# Ideas for professional development

**URL:** <https://boards.straightdope.com/t/ideas-for-professional-development/928266>\
**Category:** In My Humble Opinion\
**Created:** [December 17, 2020, 4:07pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/ideas-for-professional-development/928266 "2020-12-17T16:07:00Z")\
**Posts on this page:** 2\
**Page:** 1

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**Author:** ![Sigene](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/df788c/32.png) [@Sigene](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Sigene)\
**Post date:** [December 17, 2020, 4:07pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/ideas-for-professional-development/928266/1 "2020-12-17T16:07:00Z")

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I work in academia, primarily helping people with grants; and I work with Tech transfer for entrepreneurs and small businesses trying to make a go of it.

I have to spend money (as much as $5k) on professional development. I won’t rant about why this is a waste of money, but lets just accept the fact that I have to do this.

Any suggestions? I don’t want to do a lot of ‘homework’.

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**Author:** ![IvoryTowerDenizen](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/ivorytowerdenizen/32/17937_2.png) [@IvoryTowerDenizen](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/IvoryTowerDenizen)\
**Post date:** [December 17, 2020, 4:13pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/ideas-for-professional-development/928266/2 "2020-12-17T16:13:10Z")

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Are you looking for something to do in house, or somewhere to send folks for PD?

NORDP ([NORDP.org](http://NORDP.org)) is a great professional society for research development and tech transfer folks. I’ve been to their conferences and they are high quality. They offer short courses as well.