Show Notes
URMIA Strategic Plan
URMIA website
URMIA Education Plan [Member Login Required]
Guest
Gary W. Langsdale, ARM, DRM, Education Manager at URMIA
Guest Host
Craig McAllister, CPCU, ARM, AIC, AIS, Executive Director, Risk Management at University of Miami
Transcript
Craig: Hello and welcome to the URMIA matters podcast. Today's topic is the education plan. I'm Craig McAllister, executive director of risk management for the University of Miami and a board member for the university risk management insurance association. With me today is Gary Langsdale. Hi Gary.
Gary: Good morning, Craig. My background is that I am the URMIA education manager. Having recently retired after 16 years at the Pennsylvania State University and 43 years overall in risk management.
Craig: So with that, you've, you've been educated. You've been an educator. We've been providing continuing education now as the after your, you know, I guess it's your second career, we could call it a third career as the case may be. So if you could explain what exactly is the URMIA education plan and how was it developed?
Gary: Well, thanks Craig. The education plan has been around for a long while. It was originally developed, I believe. Way back when Glenn Klinksiek occupied the position of education manager after he retired from the University of Chicago and it was his attempt to put some order to how does URMIA provide professional development opportunities for its members?
And over time it was mostly an internal document that was just used by the staff to think of what they wanted to ask people to present about and what topics we had in the hopper. Over time it got linked with the core competencies document when Christine Eick and her team put together the core competencies and to the education plan then became sort of linked, but remained kind of in the background.
But there was a more intentional effort. To ask a potential speakers to focus on some of the core competencies. What we've done with this more current version is we've taken that and made it into a document that we want to share with our members so that they can see what presentations have been made that they might use to improve their professional development and so that members can look at what are the topics that have been suggested that we'd like to hear about, or that we haven't heard much about recently that would be helpful to some of our members. So that's the education plan is really a document designed to keep the URMIA staff focused and to provide an opportunity for our members to think about what they can plan to do to improve their professional development.
Craig: So the education plan has both upcoming sessions and documents, but also has historical recordings and, and prior presentations, can you speak a bit about the, I guess I would say the archives?
Gary: what we've done is we've gone back for the last three years and put into it's a, it's a very large spreadsheet and it lists in individual cells, all of the professional development presentations that we've had that have tied to one or another of our core competencies and what we call the sub competencies.
So for example, core competency number one is in risk management technical skills, and there are a number of core competencies that you would expect, risk identification, risk analysis, control, risk financing, that sort of thing, claims management and. We've put the presentations within the last three years into these buckets based on which skill they most identified with. There are a lot of presentations that touched on more than one, but we've, put them into at least one block over the last three years so that people can see graphically what has been presented about a particular - I'll just take the first one risk identification -in ‘21, we've had two presentations about risk identification in 20. There was one in ‘19. There were several. And so you can see what, what presentations have been made about that. And the, the really neat feature about this spreadsheet is that now we are linking this spreadsheet to the presentation materials in the URMIA library so there was, one that was, your institution as additional insured, working with Greek life. And so that actually has a presentation that's coming at the, at the annual conference this fall, once the, it takes place, the PowerPoint from that presentation will be linked. So you can just click on the cell in this spreadsheet and it will take you to the presentation materials.
And that's a real advantage. So that in one place. Our members can see, oh, there was a presentation in 2021 about working with Greek life and additional insureds. Let me see that. And, and the link will take you to the, the presentation materials. We've done that for all of the presentations for 21,20 and 19, which is about as far back as we have really good easy to use records which made it easy for me to put into a spreadsheet. Um, And, and that gives us a good cycle of what's been presented lately. So that's, that's the archives. We've also color coded it so that you can see which presentations were either at the beginner level or the intermediate or the advanced level so that you can, you can tell what, what level of materials were presented. An additional feature. So that's,, in the spreadsheet, we have 49 different. Sub-competencies so 49 rows of uh, presentation, 49 different sub-competencies. And so there are 49 rows of material and we, we have up to four different sessions based on the topic per year, so that you can see 12 different sessions over the last three years on a particular sub competency. Also in the, another feature going forward is that we've also had a task force that helped us to put this version of the education plan together and it was a great work by a lot of people. But the task force also brainstormed on future ideas. There are some of the core competencies we haven't had a lot of materials lately about a lot of presentations about out of the 49. So we're asking people - here are some suggestions for future presentations.
If someone's casting about, for an idea, or has a vague idea of what they might like to present at a future URMIA presentation. We have some suggestions for them. Now, these are not the only suggestions. This is not the only thing that we'll take topics about by any stretch of the imagination, it is just a place where members can see ideas that they, that they might use or say to themselves: “Gee, I could present about that. I know a little something about it.”
