Faculty Resources--PGUs

Personal Growth Units
Article 12.5 of the Moraine Valley Faculty Association Agreement establishes a process that allows full-time faculty members to earn credit for approved professional growth activities. PGU credits may be used to meet promotion criteria and to document professional growth.

• PGU Application Form (new)
• PGU Final Report Form (new)
• PGU Application Flowchart (new)
• General PGU Guidelines
• Types of PGU Activities
• PGU Conversion Table

General PGU Guidelines

1. Full-time faculty members have the opportunity to earn PGU credits for professional development activities in several categories. Begin by determining the category that describes your activity.

2. To apply for PGU credit, complete the PGU application form and submit it to the Center for Teaching and Learning (CTL) in Room L244. There are statements and information supporting the application that must be attached. If these are missing, the application will be returned and you will still be responsible for submitting all paperwork in prior to the start date of the activity.

3. For an activity to be eligible for PGU credit, it must have PRIOR approval from the Faculty Development Committee (FDC) and the dean of Academic and Learning Technologies. This requirement is contractual and cannot be waived. Therefore, your PGU application must be received by the FDC in time for review prior to the activity. The FDC meets the first and third Tuesday of each month to review PGU and other applications. Make sure your application gets to the committee before a regularly scheduled meeting. The meeting dates for the FDC may be found on the CTL calendar. (NOTE: applications made during the summer are reviewed on an as needed basis.)

4. At the Faculty Development Committee meeting, the director will present your PGU request for review and recommendation. 

   Requests receiving positive FDC recommendations are submitted to the dean of Academic and Learning Technologies for review and approval. Faculty members are notified in writing of the status of their PGU request.

5. When the PGU activity has been completed, the PGU Final Report Form must be completed and submitted to the Faculty Development Committee, along with the original PGU application, no later than six (6) months from the completion of the PGU activity. This is a contractual obligation, and PGU credit cannot be awarded without this report. 

Types of PGU Activities
Professional growth units (PGUs) may be awarded for activities in the following categories: 

• Special voluntary in-service staff development activities sponsored by Moraine Valley Community College for which the senior vice president Academic Affairs has approved and established PGU credit. (Typically 16 contact hours equal one PGU).

• Summer work experience to upgrade skills in a field directly related to instructional assignment (i.e., Legal Assistant, Broker, etc.). For such activities, one (1) PGU can be awarded for each 100 hours of work experience, to a maximum of three (3) PGU credits per summer. Unless unusual circumstances warrant such approval, PGU credit for summer employment would be approved only every other summer. 

• Noncredit courses or seminars directly applicable to instructional assignment. (Typically 16 class contact hours equal one PGU). Credit will be given only once for courses/seminars/workshops that contain essentially the same information content (e.g., Introduction to Word Perfect). 

• Special projects, other than college-supported research and development projects, which are beyond the scope of regular duties (i.e., special research projects, authoring significant works, development of unusually time-consuming instructional aids, presentation at seminars or workshops for which significant preparation was required, etc.) PGU value to be tentatively assessed when the proposal is made and reviewed at the half-way mark. One to three PGUs may be allowed depending upon the complexity of the activity and its time requirements. 

PGU Conversion Table
PGU credits are based on the standard 16-week semester, where 16 classroom hours equal one credit hour. Therefore 16 contact hours—hours spent in a professional development activity—earn one PGU.

To calculate the number of PGUs that will be earned by a certain activity, divide the number of contact hours (or estimate of contact hours) by 16.

Example: You attend a one day seminar and spend a total of seven hours listening to presentations and participating in workshops. The PGU's that you would earn for this activity would be 7 divided by 16, or 0.4375. The maximum number of PGUs that you can earn for each request is 3.

Here's a table with some typical contact hour totals converted to PGU credits:

NOTE: For those of you who prefer not to divide, you may multiply the total contact hours by 1/16 or 0.0625. For example, 7 contact hours times 0.0625 equals 0.4375 PGU's.