Professional Development and Education

Professional Development and Education

Sponsoring Courses at the Chapter Level

Specifics on IRWA courses and IRWA’s Professional Career Path (Generalist and Specialist) are located on other pages and will not be duplicated here.

In general, IRWA offers its courses through Chapter-sponsored class presentations held throughout the United States and Canada. Many IRWA courses are also available online. Current course pricing information is available on the Chapter Leadership page. The relative roles of the Chapter and Headquarters, the role of the Facilitator and other related class scheduling policies and procedures are described on pages 3 and 4 of the Course Sponsorship & Marketing Agreement (CSMA) form, also available on the Chapter Leadership page.  

For additional information, contact the Organizational Learning & Development Manager at IRWA Headquarters.

Continuing Education Credits and Filing Procedures

The complexity of state continuing education requirements and the variance from state to state and agency to agency makes it impractical to cover all the options that might impact state filing. Chapters will need to review their individual state's requirements on an agency-by-agency basis and prepare a list of required documents and know how much it will cost to file in your state. (Not all states charge for continuing education, but it is a growing trend.) Once you have decided to file for continuing education, notify IRWA staff to send you the required documents to support your application for approval. 

IRWA recommends that Chapters review their course offering for the next two years in their Region and determine which courses need to be filed for CE for their service areas. In states with more than one Chapter, we encourage you to cooperate, choose one chapter member as liaison, between the chapters and state agency, who will handle filing for course approval and share expenses to avoid filing duplicate courses and paying duplicate fees. We recommend that you work with your Region vice chair to coordinate those efforts.

In recognition of the additional expense of continuing education, a Chapter may want to consider adding a tuition surcharge to cover its additional fees. IRWA believes that assessing this additional tuition charge is a more equitable and fair way of assigning the expense than amortizing it among all our courses, especially those where CE is not a factor in the enrollment decision.