The MFIT Workshops will be held February 25-27, 2025, and April 08-10, 2025, and are available to NPDN members, partners, and colleagues. The MFIT Workshops are 3-day training sessions that will be held at a new location in 2025, the USDA-Professional Development Center in Frederick, Maryland. The instructors decided to offer two identical workshops to give participants a couple of options.
Registration for the 2025 MFIT Workshops will open on November 12, 2024, and close on November 27, 2024. Details about our new registration process and a link to the new form will be provided in the registration tab below as they become available.
The workshops are supported by the USDA and the Plant Protection Act 7721 funding, which means diagnosticians do not need to find funding to participate…which is very helpful to all our budgets! All workshop materials and travel expenses are covered by this funding.
The planning team requested another round of funding through PPA 7721, so if you cannot attend in 2025, keep your fingers crossed for 2026 MFIT Workshops!
The instructors are Megan Romberg and John McKemy of USDA-APHIS-PPQ, both provided instruction at the first offering of these workshops in 2024, and Megan has taught several fungal identification workshops at NPDN National Meetings. The new MFIT Workshop will build on topics taught at the National Meeting workshops but will also be suitable for early-career professionals who have not attended previous training.
Questions? Contact Barb Riker at br347@cornell.edu and copy Karen Snover-Clift at kls13@cornell.edu.
Course Description/Agenda
The MFIT Workshop will consist of lectures and hands-on activities. Participants will learn about fungi in the Ascomycota and Basidiomycota, learning precise terms for specific characters, and increasing familiarity with reading and understanding species descriptions ranging from those written 100 years ago to the present. Participants will learn techniques and access literature that may be unfamiliar and, in some cases, difficult to obtain.
Approximately 20 hours of the 3-day workshop will focus on interactive, hands-on activities. The hands-on portion will include directed examination of samples from both Phyla under the dissecting and compound microscopes, learning targeted isolation techniques using local fresh samples collected or maintained for the workshop.
Holding the workshop at the USDA facility will allow participants to form relationships with PPQ staff which may guide future collaborations and facilitate open dialogue during emergency situations. The training provides participating diagnosticians access to the scientists who regularly see thousands of fungal pathogens across hundreds of host families and the ability to ask questions about specific characters that may be rare and benefit from group discussions.
Registration
Registration is closed for the 2025 Workshop season.
Travel and reimbursement information
PLANNING
The start of travel planning begins with the receipt of the Letter A. After the workshop participants confirm their workshop invitation, they will receive the Letter A. DO NOT make travel arrangements until you receive the Letter A. Letter A is the signal telling you it is OK to begin your travel planning.
Letter A and Letter B for each workshop will be posted here when ready for instructors and participants.
DO NOT PLAN to leave before the completion of the workshop. If you attend an in-person workshop and hope to return home on the final day, do not book a return flight before 8:00pm, you will need at least 3 hours to comfortably get to the airport. The airports in this area are very busy around the clock, so plan for lengthy ground travel times and long lines at check-in and getting through security.
More details about planning can be found in the MFIT Guidelines document, a link to the guidelines is in the Workshop policies and guidelines section.
Institution travel reimbursement letter template
REIMBURSEMENTS
Cornell University will reimburse YOUR HOME INSTITUTION. Participants must follow their home institution’s travel procedures and policies. PLEASE SUBMIT YOUR REIMBURSEMENT TO YOUR INSTITUTION FIRST. When a participant submits their travel expense letter to the Cornell coordinators and their institution’s representatives at the same time, corrections often follow. The institution reviewers may find problems with the participants submitting materials that require a change. When this happens, it causes a re-submission and longer processing time to get the reimbursement back to the institution.
To review…the reimbursement MUST go to the institution, NOT directly to the participant. The participants must follow their institution’s rules AND have the letter reviewed by their institution BEFORE submitting it to Cornell for processing.
More details about reimbursements can be found in the MFIT Guidelines document, a link to the guidelines is in the Workshop policies and guidelines section.
Workshop Policies and Guidelines
The MFIT Workshop Guidelines were created to provide helpful information and tips for those planning to attend an MFIT Workshop. The guide provides workshop procedures and guidelines pertaining to registration, how to receive specific workshop details, how to make travel arrangements and how to request travel expense reimbursement. The guide includes the answers to the most frequently asked questions and common occurrences from past workshop seasons.
Each workshop participant should understand their institution’s rules pertaining to travel arrangements and reimbursements. The workshop coordinators cannot override institution rules.
The workshop coordinators hope the information supplied in this document, coupled with the understanding of each participant’s institution procedures, will result in a stress-free planning and reimbursement process. Please read the entire document!
The Workshop Policies document covers both the MFIT and PPCDL Workshops. The policy document provides key rules and guidelines and covers the expectations related to workshop registration, attendance, requirements, and travel expense reimbursement.
If you have questions about this program, contact ppcdl_workshops@npdn.org.
