Course Catalog

Custom Training Available

The Center for Professional Education at UT Austin offers courses, certificate programs and workforce training designed to build individual careers and support productive and efficient work teams. 

Use the catalog below to explore our offerings.

For quick review of upcoming opportunities, you can also download this printable PDF that lists information sessions, certificate programs and courses starting in the next couple of months.


Topic Area: Management & Leadership
Available For: All Audiences

This course will examine 11 essential leadership traits identified through a synthesis of data gathered from corporate recruiters, Fortune 500 companies, business schools and studies on how high performers manage extreme situations. You will learn how to apply these traits, combined with emotional intelligence (EQ) concepts, to real-world scenarios, developing the skills you need to succeed in today's high-performance business world.

Topic Area: Business Analysis
Available For: All Audiences

This course provides essential information for business analysts to be successful on Agile projects. Attendees will participate in hands-on activities to learn how to define the project’s vision, model user roles, write user stories and acceptance criteria, prioritize the user stories, refine the stories in preparation for developing them and utilize user stories to plan releases and iterations.

Topic Area: Business Analysis
Available For: All Audiences

This course covers requirements analysis and modeling techniques, as well as ways to document requirements to communicate them effectively to your stakeholders. Using hands-on exercises and a case study with example solutions, this course introduces methods and techniques so you can effectively model and document requirements for different audiences or stakeholders.

Topic Area: Management & Leadership
Available For: All Audiences

Assertiveness skills are crucial for professional success in today’s ever-changing business world. In this course, you will learn how cultivating assertiveness skills in the workplace creates better outcomes for both managers and their teams. By identifying your personal blocks to assertiveness and then developing assertiveness skills, you will learn to communicate more effectively—asking for what you need, handling confrontations with confidence and advocating for your ideas. 

Topic Area: Management & Leadership
Available For: All Audiences

Most individuals are not born leaders, and few people feel completely comfortable taking a leadership role for the first time. In this course, you will learn how to hone your leadership traits and enhance your knowledge of leadership principles through an understanding of the definitions, characteristics and coaching techniques of personal leadership. By developing a fundamental understanding of the leadership characteristics that any employee can utilize when presented with the opportunity to lead, you will be ready to accept leadership roles with confidence. 

Topic Area: Business Analysis
Available For: All Audiences

You will be introduced to the techniques, methodologies, and concepts of business analysis using the International Institute of Business AnalysisTM (IIBA®A Guide to the Business Analysis Body of Knowledge® (BABOK® Guide) Version 3.0. Topics Include: why requirements are important, types of requirements, underlying competencies for business analysts, the Strategy Analysis Knowledge Area, the Business Analysis Planning and Monitoring Knowledge Area, the Elicitation and Collaboration Knowledge Area, the Requirements Life Cycle Management Knowledge Area, the Requirements Analysis and Design Definition Knowledge Area, and the Solution Evaluation Knowledge Area.

Topic Area: Business Analysis
Available For: All Audiences

Cover how to plan and manage your business analysis tasks, including planning for elicitation, analysis, documentation, traceability, and requirements. You will learn the essential project management concepts and skills to effectively create business analysis planning deliverables and manage the requirements process. Hands-on exercises based on a case study will bring concepts to life with practical activities. 

Topic Area: Management & Leadership
Available For: All Audiences

One thing is certain in the business world: You should expect the unexpected. Managers must work well under pressure, adapting quickly and confidently to changing, unpredictable circumstances. In this one-day course, you will be introduced to improv techniques that you can use in a business environment to enhance your ability to work effectively and efficiently, whatever the obstacles you face. This highly interactive course guides you through experiential learning activities, readings, and scenarios designed to take your quick thinking and ability to stay calm under pressure to the next level.

Topic Area: Business Analysis
Available For: All Audiences

This course will teach you how to understand, analyze and improve the processes that exist in organizations. You will learn and use process modeling techniques to document existing processes, analyze the efficiency of a process using various techniques, and identify and recommend process improvement opportunities. 

Topic Area: Management & Leadership
Available For: All Audiences

In this interactive course, you will learn how to move from a management style to a coaching style in order to be a more effective leader for this growing workforce. You will learn the power of questioning, how relational psychological contracts work and why they are important, and how to give continuous feedback while allowing employees the freedom to grow and fail in a supportive work environment.

Topic Area: Communication
Available For: All Audiences

Today’s organizations depend on a wide variety of written communications⸺from short messages (texting, Slack, Discord) to longer ones (emails) to massive ones (proposals and reports). In this seminar, attendees will learn principles of communicating clearly and concisely so they can minimize mistakes and misunderstandings.

