Online Program

Professional goals are crucial elements in career planning and achievement. Like a compass, concrete goals help us get back on our chosen trajectory when the unavoidable distractions from inside and outside work push us off the path. Goals can help us chart that path, and can even help with leveraging experiences as growth opportunities that might otherwise seem more like “drifting” than purposeful, forward momentum. This course will provide instruction and guidance on setting, documenting, and evaluating progress towards, reasonable short-, medium-, and long-term professional goals. During the course we will discuss identification and formulation of goals; sequencing; the importance and generation of evidence of achievement; and utilization of this evidence to create a plan for next-stage goal setting. This interactive workshop will comprise a few brief lectures, individual work, and small- and large-group discussions.

Pre-conference registration will include submission of at least one specific short term (up to 1 year to complete); medium term (1-3 years to complete); and long term (3-10 years to complete) goal. These professional goals will not be shared unless the participant chooses to, but are essential for some focal point for workshop activities that are relevant for each individual. Participants should bring a laptop and a current version of their CV or resume, and come prepared for active and reflective participation.

Target Audience

The workshop could be especially useful for those contemplating GStat/PStat, promotion, job change, or other professional milestones; however, professional goal setting is an important skill set that can be refined throughout a career, so members at every career stage are welcome.

Outline and Objectives

The overall objective is to learn to set, and evaluate progress towards, reasonable short-, medium-, and long-term professional goals. This will be achieved in this half-day course through the following sequence:

• Review one general and one goal-specific self-analysis (of the instructor) outlining professional strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and threats (SWOT). Begin work on an individualized, general SWOT (which will not be shared unless the participant chooses to).
• Identify at least two sources for long-term professional goals; distinguish between goals, sub goals, and tasks.
• Learn about, and practice with, a decision-making tool that can ensure optimal alignment of work assignments and forward momentum towards goals. Identify opportunities to address weaknesses in the individualized SWOT.
• Explore resources that can be utilized to create- and assess progress towards -professional goals, and identify opportunities that can be utilized to generate evidence of progress and/or achievement.
• Consider evidence of achievement from the CV relative to individually-identified professional goals, and utilize this evidence to create a plan for sequencing or next-stage goal setting.

About the Instructor

Rochelle E. Tractenberg is a cognitive scientist specializing in higher-, graduate-, and post-graduate education; and an interdisciplinary statistician and research methodologist with 20 years of collaborative experience, and accreditation as a Professional Statistician from the American Statistical Association. She chairs the ASA Committee on Professional Ethics, is an ASA Fellow, and is a tenured associate professor at Georgetown University in Washington, DC, with appointments in Neurology; Biostatistics; and Rehabilitation Medicine.

If there's a bit of R code that you copy and paste repeatedly, package it in a function! User-written functions are a great way to increase your effectiveness in many contexts: scripts, R Markdown documents, R notebooks, Shiny apps, and, of course, R packages. Compared with highly repetitive code, functions can increase code quality, while also reducing programmer aggravation. Many principles of design and process work well across all those domains. This workshop should be useful to those new to writing functions, as well as those more experienced, e.g., ready to start writing packages. We will finish off with some coverage of functional programming and how to use it for iteration in R.

Target Audience

Outline and Objectives

About the Instructor