Professional Development Institute by Brian Gallagher

SIU Residence Life has some great things going on, and we want to showcase some of our proud moments on our blog. We also hope people considering working in RA, graduate assistant, or full-time positions with our department will take a minute to learn more about the things we are doing. More information about our department, including position descriptions, application information, and graduate and full-time staff profiles can be found on our recruitment website. Today's blog post was written by Brian Gallagher, Hall Director in Schneider Hall, about his experience attending the 2013 Professional Development Institute (PDI) presented by the Great Lakes Association of College and University Housing Officers (GLACUHO).

Over the weekend of February 8-10 I was fortunate to be selected to be a member of the GLACUHO PDI class of 2013. PDI stands for Professional Development Institute and is run by the Programming and Development committee of the Great Lakes Association of College and University Housing Officers. This year was the 5th annual PDI.

PDI occurs each spring and was sponsored by Southwest Contract – so it was essentially free for me to attend. Thanks to Southwest Contract!

My experience at PDI actually started in November when I had a conversation with my supervisor about attending. He had previously attended and said it was a great idea for me to apply. The application process was a series of reflective essay questions and a résumé. The questions asked me what challenges I thought faced professionals when they hit the 3-5 year mark, what I thought I would be doing in 5-10 years, and then a series of questions about the five chosen topic areas that we would be learning about: Social Justice, Supervision, Facilities, Mental Health, and Advanced Budgeting.

Once accepted to PDI, we received some "homework" to prepare us for our sessions. I read a few articles, I was able to interview our Director of Housing about social justice and the budget, and filled out a leadership style assessment. I was also able to take some time to mentally prepare myself for PDI. Since I didn’t know what to expect at PDI, it was tough to prepare!

PDI itself was a whirlwind of presentation sessions, reflective personal thinking time, and 1:1 time with a mentor. I was challenged to think about Housing, who I am as a leader, and how we treat those around us. I met a great group of 18 other housing professionals with 3-5 years of experience. We had five excellent faculty members who were all senior housing officers at a variety of small and large institutions.

Without going into a ton of detail about each thing I learned or thought about it is hard to write a blog like this. However, as I think about myself as a professional, I learned a lot about telling my story and standing strong in saying “I have valuable experiences that I can share in a meaningful way.” I think so often we, as professionals, turn to those in the room who have been in the field longer than us or who have terminal degrees. When, in fact, we all have valuable experiences to bring to the table. I’m clearly still processing my time at PDI. I am very thankful to the housing professionals here at SIU for both enabling me to go and for covering my duties while I was gone. I value this team and I value how each of us can be encouraged to learn and develop both in our daily duties and at conference opportunities such as PDI.