Hear the stories of employers and organizations who experienced team development with OSU's Professional and Continuing Education.
As Oregon State University's premier leader in noncredit courses and professional training, Professional and Continuing Education (PACE) partners with diverse organizations to develop state-of-the-art solutions for their unique workforce needs.
We have partnered with 100+ different organizations, companies, non-profits, and government agencies for their workforce development, corporate training, and team-based professional development. Below you can sample stories of our past partnerships and how OSU PACE supported each team's unique need.
A multi-year partnership with the Oregon Department of Revenue (DOR) encompassed a wide array of PACE’s workforce development capabilities. Over the course of more than a dozen projects – training for DOR’s workforce – PACE supported the agency leadership’s commitment to provide exceptional service to the taxpayers of Oregon. Highlights of this partnership included:
> Interactive onboarding training for tax auditors, including dynamic role-playing examples focused on both technical knowledge and effective communication. This project streamlined training for agency offices across the state and allowed supervisors and mentors to provide more meaningful, individualized attention to new employees based on data gathered during online training.
> Orientation training for the agency’s newly formed Corporate Activity tax unit. This project helped provide alignment among members joining this essential team.
> Managing remote work teams training for agency supervisors and front-line staff. As the agency implemented more remote and hybrid work options in the wake of COVID, PACE sourced subject matter experts to align efforts across the agency to ensure high levels of employee engagement.
PACE also facilitated a number of timely speakers and workshops to help ensure DOR staff were well versed on emerging issues, including the implication of tax-related legislation at the federal and/or state level. This collaboration leveraged PACE’s unique strengths – a commitment to engaging, state-of-the-art online training, a flexible approach to sourcing subject matter expertise and responsiveness to corporate partners’ needs.
When Oregon Health Authority (OHA) needed an online learning platform to support professional development of more than 50,000 essential care workers across the state, the agency turned to Oregon State University. Building on a multi-year partnership led by the OSU College of Public Health’s Center for Health Innovation, PACE worked with OHA’s Oregon Home Care Commission unit to develop a dynamic and customized platform solution. This approach involved establishing a custom online learning management environment, and supporting the agency’s rapid migration to digital-first training options for certification programs that include dozens of individual courses. The result? PACE is managing an ongoing collaboration that is accelerating OHA's commitment to provide accessible, flexible training options and advance career mobility for essential workers.
Managers at Intel’s Hillsboro site identified an opportunity for an engineering team to better align its efforts related to development of technical reports. The PACE-crafted solution involved recruiting OSU instructors with technical writing expertise to guide the team through structured online experiences and on-site workshops that leveraged company-specific standards and relevant examples from past projects. In just a matter of weeks, this highly customized approach enabled the Intel team to collaborate more productively based on common standards and expectations. As a result, the unit was better positioned to produce more impactful technical reports for internal stakeholders and external clients.
Yellowhawk Tribal Health Center, a facility providing high-quality, primary healthcare for the Confederated Tribes of the Umatilla Indian Reservation and other American Indians and Alaska Natives in Oregon’s Umatilla and Union counties, sought PACE’s involvement on a project designed to improve operational efficiency and patient satisfaction. The center’s leadership had a goal of integrating lean principles across its primary service areas. To support this goal, PACE convened a specialist team that featured experts from Lean Portland, an organization that focuses on collaboration with nonprofit organizations. Over a period of three months, PACE facilitated workshops for Yellowhawk Tribal Health Center administrators at their clinic location. This collaborative process included mapping of existing center processes and identifying opportunities for improvement. The workshop series culminated with a facilitated visit to a healthcare organization in Portland that is renowned for its lean process-driven practice. This gave participants the opportunity to observe these processes “in action” and learn directly from their peers. Overall, this effort represented a milestone in the center’s ongoing effort to optimize care provided to its tribal community.
Xavier University of Louisiana became aware of Oregon State’s unique and scalable model of providing self-paced online Disability Access Services training to its faculty. In an effort to address a similar need at its own institution, Xavier’s Human Resources team sought solutions from PACE to utilize the university’s core curriculum to train its own faculty. PACE facilitated a collaboration with OSU's Disability Access Services team to modify OSU’s existing online modules for use by Xavier. The result? A Xavier-branded online course that allowed our partners to rapidly scale disability training across its organization–despite limited time and resources.
The U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) sought PACE’s training consultation to offer essential training for U.S. scientists researchers in a more convenient self-paced online format. Until that time, the agency offered the program primarily in a site-based format that often required an investment in travel and time on the part of instructors and attendees alike. Through our collaboration, PACE worked with USDA experts to create and manage a self-paced online version of “Meeting Requirements of Animal Welfare Act” program. This has enabled USDA to greatly reduce reliance on costly in-person training programs while providing new data and insights on participant engagement. USDA continues to rely on PACE’s robust online platform to deliver and manage this high-value program. To date, the agency has had more than 500 researchers enroll in the online program.
E & J Gallo Winery (Gallo) sought a PACE custom training to equip their sales professionals with up-to-date and thorough knowledge of technology-driven sales and marketing tactics. PACE build an in-depth sales and marketing training for the company’s national sales workforce. This customized experience combined self-paced introductory modules with a series of transformative on-site workshops led by PACE-recruited industry experts. PACE’s customized hybrid solution addressed the company’s goal of equipping its salesforce with expanded insights on marketing tools and tactics to support distributors across the U.S. and beyond. This highly focused effort combined Gallo’s internal expertise, brand and priorities with the perspective of marketing industry professionals recruited by PACE specifically for this initiative. The program saw the company’s sales professionals complete a series of interactive online modules and culminated in intensive on-site workshops that took place in Berkeley, California.
Materials Technology Institute (MTI), a membership-driving organization, provides materials engineering solutions to the processing industry. With member companies including Dow, Dupont, Chevron and Fluor, among others, MTI provides management of technical projects addressing areas of shared industry interest as well as a wide array of technical training to its members.
MTI partnered with PACE to develop online training that would allow member companies to certify employees in industrial facility inspection techniques. This training was originally designed by MTI to support members efforts to manage the lifecycle of industrial storage facilities. Properly managed, such facilities can help maximize resources and address safety while reducing cost.
Through this collaboration, the PACE team transformed a formerly presentation-based training into a state-of-the-art, interactive online training program. This on-demand experience includes dynamic elements that allow participants to closely examine photos and multimedia to illustrate, and ensure understanding of, key technical principles. The PACE instructional design process also embedded activities to assess learners’ progress throughout.
The introduction of this training marks a new approach for MTI, which is now positioned to offer its member companies a unique and dynamic approach to training employees for essential technical roles.
