Professional Development Plan

Professional development is the development of new or existing skills, knowledge and aptitudes to improve one’s marketablilty, portability, performance and self worth (McKellar, 1996). This paper outlines my top three professional goals, resources required for achieving these goals, and a resource constrained schedule. The strategic formulation of my goals, required resources and schedule coalesce to form my Professional Development Plan (PDP). The first goal is a short term goal required for financing the second goal which is my medium term goal. The final goal is a long term goal that is loosely coupled with my second goal.

Goal 1: Develop and Launch an Integrated Organic Agricultural Project in One Year

This section provides an outline of my goal, my motivation for wanting to achieve the goal and an explanation of how it relates to my personal values of entrepreneurship and a customer-driven orientation. Also, provided is a brief description of the steps I intend to take to achive my goal. Moreover, I submit an explanation of how these steps utlilizes my personal strengths of self-motivation and creativeness; and exposes my weakness of sometimes trusting people too much.

Goal 1 Narrative

I have a passion for launching new business ventures. This project is supposed to be the cash cow for my other projects. I propose the following steps to accomplish my goal; a) deploy the physical infrastructure; b) test all sensors; and c) commission the fully integrated system. My main motivation for this project is to satisfy my personal values of entrepreneurship and a customer-driven orientation. These values were developed over a 30 year career than span stints in sales and marketing, civil engineering, agricultural devel...

... middle of paper ...

... York: Free Press.

Farming Simulator 2013 - Demo. (n.d.).Farming Simulator. Retrieved April 6, 2014, from http://www.farming-simulator.com/demo.php?lang=en

Liebman, M., & Davis, A. S. (2000). Integration of soil, crop and weed management in low-external-input farming systems. WEED RESEARCH-OXFORD-, 40(1), 27-48. doi: 10.1046/j.1365-3180.2000.00164.x

McKellar, N. A. (1996). Comprehensive professional development plan for a college of education. Innovative Higher Education, 20(3), 201-210. doi: 10.1007/BF01190591

Smith, J. (2013, June 7). The Best And Worst Master's Degrees For Jobs Right Now. Forbes. Retrieved April 6, 2014, from http://www.forbes.com/sites/jacquelynsmith/2013/06/07/the-best-and-worst-masters-degrees-for-jobs-right-now/

Thinkers50. (n.d.). Thinkers 50 RSS. Retrieved April 6, 2014, from http://www.thinkers50.com/biographies/clayton-christensen/