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Companies and their busy employees gain new skills through the University's Professional Development Center.
PAUL SLYMAN, a former Portland Development Commission manager, was asked in 2007 to create a management office to oversee PDC’s many investment projects—from small local businesses to Portland’s South Waterfront.
“At the PDC,” says Slyman, “we loved projects, but we didn’t always manage them optimally.”
Although employees took training offered by the state, something was amiss.
“It was 15 days of training—so they were out of the office for three weeks—and it often wasn’t relevant to what they needed to learn,” says Slyman. In addition, employees would skip classes to get work done.
When Slyman heard about Portland State’s Professional Development Center, he decided to investigate.
Opened in 1982, the PSU center offers classes to working professionals seeking to enhance or add to their career skills. It also provides instruction for companies—from Nike to Netflix—on campus or on site.
Slyman, eager to see whether the center could provide the training PDC was urgently seeking, took the project management course himself.
“What I liked,” says Slyman, “was that it was eight days, which was about the right length. It was much cheaper, so it saved a lot of money. And since it was in Portland, PDC employees didn’t have to travel to Salem.”
Still, Slyman wanted to make the course he took even more relevant to PDC staff. In a quick email, he asked the center if they could tailor the coursework to include actual PDC examples, among other changes, and to limit classes to PDC employees.
“They wrote back almost immediately and said, ‘absolutely’,” says Slyman. The center also said “yes” to allowing PDC instructors to take the reins for a day or so to teach students PDC specifics such as how to use PDC forms and how to follow the PDC chain of approval.
Unexpectedly, the training helped develop a sense of camaraderie within teams and between departments, says Slyman, who now works at Metro as Parks and Environmental Services director.
To emphasize the importance of the training, Slyman made the classes mandatory for managers—and even PDC’s executive director, Patrick Quentin, signed on.
“I went through with my entire division—the Economic Development Division,” says Quentin, “and it was a fantastic learning experience and teambuilding exercise.”
IN A SENSE, the PSU Professional Development Center, which is self-supporting, is like a smorgasbord—offering “pick-and-choose classes” to meet the particular needs of an individual or organization.
In addition to project management, the center also offers classes in conflict resolution, business writing, human resource management, multimedia, organizational development, cross-cultural communication, and process improvement.
Jessica Berg chose to take classes at the center to enhance her skills when her career goal shifted.
Marketing was Berg’s love in college, so she was happy to land a job in her field at prestigious Portland law firm Smith Freed & Eberhard. But the job changed when she was asked to take on some human resource responsibilities for the firm’s 130 plus employees.
“I liked it,” says Berg.
In fact, she liked her job change so much that she began to look for ways to move into the field, including convenient HR classes that would allow her to stay on the job.
“I researched different programs in Portland,” says Berg, “and the Professional Development Center looked perfect for me.”
In six months, Berg completed the certificate program, which she found to be stimulating, challenging, and rewarding in an unexpected way.
She found “a higher level of instructional engagement” among students as compared to her undergraduate studies, says Berg. Students were committed to learning and focused on getting the most out of the program. Likewise, professors held high expectations for students.
“For me,” says Berg, “it worked out really well.”
So well, that after she completed her certificate, Smith Freed & Eberhard promoted her to its top human resources post.