GO! PROFESSIONAL ADVANCEMENT: Helping NSBE Professionals Succeed & Soar!!
NSBE has a unique opportunity to help its Professional members soar in their careers and the experience of work. By supporting Professional members having a positive view of their abilities, and helping them access NSBE’s network of accomplished Black Engineering/STEM mentors, these members can experience their career journey as a unique opportunity to continue to achieve high performance, develop and tackle meaningful career goals, and positively impact society especially by “giving back” to the NSBE community.
Career development researchers study the paths professionals take toward improved career trajectory, professional growth and overall job satisfaction. Most acknowledge the importance of two goals - cultivating a positive emotional relationship with one’s work, and developing personally meaningful professional ambitions. In particular, Albert Bandura’s Social Cognitive Theory is helpful for re-imagining ways to improve NSBE’s professional members’ experiences. Bandura asserts that most individuals’ motives and behaviors are based on three categories of socially influencing experiences. Individuals are influenced by: • Their Self-ecacy , or what they believe they can achieve; • What they see other people achieve and the actions they take (i.e. mentors and peers). • Factors around them that they cannot control (i.e. for African Americans this conjures realities like implicit bias, structural racism and other systemic disadvantages). By NSBE re-imagining its professional and career development experiences, and re-deploying its previously event- centered activities, it can more deftly meet professional members’ needs. Moreover, the Professionals strategic direction (proposed by SPTF Professionals workgroup) asserts that by better understanding these members’ unique needs and better targeting supports at key defining stages (i.e. early, mid and late career) and critical turns (i.e. key moments of decision), NSBE can add new, compelling value to its Professional members. Focusing on the FIRST FIVE: Supporting Young Technical Professionals Typically, NSBE key member activities can be very event-focused. This emphasis can leave more systematic, evidence-informed programming in the background. However, select Pre-Collegiate (READY!) and Collegiate (SET!) activities benefit from evidence-informed, meaningful programming. Given these precedents, the Professional SPTF workgroup felt it important for NSBE Professionals to engage NSBE (i.e. including leadership, management, and sta) to establish robust out-of-conference, repeatable event activities and programming. Currently, NSBE Professionals operate with a subtle Breadth & Depth tension. Practically, its ambitions for quality and fidelity do not correspond with its volunteer and operational capacity. However, if right-sized and re-aligned, NSBE sta could focus its energies and developing meaningful programming. For example, it could re-establish the TORCH Centers. A SMALL WIN: Programs & Activities Evaluation. To start making progress, the Workgroup suggests taking NSBE’s website-listed programs list of 12-13 programs ground an evaluation of the eectiveness of NSBE current programming to professional members. With counsel and support from NSBE’s World Headquarters, the National Programs Chair’s team would determine which programs are eective and support NSBE’s 10k Goal by 2025. On the other hand, if reviewed program activities do not support NSBE’s 10k Goal by 2025, these activities would be archived. Overtime, a broader, chapter-wide inventory of worthwhile programs would be conducted at the chapter level.
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