UD Professional & Continuing Studies Customized Learning Solutions

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CUSTOMIZED

LEARNING SOLUTIONS

Leverage our knowledge and resources for your organization

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LEVERAGE OUR KNOWLEDGE AND RESOURCES FOR YOUR ORGANIZATION The University of Delaware’s Division of Professional and Continuing Studies (UD PCS) is your connection to the vast expertise and knowledge available at UD, leveraging the best research-based and applied knowledge for your organization’s needs.

UD PCS Customized Learning Solutions is ready to provide customized education programs to help your organization achieve its training and employee development goals.

When you collaborate with us, you’ll benefit from:

• Top-ranked university — Tap into UD’s resources and knowledge as a top-ranked public research university tackling the biggest challenges facing our state, nation and world.

• World-class faculty, real-world experts — Draw on the expertise of over 1,300 faculty, experts and industry practitioners working and researching in all knowledge areas and across 10 UD colleges and schools.

• Valued credential — Gain a University of Delaware backed credential and digital badges upon training completion.

• Flexible, tailored offerings — Leverage our ability to provide completely customized programs, whether online, on-site or on campus, in many program formats.

• Committed team — Advance your team with the support of our dedicated and committed customized learning team, assisting with every program aspect from development to start to finish.

UD PCS CUSTOMIZED LEARNING SOLUTIONS Laura Valadakis, lval@udel.edu • pcs.udel.edu/customized

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Put the University of Delaware to work for your organization

HOW CAN WE HELP YOUR ORGANIZATION MEET ITS LEARNING GOALS? Organizational needs assessment,  organizational development



Customized learning programs for every level of your organization

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Comprehensive instructional design and course delivery

and executive Professional coaching

• 1,300+ faculty representing a vast portfolio of academic, industry and research expertise

• 10 colleges and schools, 150+ majors, 250+ graduate and post-baccalaureate programs

• 80 research centers leading to 148 patents and 30 startups in the last decade

• Top 3% in U.S. in research activity • 200+ global partnerships with institutions on six continents

upskilling or reskilling, Employee employee retention

Executive education programs at your site, at UD, Offered online or via a combination of modalities

UD’s Division of Professional and Continuing Studies has been serving the professional development needs of Delaware, regional and national organizations for over 70 years. Partnering with UD PCS Customized Learning, you benefit from UD’s stature and resources as a top-ranked institution:

Employee professional development— a win for your organization Employees cite learning and development opportunities as an important factor in their choice to work at their current organization. Increasing those opportunities in your organization can result in:

• Increased opportunities for advancement • Reduced turnover, increased retention • Talent development and succession planning • Improved employee morale • Better-educated workforce

EXPERTS + IDEAS = SOLUTIONS UD PCS CUSTOMIZED LEARNING SOLUTIONS Laura Valadakis, lval@udel.edu • pcs.udel.edu/customized

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WHAT EMPLOYEES SAY ABOUT PROFESSIONAL DEVELOPMENT

92% 71%

61%

Access to professional development is important or very important

SAMPLE TOPICS AND COURSES All program offerings are customizable for location, schedule and format (online, in person, hybrid).

• Business Process Optimization • Business Technology Solutions (i.e. IT, Cybersecurity, AI, etc.)

Job training and development increased their job satisfaction Upskilling opportunities are an important reason to stay at their job American Upskilling Study, Gallup, 2021

Make UD your solutions partner How does your organization determine areas of opportunity for team development or process improvement? What are some upcoming challenges or trends in your industry or field?

Make UD your thought partner. Your organization benefits from expertise across the University of Delaware, across all disciplines, fields and industries. Connect with us, and connect with thousands of experts, ideas and solutions.

UD Customized Learning Solutions can meet with your organization for a comprehensive needs assessment, which includes discussing organizational and training goals.

Customizable for location, schedule, format and modality, options include:

• Program offerings like leadership, business communications, project management, healthcare leadership and more, tailored to your organization’s content, requirements and team needs.

• Design and development of new, original or proprietary programming, drawn from UD expertise and your organization’s specific goals and training needs.

• Conflict Resolution • Design Thinking/UX (User Experience) • Digital and Social Media Marketing • Diversity, Equity, Inclusion and Belonging (DEIB) • Drone Pilot Training • Employee Health and Wellness • Executive/Individual Coaching • Finance/Data Analytics • Healthcare Leadership • Leadership Development • Microsoft Excel • Montessori Training • Organizational Assessments (i.e., DiSC, Gallup Q12 Engagement Survey, Predictive Index)

• Organizational Dynamics • Patient Experience Academy • PocketMBA • Project Management • Telehealth

[

MAKE UD YOUR...

