This July I will be turning in my dossier to try to move up the ladder in the self-promotion system for PSO faculty. This can be a frustrating process as you begin to organize, restructure, and compile information to a format that is desired by the review committees. Without clear guidance for a particular format often times, and I won’t lie….. Like I did, we tend to copy the format of someone who recently passed the process the year before. But what is important is that you make clear the reason for the areas of programming you chose, your role/ involvement in what was done to address the issue, and how that impacted some kind of change. So, while it is fresh on my mind I wanted to give you a few pointers on what you can do now that will help you when your time comes to apply.
Tip #1: One of the easiest things you can do now that will save you time is providing a short description when posting events/presentations/ conferences into GA Counts. For example, I’ve never entered anything into the notes section of the entry, but if you put something like the examples below, it will save you lots of time on final formatting. And always refer to yourself as the “Candidate”. Go ahead and spell out acronyms: GACAA= Georgia Association of Agriculture Agents
Ex.1 2017 Northeast 4-H Forestry Judging Competition
Notes Entry: “The Candidate helped coordinate the setup of the 4-H District Forestry Field Day Competition and ran the tree identification station”
Ex. 2 2018 Georgia Association of Agriculture Agents
Notes Entry: “The Candidate attended the Georgia Association of Agriculture Agents annual conference in Dublin, Georgia. The Candidate presented and oral presentation on Pruning Techniques in wine grapes and received 3rd place in poster presentation in Conservation Tillage.”
Tip #2: Getting promoted to a Public Service Associate or Senior Public Service Associate always requires either regional or national work. So what does that mean? That means you need to have impactful programming at those levels and/or significant collaborations (meaning both parties benefited). Now, I know everyone got the Logic Model training where you actually work backwards when you identify need. You can apply that same theory here. Since you already know these are the boxes that the committee is looking to check, go ahead and plan to meet those goals by setting a timeline. That way when it comes time to write the achievements, you know exactly what the committee is looking for and are not scrambling to understand how to make a successful story out of base programming you did.
Tip #3: Try to get connected with a specialist! I cannot emphasize this enough. Through my work in viticulture I have been able to check all of the boxes I needed for this promotion (though I have to write it up correctly) such as regional research, publication review, co-author, national presentations, media coverage, etc. However, my other plan of work fields are not as strong. I have some significant accomplishments in each but my collaborations with specialist have allowed me to accomplish those goals I set four years ago. Every specialist, whether they are conducting research or not, can assist you in contributing to scholarly works and presentations.
Tip #4: To save some time, IF you are disciplined enough, go ahead and at the conclusion of each year, input your Faculty Activity Report into the appropriate format for your Curriculum Vita. No matter what anyone tells you, you’ll have to redo all the formatting regardless. So it is best to set the time aside each January and go ahead and create that nicely organized list in the dossier format. This includes conferences, events, programming, contacts, media numbers produced, etc.
I hope this gives you a little help and direction in making this process easier. We have all done good work, you just have to be able to show its significance and document it appropriately. I’m glad to help anyone that wants it, or find someone in your district that has recently gone up and get some additional advice.
