The UTC Graduate School is pleased to announce that Ashley Raburn will present Doctoral (EdD) research titled, An Examination of Cleveland State Community College’s Employee Professional Development Program: Leveraging Employee Learning and Relationship Building Amidst Significant Institutional Change on 07/10/2026 at 1:30 pm ET in Zoom Meeting ID: https://www.google.com/url?q=https://tennessee.zoom.us/j/82229053051&source=gmail-imap&ust=1783102226000000&usg=AOvVaw2It2tyu5NsqT53NBW9_XKL. Everyone is invited to attend. 

Leadership and Instructional Practice

Chair: Dr. Jessica N. Taylor

Abstract:

Within the last decade, Cleveland State Community College has gone through many changes, including transitioning between five different administrations from 2021 to 2025. With this change in administration, there have been many different philosophies of how professional development should be handled at the college. The priority of professional development has shifted between very high and very low, and the ownership of active initiatives was unclear. Recently, college administrators have implemented a program intended to allow PD at the college to have more structure and visibility within the employee community. Literature in both Higher education and other industries discusses the importance of professional development (Cruz, 2018; Danvila-del-Valle et al., 2019; Maier, 2022). It is imperative that the processes related to adult learning are integrated into any workplace in order to get the most out of the workforce (Brieger et al., 2020; Bui et al., 2021; De Matas & Keegan, 2020; Lee et al., 2022). While higher education is used to working with student learning, it is important to look toward other industries for training processes (Donovan et al., 2023; Reynolds & Dolasinski, 2019). Throughout this research, qualitative and quantitative data were used to determine the effectiveness of the professional development program at Cleveland State. The data indicate that the program is mostly meeting the stated outcomes. Employees are learning, developing, and maintaining positive relationships throughout the course of their work. The evaluation results suggest that while the program is mostly effective, there are areas in which college administrators can focus to continue to improve the program.