Team training Succession planning Leadership development Organizational success Peak productivity Employee engagement Process improvement

PARTNER

]

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Signature Program

POCKETMBA

Business and management development via MBA-focused topics UD's PocketMBA is a customizable executive education program for high-potential managers and aspiring leaders that features core MBA topics abbreviated to a few sessions each instead of entire semesters. This focused program has relevance across many industry sectors, offering your team’s participants the opportunity to:

• Develop and enhance critical business acumen and achieve career goals

• Collaborate and network with colleagues in other functional areas of the organization

• Develop and present an industry-relevant case study • Earn a UD digital badge, a verifiable display of competency to validate participants’ expertise

• Customize the PocketMBA based on your organizational needs and professional development goals PocketMBA is offered through a partnership with UD’s Alfred Lerner College of Business and Economics and is customizable for any organization’s business and development needs, both in topics covered and in delivery modality: online, in person or hybrid. Topics can include managing people, strategic decision making, data for decision making, management accounting, finance, entrepreneurial thinking, digital marketing, conflict resolution, business ethics and more.

“

Our employees really valued the business acumen and the management skills they could leverage from day to day. The one thing that was universal was how it helped them connect to each other.

—Danette Conley, Director, Employee Development, Incyte

”

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Signature Program

PATIENT EXPERIENCE ACADEMY

Leveraging hospitality principles for improved patient care Could your organization benefit from improved patient care and service delivery? With a mission of making hospitals truly hospitable, UD’s Patient Experience Academy (PXA) is a professional education certificate program for healthcare/ medical-based employees and providers, drawing on the principles of hospitality to improve patients’ experiences in healthcare environments. PXA is a unique program with relevance across varied healthcare settings, designed as a healthcare/patient customer service program to help healthcare team members and employees view patients as guests, and to view patient interactions through a hospitality mindset. PXA is fully customizable for any organization’s business and development needs—both in topics covered and in delivery modality: online, in person or hybrid.

Topics include:

• Listening and empathy in healthcare settings • Healthcare Theatre (HT) interactive training • Transformation and leading change • Managing expectations • Service recovery • Achievement stories This university is on the front lines, and it sounds

“

simple to us that you would take the best practices from the industry that relies on hospitality and acceptance.

—Robert Wilkie, Secretary of Veterans Affairs

”

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UD PROFESSIONAL AND CONTINUING STUDIES

EDUCATION ALLIANCE Join the UD PCS Education Alliance for networking and organizational discounts The University of Delaware's Division of Professional and Continuing Studies (UD PCS) has been serving the professional development needs of both individuals and organizations throughout Delaware and our region for more than 70 years.

Your organization can benefit by joining the UD PCS Education Alliance, open to participation by any business or organization at no cost.

• No cost for organization to join • 10% price reduction for most UD PCS noncredit programs • Preferred pricing for any customized training requested by organization

• Dedicated UD PCS representative to assist with questions • Ability to expand your professional network • Landing page provided by UD to your organization to inform employees of the Education Alliance program

• UD PCS can provide information sessions for your employees

• UD PCS can participate in education or career fairs held by your organization

• Complimentary annual employee development needs assessment For more information, visit pcs.udel.edu/alliance

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ON-DEMAND EDUCATION: INSIDE AND OUT

DELAWARE COMPANIES GO ‘BACK TO SCHOOL’ WITH UD’S CUSTOMIZED LEARNING PROGRAM

By Eric Ruth Not too long ago, in the earnestly businesslike offices of JPMorgan Chase, the bank’s executives put down their spreadsheets, picked up their notebooks and waited for the college lecture to begin.

Class was in session, without a campus in sight.

Over at biopharma innovator Incyte, where next-gen science is in the corporate DNA, a group of up-and-coming leaders discovered a new sort of tech magic: professors who leaped across the internet and into the pharma company’s offices in Wilmington and California.

Graduate-level Blue Hen coursework had gone coast-tocoast, at the speed of light.

At business after business—schools, construction firms, hospitals—the University of Delaware is ambitiously aiming to become Delaware’s vendor of choice for corporate human development training, designing and delivering custom classes at a moment’s notice—“our place or yours.”

It’s aptly called the Customized Learning Solutions program, UD’s answer to the growing demand for practical, pain-free, personalized employee training. Each year, businesses, nonprofits and even government agencies from various industry sectors enlist the kind of instruction usually studied by backpacking-wearing, degree-chasing college students.

