Professional Development of a New Assistant Professor in Counselor Education: A Model for Navigating the 1st Year.

Professional development in academia has multiple components, and new counselor educators are often not given clear directions for navigating these components. A model with both content and process components of successfully navigating the 1st year as an assistant professor is presented. In addition, the value of creating a portfolio is highlighted. ********** As new faculty members, assistant professors often look for ways to evaluate and improve their teaching skills. For many assistant professors, their first faculty position also represents the first time they have participated in all elements of teaching courses. From the perspective of a new counselor educator, this task can be daunting. There are many components to being an effective counselor educator that cannot be learned until class preparation begins and a new faculty member actually encounters the classroom. Additionally, this 1st year as a counselor educator is a time when one does not want to lose skills and, thus, wants to serve the profession by engaging in some counseling outside of the college or university setting. Furthermore, a counselor educator is expected to start producing scholarship on his or her own, without the aid of an adviser or dissertation committee and perhaps without a mentor if the college or university is unaccustomed to providing this type of guidance. As a now 5th-year counselor educator, I provide some of my 1st-year perspectives on learning to balance being an effective counselor educator in the classroom, a scholar, a committee member, and a person who serves her profession. I also recommend putting together a portfolio for both self-evaluation and evaluation by the college or university. Emphasis is placed on and acronyms are used when discussing teaching, because that was the area given the greatest emphasis during the 1st year. The two acronyms are SOD (syllabi, objectives, and course design) and A MAP (accounting for differences in learning styles, the use of various methodologies, attention to student needs, and periodic assessment). FIRST-YEAR PERSPECTIVES ON BEING AN EFFECTIVE COUNSELOR EDUCATOR IN THE CLASSROOM Attention to Content: Laying the SOD According to a study conducted by Magnuson (2002), new assistant professors in counselor education find class preparation to be a time-consuming and challenging task. Participants in Magnuson's study defined planning for classes as including many elements such as creating appropriate tests, learning to give effective feedback, assigning fair grades, and improving syllabi. As a new assistant professor in counselor education, I highlight the preparation of syllabi, course objectives, and course design as they relate to planning for classes in this article. New assistant professors often need to prepare syllabi from scratch. Creating syllabi for the first time can be a lengthy and arduous task. Much thought and research must go into the scheduling of topics, deciding which topics need to be brought into the class, and time constraints. Conducting a smoothflowing class can be difficult, especially for new assistant professors who have not yet had the chance to work on timing, pacing, and holding students' interest for a 3-hour period. In addition, newly created syllabi must often be improved, either during the semester or before the course is taught again in another semester. These adjustments to syllabi are often necessary once unforeseen issues or difficulties arise during the teaching of a course. It is now possible to use the Internet to find sample syllabi, but I found that going to other department members to see what they have used is a good way to forge relationships and to show respect for what they have done in previous semesters. Syllabi can then be amended on the basis of the new ideas or knowledge that a person brings to the position. In addition, creating and meeting objectives in courses through the finding and presenting of relevant and current information can be a trying task. …