Continuing professional development (“CPD”) is an important part of being a professional. It helps ensure applied biology professionals maintain their competence and stay up to date.
Program Overview
The Continuing Professional Development (CPD) Program is a professional development tool for College registrants to maintain and enhance their professional competencies, improve as a professional, and enhance their professional practice. The CPD Program aids the College in fulfilling its mandate to protect the public interest by ensuring registrants continue to remain up to date as a professional and in their area of practice, maintain or enhance their professional competencies, and complete mandatory training requirements.
The CPD Program is described in Part 7, Division 2 of the College Bylaws and in Policy 7-100.
Requirements
Participation in the CPD Program is mandatory for all practicing and in-training registrants, including those registered as on leave.
Registrants must complete 100 CPD points of eligible activities over 3 consecutive years. Eligible activities are those within the CPD categories. Registrants must submit annual records of the CPD activities they complete by December 31st of each year. CPD records must be submitted in a registrant’s profile within the College’s registrant portal.
Requirements for registrants set out in the Continuing Professional Development (CPD) Standard.
Annual Reporting
- CPD records must be submitted by end of each year (Dec 31).
- Annual CPD statements are submitted in registrant’s profile of the College portal.
View the CPD tutorial
• What is it, who is required to do it?
• What’s been modernized about the program?
• How does the program tie into the Professional Governance Act and the College bylaws?
• How does the program contribute to the College’s mandate of protecting the public interest?
College Registrar and Director of Practice and Compliance Shona Lawson then leads attendees in a demonstration of the tracking module before answering your questions about the module and the CPD program as a whole. This webinar can even be claimed for 1 CPD point — don’t miss it!
Suggested CPD activities
Below are some suggested resources that may be considered CPD activities. Refer to Policy 7 – 100: The Continuing Professional Development Program and the CPD Standard for information on CPD areas such as categories, criteria and associated claimable points. It is registrants’ responsibility to ensure CPD activities align with the College’s criteria when claiming points.
Webinars
- US Fish & Wildlife Service National Conservation Service Training Center
- Canada’s Adaptation Platform webinars (PDF handouts and video-recordings — English)
- Climate Change Webinar video-recordings and PDFs
- ECO Canada webinars
- Harvard Business Review webinars
- Ontario Centre for Climate Impacts
- Canadian Wildlife Federation webinars
- Science (magazine) webinars
- Nature Conservancy of Canada webinars
- Evaluating Stormwater to Identify & Quantify Causal Toxins from Tire Degradants
- 2022 updates to the Migratory Birds Regulations – Canadian Wildlife Service/Environment and Climate Change Canada
Podcasts
Online Courses
Publication Resources
Legal Resources: Legislation, regulation and court rulings
- CANLII (a searchable website for legislation, regulation and legal cases that have resulted on in Canada)
Frequently Asked Questions
More information about CPD can be found in the FAQ document. If you have questions please contact the Director of Practice at director_practice@cab-bc.org.
