By Steven Jong | Chair, STC Certification Committee
Since STC announced certification at the Summit in May, the momentum has built. A board-level Certification Committee has been charged to implement the plan. The original proposal has been honed into an operational business plan. The six areas of practice have been clarified and subjected to additional validation. (Later this year, an academic group will perform a formal validation.) The STC staff has analyzed the fee schedule, including possible member discounts, initial pricing, and package deals, and will soon engage a consultant to review the plan and offer further refinements.
To help people stay informed of progress and offer comments on the program, the Certification Committee is one of the first groups using the STC Community website. In addition, committee members have reached out to inform members and solicit comments from practitioners, on the STC Notebook blog, on the TECHWR-L list, and at chapter meetings (New York Metro in June, Carolina in August, and Boston later this year).
The next major task is to translate the areas of practice into an assessment protocol. How do we determine whether an applicant meets our criteria in each area of practice? How can we accommodate applicants whose work may be confidential or proprietary? From the answers will come an assessment methodology that can be piloted, optimized, taught to evaluators, and ultimately put into action.
For more information or to volunteer, contact Steven Jong, chair of the Certification Committee, at stevefjong@comcast.net.