Topic Area: Communication
Available For: All Audiences

Being able to communicate clearly and effectively with others is a vital skill at work and in your personal life. If your colleagues continually catch you off your guard, or you struggle with sensitive situations or difficult people, or you just want to feel understood, this class will help. It incorporates a mix of interactive exercises, enlightening assessments and opportunities to practice new skills.

Topic Area: Communication
Available For: All Audiences

This course will teach you, while maintaining your true behavioral style, how to develop confident body language, effective conversation skills and how to successfully interact with others in both business and social settings. Participants will identify specific interactions they would like to master and develop a strategy to achieve their communication goals.

Topic Area: Management & Leadership
Available For: All Audiences

Learning to deal with conflict effectively is crucial to maintaining healthy professional and personal relationships. In this course, you will have an opportunity to assess how you typically respond to conflict and learn techniques to help address and overcome interpersonal conflict, tension, and misunderstanding. You will also gain awareness of the emotional and psychological processes occurring internally when you are dealing with stressful relationships and will learn skills to help you get to the root of the conflict in any situation.

Topic Area: Management & Leadership
Available For: All Audiences

From solving problems at work to facing challenging personal situations, critical thinking is a valuable skill for everyone to master. Improving critical thinking skills will shape you into a more rational and disciplined thinker, reducing your own prejudice and bias, while helping you understand other viewpoints. This workshop provides you with the skills to analyze the way you think as well as evaluate, identify and distinguish between relevant and irrelevant information, leading to a more productive career.

Topic Area: Communication
Available For: All Audiences

In this course, you will learn about the people, situations, and interactions that can result in conflicts and stress at work. You will discover practical approaches to maintain productive, positive relationships with a range of difficult personality types.

Topic Area: Management & Leadership
Available For: All Audiences

Supervising others can be a tough job. Between managing your own time and projects, helping your team members solve problems and complete tasks, and helping other supervisors, your day can fill up before you know it. This course will help supervisors become more efficient and proficient with information on delegating, managing time, setting goals and expectations (for yourself and others), providing feedback, resolving conflict, accountability, and administering discipline.

Topic Area: Communication
Available For: All Audiences

It is more important now than it ever has been to include well-designed visual elements in written communication. Research shows that readers first engage with the visual elements of documents before anything else. Attention to visual design helps readers determine a document’s credibility and usefulness. In this workshop, you will learn basic principles for constructing visually-appealing, functional documents.

Topic Area: Management & Leadership
Available For: All Audiences

This highly interactive course will introduce you to the fundamentals of time management and planning. You will evaluate your work and personal life in a way you may never have done before—leaving you feeling empowered to execute your time-managed plans like you’ve always wanted. Become more aware of your relationship with time and learn rubber-meets-the-road practical tools and action plans to help you take control of both your personal and professional life.

Topic Area: Business Analysis
Available For: All Audiences

This course covers techniques used to effectively involve and engage stakeholders for the purpose of eliciting requirements, including when and how to use each technique. Through hands-on learning activities, you will learn how to prepare questions, conduct interviews, facilitate group-brainstorming sessions, organize the results, create storyboards and prototypes and present results.

Topic Area: Management & Leadership
Available For: All Audiences

Examining and cultivating your emotional intelligence is a highly effective strategy for improving your interpersonal skills and developing practices that will lead to organizational success. In this course, you will be introduced to the skill sets that "raise the bar" of leadership effectiveness, take part in practical exercises designed to increase your productivity and develop a personalized game plan for leveraging your emotional intelligence to be a high-impact leader.

Topic Area: Communication
Available For: All Audiences

In this interactive course, you will learn how to communicate intentionally, using techniques and best practices based on research and proven methods, to cultivate and hone more effective communication skills. We will explore and practice intentional communication skills, strengthen your listening skills, discuss the power of storytelling and learn about the power of questions, all of which establish a strong foundation for effective professional and personal communication.

Topic Area: Financial Planning
Available For: All Audiences

This course introduces you to the tools to develop practical strategies that focus on a client's goals and objectives to develop a beneficial estate plan. You will learn how to examine the taxation of gifts, estates, and generation-skipping transfers.

Topic Area: Financial Planning
Available For: All Audiences

The Financial Plan Development course serves as the capstone for the Financial Planning Certificate Program. This case-study class structure differs from the traditional lecture class in that you must take a more active role in the learning process. You will be required to complete a hypothetical directed case involving a written comprehensive financial plan and an oral presentation and defense of the comprehensive financial plan

Topic Area: Financial Planning
Available For: All Audiences

This course introduces you to the financial planning process and to the technical skills a competent financial planner must possess in order to serve clients successfully. Learn the fundamental elements of financial planning (insurance, investments, taxation, retirement planning and employee benefits, and estate planning) and their corresponding interrelationship in providing comprehensive personal financial planning. This course also explores the financial planning industry. 

