ssistant Recreation Director Tim Ishman has a pretty simple analogy when it comes to continuing professional education: “You don’t just sink one basket and think you’re a basketball player. You have to practice it in order to stay sharp.”

Ishman, who is responsible for Mt. Lebanon’s ice rink and swimming pool, ensures that he and his staff stay current with professional trends, whether it’s a workshop on best practices to maintain an ice resurfacer — they’re not all Zambonis, just like all tissues aren’t Kleenexes — to getting all full-time and some part-time staff certified in CPR.

Ishman currently has four full-time staffers with pesticide applicator’s licenses, to control weeds and invasives around the pool. “This year we’re asking our part time maintenance staff to get certified,” he said. “Our hope is to have nine or 10. Once we get someone certified, they stay with us a period of time.”

New this year is a plan to provide free training for certified lifeguards who want to progress through the ranks. “We’re setting up a path for our lifeguards to become supervisors and managers at our pool,” he said.

The employment ad for pool supervisor states that upon approval, the municipality will pay for a supervisor’s Lifeguard Instructor and Certified Pool Operator certification. Successful pool manager candidates who lack the required certifications in Certified Pool Operator, Allegheny County Bathing Place Manager, lifeguard instructor and pesticide applicator can take the classes they need on Mt. Lebanon’s dime, with the hope that they will return for more swim seasons.

“We’ll make the investment in you as the person to help us be the best we can be.”

As part of his job as facilities and parks coordinator, Phil Avolio also holds a pesticide applicator’s license, and is a certified playground safety inspector.

The safety inspector certificate requires attendance at a three-day class and recertification every three years. The course covers topics such as play surface, structures and best maintenance practices.

“The course is a great way to meet other municipal folks who are involved with parks and rec, learn about what works for them, how to handle projects or repairs and establish contacts to bounce issues or questions off down the road,” Avolio said.

Keeping a pesticide applicator’s license also requires some classroom hours, and a recertification every three years. “It’s a great way to refresh yourself on safe handling of materials and equipment, keeps the emphasis on safety in the front of your mind when you’re out in the field. It keeps you sharp,” he added.

Mt. Lebanon Public Library Director Robyn Vittek is required to earn 12 continuing education credits (CEUs) per year. Other staff members need to take three credits a year.

“We all do a ton of training,” said Vittek. “Currently everyone is signed up for the Pennsylvania Library Association’s Frontline Online Virtual conference.” Vittek is also attending the American Library Association’s conference in Philadelphia, and is the chair of the Pennsylvania Library Association’s conference in Erie.

Besides that they take various workshops and webinars throughout the year.

Vittek takes sessions on management, budgeting, working with library boards and human resource practices.

Other librarians take courses on subjects such as cataloging, readers’ advisory, research techniques and intellectual freedom, social media, grant writing, AI in libraries and other technological advances, and all staff has been trained in customer service.

Children’s librarians take courses in early childhood literacy, programming and best practices. “Even board members and members of the Friends of the Library board have taken training for their roles — sessions include advocacy, fundraising and understanding legalities. There are so many elements to working in a library, as you know, so we all do what is needed for our respective roles.”

Building inspector Josh Meyer, like the rest of the inspection office staff, carries a lot of certifications. Meyer is certified in eight areas, including residential and commercial building inspection, energy code compliance and commercial plans examining, by the state and the International Code Council.

“Our certifications expire every three years, so in that three-year period, we have a certain number of continuing education credits we have to meet in order to renew them.” Staying certified requires about 20 continuing education hours a year, taken from preferred providers, such as Penn State and the Pennsylvania Housing Research Center.

Meyer can also pick up some credit hours by attending quarterly meetings of the Pennsylvania Building Officials Conference. “They offer some sort of CEU class for anyone who attends the meeting. So you meet with the organization and then while you’re there, you get some CEU credits.

“The classes we take, they’re anywhere from updates to code changes, air sealing solutions for attached homes, like townhouses and things that can have problems with energy compliance,” said Meyer. “The nice thing is, since COVID there’s been a lot more webinar classes that you can take at your own pace. It’s a lot easier to get CEUs than when I started here almost six years ago. It seems like there’s a lot more availability as far as classes on a weekly basis or something that’s on demand.  They might be an hour, two hours, whatever it might be, and I can just do it right from my office, look at a set of plans while I’m taking a webinar.”

