Industry Professional Certifications Help RCSC
General Manager Jan Ek Serve Sun City
Recreation Centers of Sun City, Inc. General
Manager Jan Ek is now the holder of two industry designations for
professional managers of community associations.
Ek came to RCSC with her Certified
Manager of Community Associations (CMCA) designation. To obtain the CMCA
certification, a candidate must demonstrate knowledge in many areas of
community management, including:
-
Governance and legal matters
-
Budgets, reserves, investments and assessments
-
Risk management and insurance
-
Maintenance
-
Contracting
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Meetings management
-
Human resource management
The CMCA
program is the only national
certification program designed exclusively for community
managers. The CMCA certification recognizes professionals who have
demonstrated the fundamental
knowledge needed to manage communities.
Managers with this certification have:
-
Successfully completed the Community Associations
Institute's Professional Management Development Program (PMDP)
course, The Essentials of Community Management; and
-
Passed the CMCA Examination, administered by the
National Board of Certification for Community Association Managers
(NBC-CAM).
Along with
adhering to standards of professional conduct, CMCA certified managers
must continue their education with additional coursework every two years
to maintain their certification. Prior to her employment at RCSC, Ek had
already successfully completed two advanced courses, Facilities
Management and Risk Management, and she successfully completed her third
advanced course in Communications earlier this year.
In May
2007 Ek received Association Management Specialist (AMS) designation, a
secondary level of certification, from Community Association Institute (CAI).
To earn the AMS designation, managers must have at least two years’
experience in community management and complete advanced course work. To
maintain the designation, managers must r
e-designate
every three years in August and meet continuing education requirements
“While these certifications and designations are
available nationwide,” explains Ek, “I was unfamiliar with them until I
came to Arizona. Otherwise, I would have surely completed the entire
process by now. However, regardless of my experience in community
management (since 1979), I find the education and interaction with other
community managers very helpful so I am grateful for the opportunity to
continue to expand my knowledge and my experience.”
CAI’s Professional Management
Development Program (PMDP) consists of three levels of courses designed
to give new managers a knowledge base and experienced managers a deeper
understanding of all aspects of community management. Courses focus on
such topics as insurance, finance, leadership, governance and
communications.
Ek plans
to continue her education and obtain the next designation, Professional
Community Association Manager (PCAM). She anticipates that achieving the
PCAM designation will take another three to four years, as all advanced
courses must be completed. Ek has three more advanced courses to
complete and plans to take one a year, after which she will be required
to complete a case study. She also plans to continue on to a fourth and
final designation, the Large Scale Management (LSM) designation. As she
explains, “In the community management industry Sun City certainly
qualifies as large scale and I think it would be very enlightening to be
in a course that focuses only on large scale communities with only large
scale community managers.” A resident of Sun City since May 2006, Ek
began working at RCSC in January 2007.
Contact: Lindsay Frost, RCSC Communications Coordinator
(623) 876-3060, ext. 3087;
lfrost@sunaz.com.
