New & Notable
Video Presentation: A 40-year Retrospective on Continuing Education
Eugene J. Monaco—Public Service Professor and Executive Director, Professional Development Program
The Continuing Education Association of New York (CEANY) dedicated its annual conference this year to a celebration of its 40 years of providing continuing education programs and services for the public higher education institutions in New York State. At the Anniversary Luncheon, PDP's Eugene Monaco, who served as a past president of CEANY, delivered the keynote address. In his address Monaco not only provided a retrospective of CEANY's rich history but also analyzed the broader impact that continuing education has had on public higher education nationally and internationally.
Click the links below to watch the presentation videos. Videos will open in a new window.
Presentation title:
A 40-year Retrospective on Continuing Education
Total length:
25 minutes
Format:
Video/Quicktime-mp4
Original presentation date:
November 07, 2012
PDP's Community Outreach Group helps Deliver Largest Donation to the Regional Food Bank's BackPack Program
PDP's Community Outreach Group provides an opportunity for PDP staff to voluntarily support our local community through various outreach projects. Recently, this group led a campaign seeking donations for the BackPack Program, run by the Regional Food Bank of Northeastern New York. The BackPack Program provides healthy, easily prepared foods to school children that are issued to them discreetly in school on Friday afternoons so they will have food to eat at home on the weekends. Allison Sarnoff and Jill Finnegan organized the outreach project, originally setting a goal of obtaining enough donated items to fill five bags. By the end of the project, the group had received enough donations to fill 40 bags. Not only did this amount far exceed the original goal, but was also the largest donation to date! PDP employees John Traynor and Allison Sarnoff are pictured delivering the packaged donations to the Times Union offices in Colonie. The combined efforts of PDP staff were highlighted in the Times Union blog, On the Edge.
Mary McCarthy Receives PDP's Distinguished Continuing Professional Education Award
Mary McCarthy from the School of Social Welfare was presented the 2012 Distinguished Continuing Professional Education Award of Excellence by Executive Director Eugene Monaco at the May 18th Rockefeller College Awards Ceremony held at the Federal Court House in Albany.
Given annually by PDP, this award of excellence recognizes exemplary leadership and noteworthy contributions to the field of continuing professional education for the public workforce.
Mary has established a well-deserved reputation for her commitment to excellence in education and training for the public service, and as an educator who has made a difference at the crossroads of government and higher education.
Mary's work first, as the Director of the NYS Social Work Education Consortium, and then as the Co-Principle Investigator for the National Child Welfare Workforce Institute illustrates her commitment to excellence in fostering continuing professional education for the public workforce.
The Social Work Education Consortium was established in 2000 as a unique partnership between the NYS Office of Children and Family Services, the New York State Social Welfare Dean's Association, the social work education community and local social service agencies. The primary goal of the Consortium is the identification and implementation of programs and activities that promote a forward-thinking approach to training and education for child welfare workers.
As the Consortium leader from its beginning, Mary has been instrumental in promoting child welfare-university collaborations that support the education and training of child welfare staff as well as conducting research on policy and practice innovations in the field of workforce recruitment and retention.
As the Co-Principle Investigator for the National Child Welfare Workforce Institute since October 2008, Mary has left her mark on the national level as well. Through her leadership, she has helped build the capacity of the nation's child welfare workforce and improve outcomes for children and families that support the development of skilled child welfare leaders in public child welfare systems and in private agencies.
Mary began her career work in the child welfare education field in 1979 as a project assistant for the Continuing Education Program, which later became the Professional Development Program.
After receiving her MSW from the UAlbany in 1982 she joined the faculty at SSW and went on to obtain her Ph.D. in 2003, awarded with distinction, from Memorial University, in Canada. She has a wide range of publications and is called on regularly to be a conference presenter and is recognized as a national expert in continuing professional education by those in the child welfare field.
Mary's good work has been well acknowledged. In 2010, Mary received the SUNY Chancellor's Award for Excellence in Professional Service and the University at Albany, President's Award for Excellence in Professional Service and she receives another well-deserved recognition for her commendable accomplishments and tireless efforts to connect policy with practice as the 2012 recipient of the Distinguished Continuing Professional Education Award of Excellence.