Assistant Finance Director Terri Windstein attends the annual Pennsylvania Government Finance Officers Association (GFOA) conference. She sees it as a chance to network with others in her field.

“They cover current issues, ethics issues, new processes for billing. It keeps you up to date on new legislation, new products, and just the networking too, because everything that we’re dealing with here, other people are dealing with too, so you can discuss how they’ve handled things,” said Windstein.

For issues keyed specifically to Western Pennsylvania, the GFOA has a western Pennsylvania chapter.

The national Government Accounting Standards Board (GASB) provides an extra layer of continuing education. “Our GASB updates come with a more in-depth presentation from auditors explaining what needs to be done, which saves a lot of time. It also helps us keep our financial records up to date and presentable to have good bond rating get the lower rates for this and just makes us a lot more financially sound.”

Last year, Assistant Public Information Officer Rachel Windsor attended a Federal Emergency Management Administration (FEMA) class in public information basics, part of FEMA’s Emergency Management Basic Academy. The three-day class, presented by Duquesne University Emergency Management Director Bob Gerlach and Allegheny County Emergency Services Assistant Chief Steve Imbarlina, covered topics such as working with the media and developing a public awareness campaign. The class included a group assignment where each group member played different roles in a press conference following a flood.

“It just helped me feel more prepared if something should happen,” she said. “Hearing the presenters’ perspective and experience was valuable.”

At the City-County Communication and Marketing Association’s (3CMA) 2023 conference, Public Information Officer Laura Pace Lilley heard from some presenters who had to handle the 2016 Pulse Nightclub shooting in Orlando, which resulted in 50 dead and 58 injured — at the time the deadliest mass shooting in U.S. history. The Orlando mayor and the city’s public information office shared stories of responding to the tragedy.

“It was a Muslim shooter in a gay nightclub on Hispanic Heritage Night,” said Lilley. “Immediately, fraudulent GoFundMe accounts were popping up, they were overwhelmed by reporters — CNN alone sent a crew of more than 100.”

The city officials described how they responded — making sure the victims’ families were cared for, vetting charity fund-raising sites, realizing that this was not the time or place for a gun-control debate.

“Most of us are fortunate enough to not experience something like that,” Lilley said. “It was helpful to hear their experience.

Lilley has taken advantage of several 3CMA webinars. Her most recent favorite was the psychology of communication, which gave a scientific assessment of the way most people react to messages. “People focus most on what they hear first and what they hear last, which is the opposite of the inverted pyramid style we learned in journalism school. This was easily the best webinar I’ve been to.”

Lt. Dan Hyslop is the Mt. Lebanon Police Department’s training coordinator.

In 2024, the MLPD training schedule included sending officers to courses designed to enhance their effectiveness in their individual specialty area. Officers in the traffic unit attended classes in field sobriety testing, traffic stop investigations, seminars in roadway safety, collision reconstruction and advanced roadside impaired driving enforcement.

Patrol officers took classes in active shooter response, sovereign citizen awareness, crisis intervention, tactical communication and de-escalation, addiction treatment resources, field training officer and high-risk vehicle stops.

Detectives sharpened their skills in gathering evidence from communication technology, building child abuse cases, cell phone investigation techniques, interview and interrogation, search and seizure, sexual assault investigations, missing persons investigations, and conducting police applicant background investigations, among others.

Senior officers took courses in SWAT team leader development, excellence in small agency policing, FBI executive leadership training, the Great Lakes Leadership Conference and high impact supervision.

The department also added four officers to its drone team, which required additional training, and also brought in a therapist to give all officers training on mental health issues, psychological first aid, and trauma-informed approaches, focusing not only on dealing with the public, but also how to take care of themselves after experiencing traumatic events.

The job of a police officer is multi-faceted,” said Hyslop. “The areas of responsibility are endless. Gaining proficiency in all these areas takes experience and training.”

Sometimes the courses employees take for work can yield benefits that go beyond the job.

“One that has stuck with me more than any other was a weeklong course I took on active listening,” said Hyslop. “The class taught me how to effectively de-escalate a situation with a person in crisis. The verbal tactics I learned in that class have served me well, not only at work, but also in my private dealings,” he said.

“Often, choosing the right words, or saying no words at all, is all that is needed to avoid negative outcomes.  Most times, people just want to be heard,” he said. “Giving them the space to vent frustration shows them that you have their best interest at heart.  As a young officer, this was a class that I sorely needed, and one that changed my career.”