Courses | Business Skills

Antioch's continuing education courses and workshops for business leaders offers training that will help you make an immediate difference in your organization. You have lots of opportunities to make new contacts and enrich your career.

Building Business Workshops
Integrated Marketing
Grant Writing
Mediator as Leader: The Challenge Is Ours
Effective Negotiation
Applications of Appreciative Inquiry with Steve Cato
How to Teach What You Know
Practical Instructional Design

Check out the full list of options here as well as in the Certificates section.

"Building Business" Breakfast Series —
Asking the Right Question About Your Business: Moving From Good to Great
Thursday, Oct. 25, Nov. 1 and 8, 8 to 9:30 a.m.
Tuition: $90 general public; $75 Antioch alumni and GSBA, WBO, SLU Chamber, Belltown Bus. Assn. and Great Seattle Chamber of Commerce members

More than 95% of the time, when something is wrong with a business, people jump to the conclusion it is a sales/marketing problem. In fact, it is almost always an internal systems problem (and that can be record keeping, accounting or a human internal system, such as misalignment of personality with business, drugs/drinking or an introvert in an extrovert business). This course will help you get to the real issues that need to be addressed.

Session One: Business audit – seek the right question and unmask biases and assumptions that might be preventing you from discovering the real problem

Session Two: Build on your assessment results – flesh out potential solutions in a live, co-creative setting where you bounce ideas off one another

Session Three: Present your learning and solutions – learn from assessments, solution finding and presentations of participants

Instructor: Shelley Woods Glendenning has been a small business sales/marketing specialist who has served clients ranging from individuals to wildly entrepreneurial ventures and more traditional Fortune 500 companies. Today, she is coordinating the opening of the Center for Business Development located on the Clover Park Technical College campus. Glendenning earned her M.A. in Whole Systems Design at Antioch University Seattle.

Integrated Marketing
Saturday, Nov. 10, 9 a.m. to noon or
Thursday, Nov. 15, 1 to 4 p.m.
Tuition: $99 General, $89 Antioch alumni, staff and GSBA, WBO, SLU Chamber, Belltown Bus. Assn. and Great Seattle Chamber of Commerce members

Based on a review of standard marketing practices, this workshop focuses on how to amplify success using an integrated marketing plan designed around an "axis" of communication. This approach assures that you are projecting a strong unified message through advertising, sales, promotion and/or public relations — making sure that you are asking the right questions and using the right assumptions.

This introductory session will be offered in Seattle twice, serving as preparation/foundation for 2008 Integrated Marketing - Writing Group (IM-G). This group meets in support of participants who want to write an integrated marketing strategy, using this holistic, modern method to pull their work into the next level of success.

GRWR501: Grant Writing (1.5 CEUs)
Thursday, Oct. 18 to Nov. 15, 6:30 to 9:30 p.m.
Tuition: $300 General, $275 Antioch alumni and staff

If you work or volunteer in nonprofit, public or educational environments and want to gain or polish your grant writing skills, consider this course. Aimed at both novice and more experienced grant writers, the course surveys the process, structure and skill of professional proposal writing. You learn the entire proposal writing process and complete the course with a solid understanding of not only the ideal structure, but also a holistic sense of the factors that contribute to getting your program funded.

Through the completion of interactive exercises and activities, you put proven techniques into practice. You are exposed to the fine art of grant writing and practice the skills and techniques for a successful grant proposal. You also address the basics of researching grant opportunities and focus on grant seeking as an integrated, multidimensional and dynamic endeavor.

In this course, you learn to:

Identify and use online and database research tools, as well as publications and directories that contain information about foundation, corporation and government grant opportunities
Understand the purpose of program planning and how it fits with grant writing
Utilize strategies to communicate with funders throughout the grant-seeking process
Draft at least one proposal or letter of inquiry based on research
Craft a grant-seeking plan to bring grant funding to an organization or a project

Instructor: Jenny Senh is the Development Director at Community Voice Mail, a national nonprofit that provides free voice mail boxes to people in crisis and transition. She brings over seven years of fund development experience from United Way of King County and in her volunteer roles with the University of Washington Alumnae Board, Puget Sound Grantwriters Association, and the Association of Prospect Researchers for Advancement. She also completed a Certificate in Nonprofit Management from the University of Washington.

