Classes & certificates

This course empowers managers to support team members impacted by trauma while maintaining personal and professional boundaries. Learn to balance compassion with productivity and navigate complex situations guided by employment law. Reduce stress, boost morale and build a stronger team.

Explore leadership characteristics and ways to strengthen your organization and support others' work. Learn about different leadership styles, public perceptions of leadership by sector and servant-leadership basics. Develop a personal leadership philosophy that contributes to your mission.

Learn what is necessary to create an effective and high-performing team in today's workplace. Explore the unique challenges facing teams today and the elements you'll need to nurture as a leader to overcome them.

Neurodiversity reflects the natural variation in human minds and how people interact with the world differently as a result. In the workplace, building awareness for how neurodivergence appears within it is the first step towards realizing the innovation and creativity a supported team can generate.

Develop a deep understanding of what it means to "serve first" as a leader and explore your relationship to this ideal. Go beyond the philosophy and learn the practices and behaviors that embody this leadership style — and how you can integrate it to your own.

Project Management for Everyone is designed to offer a gradual and effective introduction to core project management principles. Establish an understanding of foundational knowledge, concepts and tools related to project management. This course is ideal for individuals with little to no prior experience in project management or those seeking additional reinforcement before progressing to "Fundamentals of Project Management."

The Project Management Certificate program equips you with a comprehensive skill set to navigate the intricate landscape of project leadership. Through a meticulously designed curriculum and flexible learning format, you'll delve into the technical and interpersonal facets of project management, honing both theory and practical application. Gain first-hand experience with industry-leading tools and techniques, empowering you to tackle strategic planning, effective team leadership, resource optimization, and operational execution with confidence. Our hands-on approach ensures you develop a well-rounded understanding of the project life cycle, from initiation to successful completion. This certificate is not affiliated with PMI's PMP® (Project Management Institute's Project Management Professional certification) and does not serve as exam preparation. However, it includes 42 instructional hours, fulfilling the 35-hour education/training requirement needed to sit for the exam. Please visit the PMI website directly for more information on their exam requirements.

The purpose of this final step in the Project Management (PM) Certificate is to give learners an opportunity to individually discuss their personal goals for applying best practices and skills of project management, to review important aspects of managing projects, to ask questions to further their learning and to demonstrate that they have achieved at least a basic level of understanding of project management.

Stand out with strong communication skills. This flexible certificate builds your confidence, clarity and credibility. Designed for leaders and managers, this program empowers you to lead impactful conversations, strengthen your team and drive results through effective communication.

Psychological health and safety at work is a risk management approach to helping humans be and do their best within your organization. Join us for this course preview webinar on "Psychological Health and Safety at Work."

Get a deep knowledge and effective tools that mid-level functional and technical managers need to lead within their immediate areas of responsibility and impact the success of their wider organizations. The certificate consists of seven required courses. Take up to three years to complete this certificate.

Intentional, strategic, and constructive mentoring can be a powerful tool for building a greater sense of belonging and engagement at work. Learn the fundamentals of being a good mentor through the research and the storytelling and interactions with your learning community.

Learn how to ethically assess and strategically implement AI solutions that enhance your organization's mission. Gain practical skills in using AI tools for tasks like grant writing and impact reporting. Develop sustainable AI practices that prioritize and serve your organization's values.

The ability to present information with impact, persuasion and clarity is important to your career trajectory. This course equips you with the skills needed to present confidently, whether formal or informal, virtual or in-person.

A key challenge for today's leaders is helping employees to understand the need for change. They must help employees discover new ways of working and embracing these new ideas. We explore strategies for communicating the need for change and building employee commitment to that change.

We're seeing more organizations with employees who work from home, live in other states and often live in other countries. "Lead from a distance" by understanding the challenges and best practices. Build trust, navigate conflict, make decisions and conduct engaging meetings with virtual staff.

Communication across cultures often breaks down due to basic cultural differences that are misunderstood and frequently invisible. We introduce you to tools that enable you to identify and understand cultural differences and lay a foundation for strong cultural competency, domestically and globally.

This human-centered leadership training certificate consists of coursework designed for leaders and aspiring leaders committed to developing teams that demonstrate resilience and adaptability. By focusing on individual team members' contributions, motivations and development, the human-centered leader fosters the kind of confidence and sense of well-being needed to confront change productively and prevent burnout. Registering for the Certificate from this page declares your intention to complete it and incurs no cost. To earn the certificate, learners shall register separately for, and complete, four core courses and one elective, totaling approximately 35 class hours.

Please join us for this free webinar, which previews our upcoming course, Mastering Modern Presentation Skills, offered online this spring through UW–Madison Continuing Studies.

Please join us for this free webinar, which previews our upcoming course, Design Thinking for Innovative Problem Solving, offered online this winter through UW–Madison Continuing Studies. What you'll learn Design thinking is a powerful and people-centered approach to solving complex challenges. In this preview webinar, we will introduce the five stages of the design thinking process and share how this method helps professionals (not just designers) drive creativity and innovation in real-world scenarios. You will also participate in a brief, interactive, fun activity to get a glimpse of the full course content. Learning Objectives Identify the five modes of the human-centered design thinking cycle: Empathy, Define, Ideate, Prototype and Test. Recognize that design thinking can be utilized to solve problems in various settings, not only in design. Course instructor Holly Anne Burns, founder of Burns Design Strategy and expert in innovation and collaboration, will lead the webinar along with program staff. Who should attend? This free webinar is open to anyone interested in learning how to solve complex problems using design thinking techniques. Whether you lead teams, manage projects, support learning and development, run a business, or are simply curious about innovation tools, you are welcome to join. Take the first step and join us for this interactive introductory session on November 13!You can learn more about the full course, coming in January 2026, here.