For more information, contact Continuing Education at 814-375-4715 or email [email protected].

Program Overview

Being an effective manager requires learning new skills and technologies as well as juggling priorities, projects, products, and processes. Managing people is different than managing things; people have different perspectives, attitudes beliefs, and needs.

Effectively engaging, motivating, aligning, supporting, and directing people requires a combination of skills, perspective, and interpersonal awareness. The program’s four courses provide important tools, knowledge, and awareness to improve effectiveness, efficiency, capabilities, and capacities of the modern workforce.

A digital badge will be awarded upon completion. Badges can be digitally displayed anywhere to recognize attaining a new level of knowledge.

Program Scope and Sequence

The program consists of four required 21-hour courses offered in succession. Upon completion, a certificate will be awarded.

Who Should Attend

New or prospective managers: This program provides a real-world grounding in common challenges and opportunities for those who have just started or plan to manage, engage, and motivate people.

Experienced managers: Recent changes in the workforce and working conditions mean that experienced managers can benefit from learning about leading practices and technologies.

Managers who manage managers: Senior managers commonly have one or more levels of management as direct reports; these managers can benefit from new technologies and new ways of promoting management talent.

Program objectives

Upon completion of the program, students will be able to:

  • Identify and act on potential areas of support (or resistance) to new change
  • Understand, define, and apply the concepts of performance and talent management
  • Apply strategies, best practices, and ethical guidelines to employee performance
  • Understand, identify, and reduce unconscious bias
  • Increase diversity and inclusion in the workplace
  • Develop key performance indicators from strategic goals and objectives
  • Achieve strategic and tactical goals

Course Descriptions

BUSAD 5968: Organizational Development & Change

This course outlines the guiding of an organization or team through growth, crises, and sustainment from managerial and support roles. The focus is on objective-oriented processes and diagnostics to evaluate the state of change in groups and the organization as a whole, make changes, and stay on-track through to completion.

How does this course fit into the program?

This course sets the stage for the Certificate Program by presenting common challenges and opportunities and shows the students how to use tools to adapt and react.

BUSAD 5967: Performance Management

This course provides students with an introduction to the concepts and processes required for effective performance management, which establishes a sharper interpretation of organizational expectations that promote a less stressful workplace. Students can apply these tools to adjust workflow, recommend new courses of action, and make other decisions to help employees achieve their objectives. Focusing on continuous accountability creates a healthier, more transparent work environment.

How does this course fit into the program?

This course helps managers, supervisors, and human resource professionals to create a cascade of metrics and targets, from top-level strategic objectives down to the daily activities of frontline employees. By aligning these strategic aims with the organizational goals developed in the other three courses, students can construct a plan that optimizes workforce productivity, safety, and development.

BUSAD 5970: Building a Diverse Workforce & Inclusive Culture

This course provides participants with a deeper understanding of concepts of Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion in the workplace. Starting with clarity around core concepts, participants will move on to examine all phases of the employee lifecycle to discover opportunities for reducing bias and creating inclusive cultures. As a role model and leader, participants will learn, discover, and practice behaviors to promote a greater sense of belong and engagement for all employees.

How does this course fit into the program?

Diversity and Inclusion are woven and integrated into all aspects of the best organizations. This course provides participants with the knowledge, skills, and perspectives to apply a diversity and inclusion lens to all areas of talent and workforce management. With this holistic awareness, participants can advocate within their scope of influence for better decision making and increased employee engagement.

BUSAD 5969: Strategic Integration & Succession Planning

This course outlines the tactics and approaches to implementing strategic plans in real-world situations. Every strategic implementation includes change and people development; therefore, all successful implementations also include succession planning throughout the organization. This course includes approaches, assessments, and execution of succession planning as a key component of strategic implementation.

How does this course fit into the program?

This course incorporates principles, perspectives, tools, and techniques of change, performance management, and building a diverse workforce with forming a strategic plan. Students experience the challenges and advantages of integrating several different technologies into a consolidated work plan.

Continuing Education Units

Continuing Education Units (CEUs) are awarded based on a standard of one unit per ten (10) hours of classroom contact.

Note: The University reserves the right to cancel courses due to insufficient enrollment or other unforeseen circumstances