Rosemary Chavoya was running the Department of Psychology's student affairs office but yearned to tackle something even more challenging. VC Powe, who was director of alumni and government relations in the School of Public Policy and Social Research (SPPSR), also felt ready to take on more and move up.

While Regina Sais Blasberg, special projects coordinator for UCLA Fleet and Transit Services, knew every area of her turf, she sought a broader knowledge of campus operations elsewhere. And Joseph Vaughan, who was a manager in the College of Letters and Science's Division of Humanities, felt due for a change, but wasn't sure where to turn. "I wanted to clarify the story I would be telling about my life five or 10 years from now," he recalled.

Fortunately, these UCLA middle managers found a way to fulfill their aspirations through the Professional Development Program (PDP), a rigorous, yearlong training initiative offered by Campus Human Resources (CHR).

"People were always asking, 'Is there a program similar to Staff Enrichment (for support staff and others), but for people at a more senior level?' " said Marsha Coutin, CHR career services coordinator, who helped create the program after a campuswide survey was taken on training needs. "One thing came across loud and clear," she said. "There wasn't anything specifically targeted to mid-level managers."

With seed money from UC's Office of the President, a pilot program was launched seven years ago.

So successful has PDP proven that it is now a core CHR program as well as a model for other UC campuses. And, as further testament to its remarkable benefits, almost half of the program's nearly 100 graduates have since been promoted.

Powe is now executive director of external programs in SPPSR. Chavoya manages the psychology department as executive officer. Vaughan landed a position as assistant director of the Center for Digital Humanities.

"But PDP's success isn't limited just to people who have gotten a job change," Coutin pointed out. "People have developed new skills and established professional networks that are critical to their career development."

Sais Blasberg, for example, is in the same job, but thanks to encouragement she received in PDP, she has added another one: teaching engineering classes part-time at East Los Angeles Community College.

"PDP has had an incredible impact on me," Sais Blasberg said. "It has helped me establish a broad networking and support group. I have all these people I can call on."

Echoed Vaughan: "I can walk around campus and know someone in every building."

"It was absolutely fabulous," said Chavoya, "in terms of the networking potential and opportunity to understand how the university works."

"PDP is one of the most beneficial things a UCLA employee can do for his or her career," said Powe.

For the university, the program also fills a pressing need for highly trained, motivated professionals in light of a systemwide limited hiring freeze, budgetary constraints, the onset of Tidal Wave II and the pending retirement of many UCLA managers.

"The goal is to have a pipeline for moving into management or senior management," Coutin said. "We want to grow our own leaders."

PDP recruits new candidates every spring with letters to all employees classified as professional staff series (Grades 2-6). Some 20 to 25 participants are selected by a committee of managers from the campus and the UCLA Medical Center, based on interviews and applications. A supervisor's endorsement also is required.

"What we're saying to supervisors is, 'Give us your best and your brightest,' " Coutin said. "I applaud managers for their support." Managers must grant participants 10 to 15 hours of release time each month.

The program kicks off in June with a three-day career retreat to activate a kind of "superglue" that quickly bonds participants together as they prepare for the intensive work to come. They attend monthly seminars, led by guest speakers ranging from Assistant Vice Chancellor Glyn Davies, who walks them through the budget-planning process for a department, to AIS' Jackie Reynolds, who covers IT issues. Every month, participants host brown-bag lunches in their own departments to introduce PDP colleagues to their managers and the work of their units with behind-the-scenes tours of such disparate entities as the School of Theater, Film and Television and the CoGeneration Plant, which supplies the campus with most of its power.

"One of the greatest benefits of this program," said Coutin, "is a wide exposure to the depth and breadth of everything that is UCLA."

Through such activities, participants also meet campus movers and shakers on a more level playing field. Recalled Powe, "Even though I already had a pretty good overall grasp of the campus, this program exposed me to senior-level management in a way that I could interact as a 'future' colleague."

Small groups also collaborate on team projects. Chavoya's team, for example, analyzed the Department of Chemistry's recharge units. "I knew very little about finance and business," she recalled, "but I wanted to learn." Sais Blasberg's team helped UCLA's Staff Assembly create the Casino Night fund-raiser, a now-annual event supporting staff development.

Vaughan, intrigued with information technology, worked with his team to create a Web-based needs assessment survey. And Powe's team designed a part-time degree program, soon to be instituted in SPPSR.

"When our team presented the plan to the school's associate dean," Powe recalled, "he told us, 'I feel like I've hired a professional consulting team, and it didn't cost me a dime.' "

Coutin meets with each participant regularly for career counseling. "People come with a wide range of needs," she said. "Some are fairly focused while others need more focus. Some come into the program wanting to move up in their department, but they might not know the next step. I work with them to develop a path, a direction."

And the icing on the cake: Every participant works with a mentor from the campus' senior administrative ranks.

Said Coutin: "I ask every participant, 'If you had a magic wand and could pick anyone on campus to be your mentor, whose name -- or what area or position -- comes to mind?' "

From a pool of assistant vice chancellors, deans, assistant deans and directors, she then seeks the right match, a mentor willing to meet with his or her mentee monthly, answer questions and even be "shadowed" for a day or a week.

"I do it because I feel it's an important contribution," said Mary Jane Varley, SPPSR associate dean of administration, who has served as a mentor since the program began.

"UCLA is a complicated environment. People need guidance to acquire the skills and the knowledge to negotiate this environment," Varley said. "And senior managers have a responsibility to replace themselves, for lack of a better way to look at it."

"The piece of PDP that had the most lasting impact on me was my mentor," said Vaughan, who was paired with now-retired Associate Vice Chancellor Al Solomon. "We agreed at the beginning I could ask him any question I wanted," Vaughan recalled, "and I did," querying Solomon on everything from personnel issues to making a career at UCLA. "It was really fantastic."

Powe's mentor was Senior Associate Dean Bill Broesamle, whom she'd known while attending the Anderson School for her M.B.A. "It was wonderful," Powe said, with their relationship evolving into "an exchange of ideas." "I came away feeling that I was his colleague, that I could be a senior administrator, too."

Letters from CHR inviting applications will go out this month. For information, see www.chr.ucla.edu and follow the links to Training and Development.