Mediator as Leader: The Challenge Is Ours
(.6 CEUs)
Tuesday, Oct. 30, 9 a.m. to 4 p.m.
Tuition: $175

This workshop provides skills for experienced mediators to lead effective organizations and build webs of association to realize significant changes at work and in the community. Participants gain:

Time for self-reflection to assess their leadership skills
Application of mediation techniques to organizational effectiveness
And strategies for transforming their work environment and mediation practice to develop linking leaders of the future.

The workshop is co-sponsored by Dispute Resolution Center of Snohomish and Island Counties and Washington Mediation Association.

Instructor: Joan Goldsmith is a mediator and organizational consultant, specializing in complex disputes and leadership development in corporations, governments and nonprofit organizations in the U.S., Latin America, Europe and Asia. Her best-selling books Learning to Lead and Resolving Conflicts at Work and Resolving Personal and Organizational Conflicts: Stories of Transformation and Forgiveness have been respected resources for leaders and mediators internationally. She is founder of Cambridge College and former faculty member of Harvard, UCLA and Antioch.

Effective Negotiation (1.2 CEUs)
Sunday, Oct. 21 and 28, 1 to 5 p.m.
Tuition: $569 general, $519 Antioch alumni, staff, students and GSBA, WBO, SLU Chamber, Belltown Bus. Assn. and Great Seattle Chamber of Commerce members

Explore the psychology of negotiations and its components: relationships between negotiators, negotiation models, skills of negotiation and the impact of culture on negotiation. You have an in-depth look at the configuration of negotiation, conflict and agreement and study verbal and nonverbal impact of language in negotiations. The workshop focuses on practical examples that enrich an understanding of theories, techniques and skills of effective negotiation.

Instructor: Sayyed Mohsen Fatemi, Ph. D., holds doctorates in psychology and language and literacy education. He conducts seminars and workshops on emotional intelligence, negotiation and communication skills throughout North America and overseas. He also teaches for the University of British Columbia and other universities.

Applications of Appreciative Inquiry (.75 CEUs)
Tuesday, Nov 6, 13, 20, 8:30 to 11 a.m.
Tuition: $390 General public, $350 Antioch alumni, $310 for PNODN members

This course is for experienced organizational development professionals and human resources managers who want to explore and expand their understanding of appreciative inquiry in a modality like an early morning campfire when you're greeting the day, watching the sunrise, smelling the coffee, and freezing your tail off. Steve Cato facilitates your being alive to learn in those moments and glad to be in a community of fellow campers. Advanced topics are interwoven into the three sessions and participants develop a community of post-graduate learners. The presumption is that participants can help themselves and each other, collaborate and deepen existing skills and practice new applications.

Participants learn techniques and tips of useful and practical value, engage in interesting conversation about the use of positive approaches in organizations and play some of those out in their own work situation.

Instructor: Steven M. Cato, Ph.D., President of Moss Bay Consulting Partnership, has worked in organizational change for the past 30 years for a vast range of corporate, governmental and non-profit clients in technology, health care, manufacturing and service areas helping executives and their organizations discover and effectively pursue inspiring and realistic visions of their future. Dr. Cato received his master's degree in business administration from the University of New Hampshire and his Ph.D. in organization behavior and research from Case Western University.

Practical Instructional Design (1.5 CEUs)
Offered again winter 2008
Tuition: $375 general, $350 Antioch alumni and faculty, $325 Antioch students

This course teaches how to develop, design and deliver successful training materials for traditional and online classroom settings. Students discover how to apply research-based adult instructional principles to an organization's training needs. Students learn skills in selecting the most appropriate applications of media and technology, as well as how to analyze learners' needs, set goals and evaluate results. The course includes a review of several of the most successful training models used in the field today and provides techniques and tips for adapting and implementing them.

Instructor: Peggy Jacobson, Ph.D. owns a technical communication and instructional design company. She has more than 20 years of experience designing curriculum and developing training materials and train-the-trainer programs for virtual and traditional classrooms. Guest speakers are also scheduled.