Original Date: 4/1/1990 * Last Revision Effective: 3/3/2025
Policy Contact: Vice President, Human Resources
Policy
Commitment
Bellevue College is committed to a culture that values and supports personal growth and professional development of every employee (faculty, exempt and classified), and recognizes that life-long learning and continuous improvement are integral to individual and organizational success. The college promotes integrative learning, which includes but is not limited to coaching, on-the-job mentoring, experiential learning, and classroom instruction. The college environment encourages individual responsibility in the pursuit of these objectives while recognizing the barriers experienced by people from marginalized backgrounds. This policy aims not only to strengthen growth and professional development, but to address and remove systemic barriers for access to development opportunities. The college is committed to ensuring that all employees, particularly those from marginalized communities, have equal opportunity for professional development.
Development and Training Goals and Objectives
Training and employee development activities may be identified by the employee or their immediate supervisor to:
- Enhance skills to improve performance
- Increase job-related knowledge, skills and abilities that position the employee for future advancement
- Build cultural competence to advance the college as an anti-racist organization
- Support campus engagement and community building among college employees.
Employees and supervisors are expected to be active participants in the process of identifying opportunities for training and development and designing a plan to ensure they have the competencies necessary to perform their job and effectively contribute to the organizational mission, goals, and objectives. Internal training offerings shall be designated as mandatory or discretionary. Supervisors may adopt flexible strategies to facilitate participation in discretionary development opportunities which require supervisory permission.
Bellevue College provides financial support as resources allow or defined by collective bargaining agreements for development opportunities such as seminars, courses, workshops, or conferences designed to increase knowledge, skills, and abilities in job-related competency areas.
Relevant Laws and Other Resources
- WFSE Higher Education Collective Bargaining Agreement
- WPEA Higher Education Collective Bargaining Agreement
- 2024-2026 Collective Bargaining Agreement Board of Trustees of Bellevue College and Bellevue College Association of Higher Education
Revision History
Original 4/1/1990
Revisions 1/1/2003; 5/10/2005; 3/18/2008; 5/21/2009; 6/1/2010; 9/11/2012; 4/21/2015; 6/27/2023; 3/3/2025
Approved By
Board of Trustees
Last Updated March 12, 2025