Topic Area: Management & Leadership
Available For: All Audiences

Understand the basic types of negotiations, the phases of negotiations and the skills you need for successful negotiating with help from this workshop. Learn how to understand your opponent and gain the confidence to not settle for less than what you feel is fair. You will learn that an atmosphere of respect is essential, as uneven negotiations could lead to problems in the future.

Topic Area: Management & Leadership
Available For: All Audiences

This individualized coaching session builds upon the lessons learned in Emotional Intelligence: Assessing and Maximizing Your Competencies and Skills and Applying Your EQ to Leadership. It is designed to guide you in developing a strategic flight plan through regular email contact and two personal coaching sessions with the instructor. The telephone coaching and email sessions also help you develop a personalized improvement plan by identifying habits that limit potential and professional development. This understanding helps break those habits, improve the emotional intelligence skill set, and pave the way to success.

Topic Area: Financial Planning
Available For: All Audiences

This course explores the financial risks that your individual and business clients encounter and how they can manage those risks, including the utilization of insurance solutions. Learn how to determine a client's risk exposure and develop a comprehensive insurance and risk management plan based on the client's goals and objectives.

Topic Area: Management & Leadership
Available For: All Audiences

Whether your role requires management of a team, supply chain, product development, inventory, contracts or sales pipelines, every business professional must be proficient at tracking, projecting and reporting financial information in order to be successful. This course will help you build essential financial management skills that will enhance your personal toolset and ensure that you apply best practices when managing fiduciary responsibilities.

Topic Area: Graphic Design
Available For: All Audiences

In this short, self-paced introductory course, you will learn Adobe design program basics and explore the fundamentals behind three primary Adobe products - Photoshop, InDesign and Illustrator - taken in the order of your choice.

Topic Area: Financial Planning
Available For: All Audiences

This course introduces you to the concepts of risk and return, the differences between equity and fixed-income investments, the mathematics of investing, the evaluation of investment theories and strategies and the regulation of the investment industry. Learn to calculate investment fees and expenses, time-weighted vs. dollar-weighted returns, arithmetic vs. geometric returns, risk-adjusted returns and after-tax returns. You will gain the skills to develop a suitable investment portfolio established to meet a client's goals and objectives and prepare an appropriate plan of implementation based on this information.

Topic Area: Communication
Available For: All Audiences

Fostering open discussion is a challenge depending on a workplace’s discourse culture and an individual's willingness to be candid. In this hands-on course you will learn and practice appropriate strategies for inviting input, handling disagreement, coming to decisions and reporting decisions to insiders and outsiders.

Topic Area: Management & Leadership
Available For: All Audiences

Some say that leaders are born, not made. While it may be true that some people are born leaders, many leaders are born in the midst of adversity. Often people who have never been in a leadership role will stand up and take the lead when a situation they care about requires it. Explore the many facets and types of leadership in this course, from transformational leadership to differentiating between leading and managing a team. Conduct an inventory on your leadership skills and learn how to incorporate them into your professional life, enabling you to become an effective and approachable leader.

Topic Area: Management & Leadership
Available For: All Audiences

In this course you will be introduced to the fundamentals of change management in an organizational setting. Learn how to address the impact of change—on your team, on your organization and on you.

Topic Area: Management & Leadership
Available For: All Audiences

The transition from individual contributor to manager often happens quickly and may not include training or additional support. In this course, you will learn the fundamentals of entry-level management skills and techniques and develop an action plan for applying what you learn back on the job. With these skills, you will be able to manage with confidence and demonstrate success quickly in that all-important first management role.

Topic Area: Management & Leadership
Available For: All Audiences

Managers play a crucial role in any organization's success. Good managers know how to achieve positive results through their interactions with people. Motivating and retaining talented people can give your organization a true competitive advantage. This course provides provides an exceptional overview of management with particular emphasis on motivation techniques.

Topic Area: Management & Leadership
Available For: All Audiences

In this course, you will learn how to manage without authority by developing a skill set that helps you manage a team that crosses departmental boundaries. You will develop strategies to help you complete projects on time and on budget. At the same time, you will gain valuable insight into how to build trust and help other team members realize their potential.