Utilizing more than 1,500 faculty experts across UD, the program blends the University’s service mission with immediate community application.

“We are nimble, we are flexible, we are responsive. And we can make it Delaware-specific, something that bigger outside consultants can’t offer,” says Monica Browne, program coordinator for Customized Learning Solutions, one of many open-to-the-public educational opportunities offered by UD’s Division of Professional and Continuing Studies.

Deep resources, nimble response The list of clients tapping into UD’s Customized Learning services includes some of the state’s elite bodies: financial powerhouse JPMorgan Chase, health provider Christiana Care, the Wilmington VA Medical Center.

As they juggle shifting workforce dynamics and evolving needs, UD’s teams take a deep dive into their individual priorities, weaving together a course of instruction that can be customized at a near-cellular organizational level.

“We try to approach it in a team fashion and think of ourselves as being a thought partner to these organizations,” says Laura Valadakis, UD’s Customized Learning Solutions manager. “We don’t just go in and sell a product; we try to identify their needs and work together.”

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Some Customized Learning courses serve up the meat-andpotato topics that are perennial concerns to any organization— leadership skills, DEI, intro-level Excel. Other courses have evolved as global needs evolve: There’s now a Design Thinking course, Data Analysis programming and Advanced Telehealth Coordinator training.

No matter the need or goal, UD can swiftly tap resources across its 10 colleges and schools to design practically any course, in any format: in person or online; recorded or live.

In some cases, the program enlists external industry experts who bring an even sharper “real world” practicality to coursework.

Two of the program’s core offerings are the PocketMBA (a nine-month mini-course in business leadership) and the Patient Experience Academy (which applies hospitality practices to hospitals, helping providers view patients as “guests”). Multiple instructors from inside and outside of campus are often required for such extended training, and UD’s team sometimes works for months in advance to align course material with company needs.

At other times, speed and agility are paramount. Just this year, UD’s team received a training request from the International Fresh Produce Association to develop an Executive Presence and Extemporaneous Speaking program on the 5th of April. By April 25, the plan was ready.

More than facts

“The one thing that was universal was how it helped them connect to each other. As a result of that they felt confident reaching out to other employees to collaborate.”

Expertise in teaching those interpersonal skills runs deep at UD, where Dustin Sleesman, an associate professor at the Alfred Lerner College of Business and Economics, is a leading scholar in organizational behavior. Sleesman prides himself on giving his Customized Learning students an experience every bit as rigorous and memorable as his undergraduates.

Before that can happen, he researches the organization itself, working with clients to identify their needs and observe the company’s culture. “It’s hard for people to articulate what the challenges are, what the pain points are, and often they merely say there’s a ‘communication’ problem,” he says.

“When I hear that, I want to dig deeper.”

Where teachers learn Rita Landgraf is surely no stranger to the byzantine complexities of healthcare policies, but the former Delaware Health and Social Services secretary says she ends up learning a lot herself while teaching the topic to industry pros.

“It gives me insight into the diversity of thought within the industry,” says Landgraf, a professor in UD’s Department of Health Behavior and Nutrition Sciences. “I love my undergraduate work, but it’s great being with the professionals who can translate this into practice.”

At Incyte, a boundary-pushing biopharmaceutical firm with headquarters in Wilmington, managers were aiming to support their up-and-coming leaders, but recognized that few had time to take on a full master of business administration degree.

UD’s instructors agree that teaching in that corporate setting helps them align their college classes with industry advances, bringing the transfer of knowledge full circle. By lending their time and helping Delaware’s businesses, they get a refreshing bounceback of good karma, a feeling that they are helping to make a difference in the communities they call home.

UD’s PocketMBA fit Incyte’s need, especially since the training had to be delivered on opposite sides of the country, in continentally distant time zones. Once delivered, it became clear that some of the most significant takeaways weren’t just “textbook “facts, but the soft skills that typically take years to foster.

On a higher, holistic level, the program also helps fulfill UD’s aspirations for deeper community connections. “These are the leaders,” Landgraf says of UD’s ever-growing partner organizations. “If we’re all rowing in the same direction, Delaware will be a stronger state because of it.”

“Our employees really valued the business acumen and the management skills they could leverage from day to day,” says Danette Conley, Incyte’s director for employee development.

This article originally appeared in the University of Delaware Magazine.

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501 S. COLLEGE AVENUE • NEWARK, DE 19716

PCS.UDEL.EDU/CUSTOMIZED For inquiries, please contact Laura Valadakis, Manager, Customized Learning Solutions at lval@udel.edu.