Browsing Posts of Author »Tyra Hilliard, PhD, JD, CMP

Degree vs. certification: What’s best?

May 21st, 2018 @ Tyra Hilliard, PhD, JD, CMP

“Should I get a master’s degree or a certification?” It’s a question I’ve been asked a lot over the years. And my answer is usually an ironic, “Yes.” Asking, “Should I get a master’s degree or a certification?” is like asking, “Should I have an apple or should I have turkey and dressing with giblet gravy?”

diploma A certification and a degree are not equivalent. Believe me, I know. I have both. I’ve taught in both kinds of programs. Thus, it makes me irrationally crazy when I see a certification described as “the MBA of” any field. It’s not the MBA of a field. An MBA is an MBA (did I mention I’m a professor in a business school?). But I digress.

A certification—be it a CMP, CMM or one of the many other valuable options available—is a great professional development tool when you want to fine-tune skills or knowledge within a fairly well-defined framework. The content is consistent and it can usually be achieved within a short period of time. While sometimes including strategic elements, it tends to be focused on more discrete topics out of necessity due to the timeframe. It’s recognized within an industry or professional segment but may or may not be known outside the industry.

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A degree, on the other hand, is an expedition into a body of knowledge. The focus of most advanced degrees is strategic and I would venture to say that no two degrees are alike. Ten students can take exactly the same classes in the same master’s degree program at exactly the same time and they will all come out with something different because you get a certain freedom to customize, to integrate your professional experience into the curriculum, to poke and prod at the materials and challenge the professors and theories over an extended period of time based on your unique experiences until you come out with a common base of knowledge layered with unique experiences and projects that make a master’s degree a one-of-a-kind experience.

The beauty is, you don’t have to choose a certification or a degree. You can do both. Or either. Or several of either or both. That’s the beauty of educational credentials. There’s no one-size-fits-all, but there’s probably a credential for everyone. When people ask me which they should get, I ask them these questions:

How much time do you have to devote to it? In the short-term? In the long-term?
Why do you want a credential? Personal gratification? Do you think it will help you get a promotion? A raise? A new job?
What kind of credentials do others who have the promotion/title/job you want have?
Do you think you’ll go on for additional credentials in the future?

Answering these questions can help guide a person to what may be their first (or only) credential or may lead them to another path altogether. The credential alone, however, doesn’t make the person a better meeting planner or salesperson or whatever. Again, this is not to disparage certifications or degrees. Clearly, I’m a believer. My point is that you can get the credentials, but you have to apply the learning and continue learning for it to truly help you professionally. Both certifications and degrees are based on a body of knowledge. You can master the body of knowledge, great or small. But what you do with it from there is what makes you a professional…or just a person with a credential.

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And what if you are thinking, “But I don’t even want a credential?” In my mind, that’s okay, too, as long as you never stop learning. Credentials aren’t for everyone. And there are plenty of non-credentialed learning opportunities out there. There’s nothing to say that a credentialed person is smarter or more knowledgeable than one without. For example, my mother finished high school when she was in her 30s with a GED. My father earned a master’s degree. With absolutely no offense to my dear father, matching wits with my mother was a far more formidable experience for me, even after I earned four degrees and a certification. Mom used to say, “There are common sense smarts and there are book smarts.” Then she’d give me a look that told me that she put my father and I in that latter (and from her perspective, inferior) category.

Some of us just do better with “book learning” than others. It happens to be something I enjoy very much, wrapping my arms around a body of knowledge, learning from experts, feeling I’ve mastered it and getting some kind of credential—whether a certification or a degree—for it. It’s almost a game for me, like running an obstacle course and capturing the flag at the end. But I know others in and outside our industry who struggle mightily with the kind of learning I do for fun. My mom and dad were polar opposites. My brother and I are, too. College was not his thing, but not because he’s not smart—he’s very smart. There is no machine he can’t figure out, including cars. He builds houses and says he thinks in three-dimensional blue prints, which blows my mind. In education, we call this “differently smart.” And we haven’t yet figured out the andragogy (methods and principles used in adult education) of how to offer the same credentials in ways that reach those who are differently smart. So, if you are differently smart, keep learning your own way until we catch up to you. We’re trying!

Whether you’re seeking a degree or a professional certification, there are numerous scholarship programs available to help fund your growth.

The post Degree vs. certification: What’s best? appeared first on Plan Your Meetings @ Meeting Professionals International.

Category : Blog and Industry News

Food allergies and the ADA

October 25th, 2017 @ Tyra Hilliard, PhD, JD, CMP

As a mom, I wouldn’t dream of bringing peanut-laden snacks for my sons after being told there was a child in the class with a serious peanut allergy. Our meetings should be likewise considerate of people with food allergies—because it’s the right thing to do. If that’s not reason enough, then because of the growing risk of liability for failing to do so.

Food Allergy Research & Education (FARE) estimates that 15 million Americans have food allergies; nine million of those are adults. Seventeen million Europeans have food allergies. These figures don’t even include people with other dietary restrictions (e.g., low-sodium, low-cholesterol) or people following specific diets or styles of eating (e.g., Paleo, vegetarian).

Thrive! Meetings & Events, which has a special expertise in managing food allergies at meetings and events, estimates that 38% of meeting attendees worldwide have food allergies or other dietary restrictions. FARE suggests that close to half of fatal food allergy reactions are triggered by food consumed outside the home, which could easily include meetings or eating while traveling. It’s simply not possible for meeting planners to ignore the problem and yet planners often ask me, “Do I have to provide special meals for <insert dietary restriction>?” The ethical answer is, “Of course!” The legal answer, as is typical: “It depends.”

When the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) came out in 1990, it was intended to be an anti-discrimination law that afforded persons with disabilities equal opportunities in employment, government and public accommodations. For clarity, a person with a disability is defined as someone with “a physical or mental impairment that substantially limits one or more major life activities of such individual.”

Yet for years, courts construed the ADA narrowly, and refused to grant disability status to those with severe food allergies. Cue sigh of relief from meeting planners, hotels and restaurants—and cry of frustration from those with serious food allergies.

But here’s the thing—times (and the law), they are a-changin’.

Like many new laws, over time it became apparent that the ADA was not being applied quite like it was intended. Indeed, the law was often being used as a sword rather than a shield—it was being used to exclude people from coverage rather than to include them. To fix this, the Americans with Disabilities Act was amended in 2008.

Gluten free tears The Americans with Disabilities Act as Amended (ADAAA) made many clarifications, including what constitute “major life activities” (including eating and breathing). The amendment was made in an effort to make the ADA more inclusive and is broader in scope than the original.

The gravity of these changes was made imminently clear in 2013 with the case United States Department of Justice v. Lesley University, in which a group of students with food allergies brought a complaint that the university required them to purchase a meal plan but refused to provide food options that accommodated their special needs. The U.S. Department of Justice agreed with the students and this became the first major case to apply the ADAAA to food allergies.

There will likely be more complaints and lawsuits to come, and the meeting and hospitality industries seem likely targets.

Be prepared.

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