Torie Seeger elected Secretary of NYSAEYC Board
Torie Seeger, PDP's Program Manager for Licensing and Subsidy Training, was elected as the Recording Secretary to the Board of Directors of the New York State Association for the Education of Young Children (NYSAEYC). This post will begin July 1, 2012 and run through June 30, 2014. Ms. Seeger will also serve on the Executive Board in this same capacity. NYSAEYC is a statewide membership organization whose mission is to promote excellence in early care and education services for NYS children and families through education, advocacy and the support of the profession.
PDP Enables Publishing of eBooks
PDP has worked with the Center for Problem-Oriented Policing (CPOP) since 2000. CPOP is funded by the U.S. Department of Justice. One of its Associate Directors, Dr. Graeme Newman, is a distinguished teaching professor at the School of Criminal Justice, University at Albany. Graduate students there also serve as research assistants to the POP Center. The problem-oriented approach examines the many factors that contribute to crime or disorder problems, and suggests responses aimed at changing the conditions that underlie them.
PDP designed and maintains the CPOP web site, converts its publications to electronic format, and has created interactive courses and crime analysis tools that support the project. Last year PDP fully optimized the CPOP web site for mobile delivery. The latest enhancement to this long-standing partnership is conversion of CPOP's core publications, their problem guides, to eBooks. CPOP's guides summarize knowledge about the causes of and effective responses to specific crime and disorder problems. Until now they have been available in only print, web and PDF versions. PDP set up a process through which the web version of each guide is automatically stripped down to basic code and then uploaded into an Amazon publishing tool that produces a Kindle version and a .mobi version. The Kindle version is distributed by Amazon and the .mobi version is offered for free on the CPOP web site. CPOP is very excited about this new distribution channel for its material and happy to offer another format for the problem-oriented policing community.
Peter Kircher Receives 2011 Executive Director's Award
This year’s recipient of the PDP Executive Director’s Award is Peter Kircher, Training Program Coordinator in PDP’s Department of Temporary Assistance Training. Peter is an incredibly dedicated employee and this award goes to Peter in recognition of his outstanding and continued contributions to furthering PDP's mission and organizational goals.
Peter also received recognition today for 30 years of service to PDP. Countless times over the years, Peter stepped in with little or no notice to deliver trainings when others became unavailable despite having his own overfilled plate of work. Over the last year alone, Peter stepped in eight different times to deliver different programs due to the unavailability of staff.
Most notable is that Peter was outstanding in delivering each of these diverse programs despite having little time to prepare. Peter, a long-time DDI trainer, also managed to squeeze in another delivery of Essentials of Leadership training for PDP staff, and he has delivered many other PDP-DDI training courses over the years.
Peter is an amazingly outstanding coach and mentor to new trainers. He has an exceptional reputation with our OTDA sponsor staff and social service district customers, and he has been an outstanding representative to multiple advisory groups for PDP, most recently the OTDA Joint Application Design (JADS) group. Peter’s subject matter expertise is strong, deep, and yes I believe to be irreplaceable. Peter actively continues to build his knowledge, becoming expert on new technology and content, such as training with iLinc and myWorkspace—which enabled him to lead us through a redesign of the Food Stamp Worker Training Institute this past year.
Peter’s leadership and subject matter expertise also enabled us to expand our TrainingSpace products and iLinc training portfolio over the last couple of years, including three food stamps web-based training courses for New York City, multiple modules for the Temporary Assistance Budgeting and Coding course, and four iLinc courses.
If you know Peter well, then you also know that he never complains about work assignments and is always positive with staff and other colleagues. I can truly attest that over the past 27 years that I’ve known him, I’ve never heard Peter ever say anything negative about others. You’d also know that Peter is not a flashy person and he would prefer to be quietly working hard in the background rather than be in the spotlight. But, you should also know, Peter is one of the most dedicated, loyal, and hard-working employees who can always be counted on to take on any assignment no matter what and without hesitation.
Peter is deeply committed to PDP’s mission and core values and beliefs. He exemplifies this in his work and his strong professionalism. In an organization like ours, with constantly shifting priorities, endless scheduling and staffing dilemmas, and a constantly full plate of work, Peter stands out. It would be very hard for the Department of Temporary Assistance Training and PDP to accomplish the high quality and quantity of programs without Peter’s hand in the mix.
Congratulations on being this year’s recipient of the Executive Director’s Award—it’s well deserved!