Topic Area: Communication
Available For: All Audiences

Professionals who can write clearly and correctly save themselves and their organization's time and effort from repeated proofreading reviews. Small mistakes in writing can make significant negative impressions in the workplace and diminish your credibility. In this course, you will learn the standard rules for proper usage and grammar, including commas, colons, semicolons, parenthesis and commonly confused words like “effect” and “affect.” You and your fellow classmates will work in teams to apply what you learn in hands-on exercises and activities. 

Topic Area: Management & Leadership
Available For: All Audiences

Moving a team from dysfunctional to cohesive and high performing requires every member’s commitment, effort and discipline, making this course a great opportunity for team improvement and professional development. Throughout the course, participants learn communication strategies, conflict resolution tools, and methods for building trust to help improve overall team function. Individual team members are also provided with specific feedback allowing for a better understanding of how individual personalities contribute to team development and success.

Topic Area: Management & Leadership
Available For: All Audiences

Effective leaders and managers influence people. When you're clear about your personal power of influence, you will be able to utilize your strengths to engage others, leading to increased team motivation and productivity in the workplace. In this course, you will gain a greater awareness of your ability to influence others in order to create a positive environment in your organization. 

Topic Area: Management & Leadership
Available For: All Audiences

The ability to self-promote is crucial for success in dealing with clients and for career advancement. However, even the confident and accomplished tend to flounder when asked to talk about themselves. You need to know how to introduce yourself, tell your story, connect to your audience, and discuss your accomplishments and qualities with ease, enthusiasm, and clarity. Gain tools and tips for promoting yourself in this workshop, and practice self-promotion to increase awareness of the impressions you make. Practice managing what you communicate to others with your elevator pitch, networking, personal branding, social media and business writing.

Topic Area: Management & Leadership
Secondary Topic Area: Project Management
Available For: All Audiences

In this course, you will learn the basic characteristics of a project and how to manage one effectively, explore key areas of expertise and learn how project stakeholders and organizational structures affect outcomes. Using A Guide to the Project Management Body of Knowledge (PMBOK® Guide), published by the Project Management Institute (PMI)®, you will discover the five process groups of project management: initiating, planning, executing, controlling and closing.

Topic Area: Communication
Available For: All Audiences

This course incorporates cutting-edge research from social psychology to TED Talks on building a positive mindset and managing speaking anxiety. Best practices in the slide design and special challenges concerning modern presentations will be explored, from webinars to video and phone conferences. Coupled with how to speak in a compelling manner, manage audience engagement, answer questions concisely, and other “quick win” approaches, this session will elevate your public speaking know-how. Activities and discussions will be incorporated throughout the class to guarantee a powerful blend of strategies and practice.

Topic Area: Financial Planning
Available For: All Audiences

This course explores the nature and function of retirement plans and provides a survey of the more common benefits and retirement programs offered by companies today. You will learn how to recommend an appropriate plan of action that helps your clients combine their employee benefits with their long-term goals and objectives to create a comprehensive financial plan.

Topic Area: Human Resources
Secondary Topic Area: Management & Leadership
Available For: All Audiences

SHRM Essentials® of HR Management is an introductory course offering a complete overview of real-life human resource issues and important topics, including employment law, selecting qualified employees, compensation, new employee orientation, and training and the performance management process.

Topic Area: Communication
Available For: All Audiences

Whether it’s explaining the benefits and strengths of your ideas to upper-management, negotiating with customers or negotiating with coworkers, you are probably called upon to speak at work daily. But is your “vocal image” helping you or hurting you? There is more to our voices than meets the ear. A poor vocal impression can lead to diminished credibility, loss of support and even lost business. In this course, you will learn about the vocal range and practice the skill of voice projection in a professional setting. You will develop strategies to overcome common vocal issues, including having a high-pitched tone, speaking too softly or too quickly, straining the voice and not having enough vocal variety.

Topic Area: Management & Leadership
Available For: All Audiences

This course will help you build a fundamental knowledge of strategic planning and goal setting, teaching you how to integrate both into the functioning of your department or organization. Ultimately, this course will improve how you collaborate with other leaders to engender an environment that creates purpose and meaning for all employees. In addition to learning the strategic planning process, you will have an opportunity to create a plan of action to immediately implement in your organization.

Topic Area: Management & Leadership
Available For: All Audiences

The success of a team is determined by the interactions among its members. In this highly interactive course, you will learn about systems thinking, a management discipline that focuses on understanding a system by examining the interactions between its components.

Topic Area: Communication
Available For: All Audiences

In this course, you will learn several tools and tips to help you speak with more confidence and ease at work and in social settings. You will have the opportunity to practice what you learn in a safe and supportive environment, including techniques to overcome the fear of public speaking.

