As part of your administrative professional role, you are often asked to plan meetings and events—from board meetings and management retreats to client-facing summits and even executive training programs. And while you find planning these types of programs to be an exciting part of the job, you wish there were a method or process to follow to make the organization of meetings and events more efficient.

Join us for this eight-week online specialty in meeting and event planning, developed in partnership with industry leader Meeting Professionals International (MPI). Begin with a focus on defining meeting goals and objectives and stakeholder needs before learning how to develop a budget, create a blueprint, manage RFPs and develop contracts. Then, discover how to manage speakers and content, plan menus, design room sets, arrange transport and oversee logistics. Finally, discover how to evaluate the success of your meeting or event, communicate success and improve your meetings over time.

Throughout the course, you will work on an individual project utilizing your new skills that will culminate in a project paper. The Meeting and Event Planning (MEP) Specialty Certificate verifies you have the skills necessary to plan meetings and events for your organization that drive value and create successful outcomes for your business.

COURSE OUTCOMES:

• Identify stakeholders and define SMART goals and objectives for your meetings
• Source venues, vendors, speakers, and content for your events
• Design experiences that deliver value for your organization
• Oversee onsite logistics during the execution of your meeting
• Measure results and demonstrate business value and improve your meeting over time

Live Call Days and Times: Thursdays from 2:00 – 3:00 p.m. Central time

Writing is at the core of an administrative professional’s skill set. Much of your success as an administrative professional depends on the effectiveness of your written communication, whether communicating with the team that you support or with related internal and external stakeholders. This skill is essential not only when you create your own documents, but in copy editing and proofreading the written work of others.

In this interactive, 8-week course, you’ll learn strategies to plan, write, and revise a variety of your own business documents, including emails, memos, and letters. The course will also cover grammar basics and the skills needed to edit and proofread the work of others with whom you work. You’ll have ample opportunities to apply concepts to exercises during the course while getting facilitator feedback.

Weeks 1-3

• Using problem-solving strategies in writing
• Applying critical thinking to solve the writing problem
• Analyzing readers and determining objectives
• Using organization to guide readers
• Creating flow and using logic
• Structuring sentences and paragraphs according to how readers read

Weeks 4-7

• Grammar 101
• Using language effectively
• Developing effective proofreading/editing strategies
• Writing effective emails
• Using the subject line to your advantage
• Writing concise memos
• Writing the various types of business letters

Week 8

• Effective copyediting
• Effective proofreading
• Course recap
• Course assessment

COURSE OUTCOMES:

• Explain the importance of analyzing audience and purpose
• Create useful writing strategies
• Evaluate and modify language use in business documents
• Write more effective emails, business letters, and business reports
• Demonstrate various copy editing and proofreading techniques
• Understand grammar basics and apply them to all phases of writing, editing, and proofreading
• Writing the various types of business letters
• Grammar 101

Live Call Days and Times: Thursdays from 11:00 a.m. – Noon Central time

For so many of us, working from home brought about a host of new challenges. For others, this is a dream come true.  Then there are people like myself that have been doing this for 14 years, and already made the mistakes – so you don’t have to. No matter where you are on the spectrum, we are going to get down to the skills you need to be successful, and all the pitfalls to avoid. Whether you work for a large company, or plan to build a business of your own providing professional virtual support services, we will delve into the habits you will need to be successful, and maximize your value. At the end of our time together you will:

• Learn how to work to your strengths in a virtual environment
• Develop skills to keep the “team” environment
• Gain knowledge of the systems used by virtual professionals to keep work flowing
• Have a documented back-up plan so things keep moving
• Create an environment for successful virtual work

• Week 1: Professional appearance still matters!
• Week 2: Team Building in a Virtual atmosphere
• Week 3: Accountability & Scheduling
• Week 4: The Apps and Systems you can’t work without
• Week 5: What happens when life happens? Developing the backup plan for your backup plan
• Week 6: Virtual Communications – How to communicate when you can’t see your team, and they can’t see you
• Week 7: Creating an Environment for Success – Part 1 – Stress management and relief, self-care, and Boundaries
• Week 8: Creating an Environment for Success – Part II – Your physical space

Live Call Days and Times: Fridays from 11:30 a.m. – 12:30 p.m. Central time