Craig: So really having our members fill in those areas that need more um, more information, more presentations. That's great. Um, Gary you've, we've referenced the core competency document several times. Can you take a minute to, to provide more details on that?
Gary: The core competencies document is a compendium of the types of skills needed by a higher ed risk manager. It came from a work that was done - I'm going to say five years ago now - to put together in one place, a document that people could use to think about their professional development and that bosses could use supervisors of risk managers could you use, it was, this was copyrighted in 2017. So that tells you how long it's been around. So, so it was put together so that if you were a risk manager who wanted to expand your professional development, you could look at this document, which is segmented by the four core competencies, the four main core competencies and think about what areas you need more in or you'd like to learn more about, even if it's not within your area of responsibility, for example if you want to learn more about what your compliance office is doing or how to work better with your student affairs organization for student org programming, risks, that sort of thing.
Each of those are laid out. In this higher ed core competencies document and it gives people an idea of, of where they need to go next. It also can be used by say the chief financial officer or whomever to whom the risk manager reports to cooperatively work with their risk manager on a development plan or when they are hiring someone new to think about what are these candidates and what are their skills that they've demonstrated on their resume? How will that match with what I ought to be looking for in a higher education risk manager? The four core competency, general areas are risk management, technical skills, strategic management. Inclusive leadership, which includes things like self-awareness self-management relationship management beyond inclusion and acceptance. And then the fourth one is organizational engagement, which is how do I, as a risk manager in my office interface with everybody else in the university and risk management, as we know is one of those disciplines where it is university wide, the risks are everywhere. And it is an important skill for risk managers to be able to relate to and interact with all of the different operations around the university.
Craig: So it's really takes is the identification of the skills needed to be a practitioner of higher education, risk management. Linking that to the materials that we have, that support that identification, right? I guess it's, you know, how to, how to treat that. And then ultimately a way for us to identify what sessions, what other materials we need going forward.
Gary: And we're hoping that this plan as it's used, as, as it rolls out will be useful to our members for them to identify items. It's a good place to just look back and say, okay, I'm looking for something on a particular topic. I'm looking for something about youth protection or international travel risks or capital projects or governance. And see what kind of presentations we've had, to link to those in the future, or to even get an idea for a new session that they might like to present on because their institution has a different twist on, on a topic or another.
Craig: well, thank you. Are there other ways that URMIA will use the education plan in the future?
Gary: Yes, we hope to continue to use this document. Number one, we're going to continue to add to the suggestions list. We're going to add to the list of presentations that have been made. And we will use this, for example, with our affiliate members, to encourage them, to partner with institutions, to develop new programming or ideas for conference sessions or webinars or community conversations that they've got some expertise in and would like to present to our members, this kind of gives them a roadmap too where they can, they can take a look at this.
And again, I want to emphasize that this is not the only list of suggested topics that we would accept, we want to encourage all of our members, both the affiliates and the institutional members to think more broadly about risk management and to present new topics and new ideas. This list of future topics is just the brainstorming of six people that came up with this, but there are many other topics as well, but at least this gives the affiliates and the institutional members something to start with and say, oh we haven't had much on, OSIP lately. Maybe, maybe, you know, my, my organization can talk about what makes a good, successful OSIP or CSIP
Craig: and with all the content that's out there, what if a member doesn't find what they're looking for? Is there a way that they can suggest presentation topics? They may not be interested in presenting themselves, but with URMIA accept their suggestions.
Gary: sure. Absolutely. We're always looking for good ideas. From whatever the source and we would be happy to hear they can uh, email to Lou “Ask Lou our resource manager or to send me an email. To education@urmia.org or just urmia@urmia.org with a suggestion. And, uh, we're, we would be happy to follow up on that and take them up on that idea to look for a presentation. And you're right. They don't have to be the Expert. They don't, some people are not confident in their skills, even though they've probably got more knowledge than they think. But we would be happy to take their suggestions. And if they're not willing to present on something, we'll find somebody who can present on, on a good time.
Craig: I wouldn't say that this is always a great opportunity for our members to increase their own professional development and to take that opportunity to expand and give a presentation, working with, maybe somebody who's more experienced on it. So as we look this as the education plan, part of our overall professional development program, just another good idea for them.
Gary: Absolutely. We, you know, I've found that one of the best ways you learn about a topic is by doing a little research in preparation for making a presentation. Everyone is self-conscious and wants to do a good job and they will find out even if they think they know the topic in getting ready for a presentation, they're going to learn something about it too.
And that's always helpful.
Craig: Well, thank you, Gary. This has been a great overview of the education plan and how our members can utilize it and help with their professional growth. So thank you.
Gary: Okay, one other thing I will say, where can you find this? The education plan , is on the URMIA website under the professional development page is, is where people can find it.
Craig: Thanks, Gary. Well, thank you everyone. This again has been another uh, podcast or the URMIA matters and that's a wrap.
