Senior Engineer Kelly Blume
on KAI's Professional Development
While professional development is ultimately about an individual’s career path and goals, we approach it as an outward-focused activity. We recognize the benefits of attending conferences, participating in training courses, attending professional society luncheons, and pursuing professional certifications and advanced degrees, but we also recognize the value of helping each other learn by creating opportunities to teach others. How does this philosophy relate to professional development? Here are a few examples:
- We have a mentoring program for new staff and interns. The mentee and the intern benefit from this in the obvious way, but the mentor benefits, too. By becoming a mentor, a person takes on the serious responsibility of developing a budding professional. It behooves the mentor to ensure that his/her technical understanding and management skills are solid so that the mentor can share this knowledge with the mentee or intern.
- Throughout the year, individuals volunteer to give internal lunchtime presentations and training courses. Sometimes these sessions are informal and spontaneous--perhaps given when a KAI engineer is visiting another office--and sometimes they are the structured outcome of companywide decision-making. I have volunteered to give such presentations, and nothing helps a person master a technical subject like preparing to present it to peers. We do not hesitate to ask each other the “tough” questions in this environment!
- Our staff seek out external teaching opportunities. One of the guiding principles of our firm is giving back to the transportation profession and community, and one way we accomplish this is by teaching courses based on research we have conducted. We oftentimes look for opportunities to teach these courses alongside other consultants, because in this way the entire profession benefits and that is ultimately our goal. Another way we accomplish our goal is by teaching non-technical clients about transportation engineering and planning in the course of project work. To be able to explain a technical subject to a variety of audiences and answer their questions, a person needs to be confident in his/her technical knowledge and develop strong communication skills.
Is there a more effective and rewarding way to learn than teaching others? What do you think?
