-to-implement mindfulness practices. The participants practice these activities and also discuss how they can incorporate them in their daily lives. These activities include: (1) mindful observations in one’s personal life and at work (e.g., training the mind through short mindful observations, mindful body scans; mindful eating, and mindful walking); (2) gratitude awareness (e.g., waking up and giving thanks to the body and a condensed loving-kindness meditation); and (3) being aware of and appreciating the unique experiences during the day (e.g., being mindful of the five senses). Each activity leads to a growth and development in the both mind and body and shows how each is intimately related (Kabat-Zinn, 1994).
The session concludes with a review of the activities and benefits. Participants receive a handout with additional mindfulness activities they can implement in their lives.
Humanity and the Staff of the University of Nebraska
Nicole Church, Administrative Coordinator, Chemical & Biomolecular Engineering
Mona Bavarian, Assistant Professor, Chemical & Biomolecular Engineering
Location: Room 032
It is a universally known fact that the University of Nebraska could not exist without their staff. However, over the past few decades as state funding has steadily been reduced, staff benefits and opportunities for advancements have decreased dramatically. Most training sessions offered focus on how staff can be better servants to the university by enhancing their technical competencies. Although technical training can be valuable, opportunities focused on personal growth and creativity are essential for staff to broaden and diversify humanitarian skills. Skills which can help guide departments through challenges such as conflict resolution, bias, discrimination, and challenges associated with the return to the workplace after the pandemic including adjusting to staff reductions/additions, re-orienting to physical encounters with faculty and students, and re-establishing basic trust among our campus communities.
In this session, we introduce ideas centered on enhancing staff visibility and valuing their roles without the standard practice of task compartmentalization. Rather, we will discuss specific options for fostering community cohesiveness between staff, students and faculty in departments, colleges and across campuses. For example, we will talk about writers, artists, athletes, musicians, nature enthusiasts, knitters, dancers, activists and volunteers. Promotion of staff importance is intertwined with the interests of faculty and students in a symbiotic relationship. The possibilities for creative engagement are endless, and they encourage a ‘village’ motif, a sense of belonging and community among groups of people with vastly different backgrounds. We believe this approach can contribute to departments being more productive, intellectually stimulating, and fun. As an adaptation to post-pandemic academia, the ‘village’ motif has the potential for innovation and creativity that would benefit departments, colleges, and the university while strengthening university participation and collaboration with city and state communities.
Connections Through Responding to Bias Reports
Stephanie Bondi, Associate Professor of Practice, Educational Administration
Location: Room 040
Research has shown that higher education institutions have their fair share of bias incidents. These incidents can create fractures in individual’s experiences at the institution. Many are not aware and have not been trained how to effectively respond to bias incidents even when they intend to be supportive. A misinformed or ineffective response can create additional harms and fractures in our community. This session will provide information about and a process for those who want to support someone who has experienced bias or discrimination. It is relevant for administrators, supervisors, office staff, and anyone else desiring to support fellow staff and/or students. Effectively responding to reports of bias will strengthen connections and our community.
Use the Forms, Luke: Creating High-Quality Webforms and Surveys
Markeya Peteranetz, Learning Assessment Coordinator, College of Engineering
Location: Room 138
What’s worse than having to take a survey? Having to take a bad survey! If you’ve ever had to take a survey or complete a webform, chances are you’ve been frustrated by the process. Unclear questions, response options that don’t fit, and a seemingly endless stream of questions can be enough to leave you cursing your computer! Despite the frustrations they can cause, webforms can be a great way to gather information from your colleagues and clients, and they can be used for more than just surveys. Whenever you need to gather similar information from multiple people, a webform can help you be more efficient. In this session, we will go step-by-step through the process of creating a webform that is painless for the users and produces useful and usable data for you. We will cover guidelines for writing good questions, learn about different options within free webform programs, see how the programs enable you to analyze your data, and review options for distributing your webform. You are encouraged to bring your laptop to the session along with an idea for a survey or webform you want to create (but neither are required).
By the end of this session, attendees will be able to:
- Build and distribute high-quality forms and surveys using freely available web-based programs
- Write survey questions that adhere to principles of good item writing
- Design forms and surveys that produce useful, useable data
- Conduct a basic analysis of some of the most common types of survey questions
Color on Campus: Seeing Color and Other Human Characteristics on Campus*
Mynesha Spencer, Chief Inclusion Strategist, All of Us Together Co.
Marquisha Frost, Digital Learning Operations Specialist, IT Academic Technology
Location: Room 211
Seeing color and other human characteristics on campus is a facilitated interactive presentation that provides faculty, staff, students and other campus stakeholders the opportunity to step beyond our comfort zones and intentionally see color, other human characteristics and the advantages associated with this practice. Public service institutions will never prove more equitable, more inclusive or more diverse than the individuals who lead and learn in these spaces and the University of Nebraska is no exception. Attendance of this presentation guarantees a self-reflective experience and provides participants starter tools and resources to begin seeing (and embracing) color on campus.
Participants attending this interactive presentation should bring:
- Writing Utensil
- Favorite object or thing (optional)
- A set of colored pencils/crayons (optional)
*Hybrid presentation