Topic Area: Financial Planning
Available For: All Audiences

This course delves into current tax code concepts, issues and regulations and the resulting consequences and liabilities to a financial planner's clients. You will develop tax planning strategies to manage tax liability and to accumulate assets while minimizing tax consequences.

Topic Area: Communication
Available For: All Audiences

Skillfully written technical material is able to clearly and concisely convey an understanding of new technologies, processes or concepts. No matter the reading level of your audience, the principles behind good technical writing remain the same. In this course, you will become more familiar and comfortable with the technical writing process and develop strategies to present technical details and data in the most easily understood and meaningful manner for your audience. You will strengthen your writing style and learn to employ design techniques that will improve your technical documents.

Topic Area: Management & Leadership
Available For: All Audiences

This course involves a 360° emotional intelligence assessment utilizing the EQ360. It is meant to serve as an outcome measure of progress and change after taking the self-administered Emotional Quotient Inventory (EQ-i®) as part of the Emotional Intelligence series. You will re-take the EQ-i® to rate your level of emotional intelligence, and select from among managers, peers, direct reports, family and friends, and others to also rate their emotional intelligence via the EQ360.

Topic Area: Management & Leadership
Available For: All Audiences

This course introduces key principles and practical techniques to enhance your personal leadership presence. It will explore the skills of successful leaders that contribute to their leadership competency and teach you how to capitalize on your own leadership presence.

Topic Area: Management & Leadership
Available For: All Audiences

Transformational leaders create and sustain an environment that supports and excites employees and focuses on team-building, motivation, and collaboration at all levels of an organization. In this course, you will develop a unique transformational leadership mindset that goes beyond managing the usual day-to-day activities to create strategies for taking your team to the next level of performance and success. Learn how to set goals and incentives to motivate the team while providing opportunities for personal and professional growth for each member.

Topic Area: Business Analysis
Available For: All Audiences

Learn how to determine if a new business initiative is worth pursuing in this one-day course. Discover how to analyze the business need using techniques like systems thinking and root cause analysis. Study how to analyze capability gaps and define the scope. You will leave class ready to prepare a strong business case that aligns with your business strategy. 

Topic Area: Management & Leadership
Available For: All Audiences

Emotional Intelligence as measured by one’s emotional quotient (EQ), can be several times more powerful in predicting occupational performance than IQ (intelligence quotient) because it reflects the ability to apply what you know to the real-world situations you face. This course is designed to help participants unlock their leadership skills through the power of Emotional Intelligence.

Topic Area: Management & Leadership
Available For: All Audiences

Women in the workforce face unique systemic and interpersonal challenges throughout their careers. In this highly interactive course, participants will gain tools, tips and practical experience to elevate their status in the workplace, speak with influence and rise above gender communication challenges. Participants will learn the strategy for lifting others up that was successfully used by female staff in the Obama White House and we will explore how gender roles, as well as our own behaviors and thinking, can impede our career advancement and satisfaction. In addition, we will cover key gender communication techniques that will empower you with concrete strategies to increase your confidence and enhance your professional communication and leadership style.

Topic Area: Management & Leadership
Available For: All Audiences

Is your inner critic, that pesky negative voice in your head, trash-talking your efforts? Are you noticing imposter syndrome, a feeling like you're not good enough and your colleagues or team will soon find out and be disappointed in you? Do you find yourself wishing you said the right thing in a meeting instead of what actually occurred? Or, are you hiding in your comfort zone, hesitant to take professional risks?

Topic Area: Communication
Available For: All Audiences

How do business proposals work and what do you need to include in yours to accomplish your goals? In this course, we’ll approach business proposals as persuasive arguments, dissecting a proposal, examining its underlying components and putting it back together in ways that increase its effectiveness.

Topic Area: Communication
Available For: All Audiences

Whether you’re writing an email, building a website, creating a slide deck or posting a video, it’s essential to make that communication open and understandable to individuals with a varying range of abilities. This course will introduce and provide opportunities to exercise the practice of writing for accessibility.

Topic Area: Communication
Available For: All Audiences

Policies and procedures are important documents in any organization. Procedures that are effectively designed and written help both managers and employees increase efficiency and productivity, reduce mistakes and frustration and save time and money by providing clear guidelines that are easy to find and follow. In this course, you will learn best practices for writing policies, procedures and supporting documentation to help you develop logical and easy-to-understand documents. You will learn to prepare material that is consistently formatted, informative, appropriate for the needs of your audience and organization and ready for distribution both in print and online.