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Professional Development Studies
Welcome to Professional Development Studies (PDS) at the School of Communication and Information (SC&I). Whether you are a young professional, new manager, or experienced executive you will find a wide array of continuing education programs that will help you enhance your skills and succeed in your career.
PDS offers three non-credit professional online certificate programs:
- Business and Managerial Communication
- Public Relations
- Digital Asset Management (DAM)
- Health Communication and Information, launching in Spring 2021
To earn your certificate, you must complete six courses. You can start our programs with any course in any month. The course schedule loops so that you can complete the program in six months no matter which month you start in. You are also welcome to take stand-alone courses that meet your career development needs.
PDS certificates and courses are:
- 100% online
- Four weeks long
- Instructor-led and self-paced
- Immediately applicable to your career
PDS Current Classes
Much of workplace communication takes place in writing–your image as a professional is often formed by what someone is reading on a screen. This interactive and feedback-driven writing course addresses common challenges such as facing writer’s block, presenting clear messages quickly, formatting documents for readability, and using a positive tone.
In this course, public relations practitioners will explore theories of ethical reasoning and apply them to both simulated and personal ethical communication challenges. By the end of the course, each student will have learned how to better negotiate ethical challenges, examined how to chart paths through the grey areas of ethics, and prepared a practical guide to ethical decision making, consistent with their personal values and appropriate to their practice of communication.
A multi-channel, multi-platform world continues to increase demand for digital assets, and organizations that manage high volumes of content rely on creative operations as the cross-functional glue for marketing and communications, agency relationships, packaging, branding, publishing (digital and print), as well as other related aspects of digital assets within a business.
