Essential Business Skills Certificate
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Online Certificate Program
The OLLU School of Business and Leadership offers an online Essential Business Skills certificate program that aims to help professionals achieve their career goals by mastering the most essential skills in a business environment. The program prepares ethical, knowledgeable, critically thinking and collaborative servant leaders with necessary skills and vision.
This certificate is for non-degree seeking students.
Program Outcomes
Students who earn the Essential Business Skills Certificate will be able to:
- Identify business environment challenges and develop strategies to overcome those challenges
- Analyze complex business problems and develop creative solutions
- Identify optimal solutions in negotiations and develop the skills as a successful negotiator
- Communicate effectively using various professional communication methods in a business setting
- Describe and discuss issues relevant to environmental sustainability in managerial decision making
- Examine past and present technology trends and infer business-related results in different sectors
Course Descriptions
The Essential Business Skills Certificate program consists of five online courses. Students will take two courses during the fall, two courses during the spring and one course during the summer.
Fall
This course investigates technological movements and their impact on a variety of fields. Students will research the challenges and opportunities that new technology will create in agriculture, transportation, education, health care, security, currency, entertainment and arts. Additionally, students will learn about the development of new materials and production techniques that will shape the way we do business for the next 50 years.
This course examines both the concepts of creativity and innovation: what they are, how they impact business and how to bring them to your business enterprise. The main objective will be to teach students how to be creative – how to ‘unleash’ the right side of their brain.
Spring Semester
This course explores persuasive communication strategies and applied negotiation techniques. The course contains a strong written component and oral presentations. Topics and activities integrated into the course include salesmanship, strategic negotiation, negotiation preparation, conflict resolution, applications of interactions with stakeholders, illustrating guidelines of communication with different audiences, communication theory and ethical concerns about persuasive techniques.
This course includes an overview of the role sustainability plays in 21st century business. It explores the connection between innovation and sustainable practices. Each of the three “P’s” will be covered: people, planet and profit. The course analyzes each of the three P’s contribution to the bottom line and the efforts various companies have made in sustainability (e.g. Coca Cola, Walmart, Hanes).
Summer
This course teaches students to identify business environment challenges and develop strategies to overcome those challenges. Topics covered in the course will include the challenge of office politics; blending into the pre-dominant culture while maintaining your own; effective integration with colleagues, managers, subordinates and outside stakeholders; gender issues in the workplace; keys to effective meetings; crisis management; and intra-organizational communication.
Earn Credit Toward your MBA-Management
The Essential Business Skills Certificate can stand alone to demonstrate expertise in business skills, or the earned credits can be added toward the completion of the Master of Business Administration (MBA) degree at OLLU. Students have up to one year after they have completed their last certificate course to transfer credits into a related graduate program.