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Customized Training

Empower your employees with professional continuing education.

Learn how the Virginia Tech Roanoke Center can help develop, train, and elevate your organization's talent. All of our course offerings are available as standalone opportunities or may be combined in a custom package that suits your needs.  

Our portfolio of noncredit professional development courses and programs provide working adults with opportunities to advance, upskill, or refocus their career. Workshops, conferences, and classes are delivered in a full-day, half-day, or multi-day format in our facility - or yours! Continuing Education Units from Virginia Tech can be awarded upon request.  

Below is a menu of customizable areas of interest, along with program topics. If your organization is interested in a topic that is not listed, please reach out and we can design a program specifically for you!

Lean Foundations is a full-day class (9 a.m.-4:30 p.m., lunch included) led by Lean experts. It will examine Lean as a philosophy and a system. It will help you identify the benefits and challenges of creating a continuous improvement culture. You will explore the ways to get started and leave class with the tools to establish new behaviors and capabilities.

Who should attend?

  • Local government
  • Health care
  • Utilities
  • Non-manufacturers (Lean is for you, too!)
  • Small-business owners
  • Those looking for an introduction to Lean thinking

What you'll learn:

  • Definition of Lean + core concepts
  • History of Lean and its origin
  • Lean principles and examples of waste
  • Tools and methods of Lean improvement:  5S, Standard Work, Pull, Cells
  • Qualities of a continuous improvement culture
  • Ways to get started on the Lean journey

This class is suitable for employees at any level. No prior exposure to Lean is required.

Our project management fundamentals course is an introduction and overview to the project management discipline, including the concepts, tools, and techniques used in the management and leadership of all projects.

Key topics covered:

  • Role of the project manager
  • Project team selection and management
  • Cost, schedule, and risk management
  • Conflict and negotiations
  • Quality in projects
  • Introduction to creating and maintaining project plans throughout the project life cycle

Participants will gain a greater insight into project management and leadership skills. They will understand how personality and culture influence emotions and behavior and what effect that has on project outcomes. This is a one-day course that can be taught at our facility or yours; it includes a copy of the book Fundamentals of Project Management by J. Heagney. If you have questions, please contact us.

This course will give an in-depth introduction to project management principles and concepts, as well as the practical tools necessary to manage and lead all projects. The second day will focus on application and hands-on exercises. All concepts and topics in Project Management Fundamentals are covered in the first day and the second day uses those fundamentals in a hands-on interactive session.

This two-day course can be taught at our facility or yours. If you have questions, please contact us.

This is an 8-hour training that provides individuals with an opportunity to learn safe practices defined by the National Fire Protection Association (NFPA).

Topics include:

  • Establishing electrically safe work conditions
  • Skills needed to create an Arc Flash safety program
  • Identification of warning labels
  • Calculating hazards
  • Reviewing appropriate personal protective equipment
  • Evaluating the criterion for training others
  • Assessing the tools needed for live equipment

This is a one-day course that can be taught at our facility or yours. A certificate of completion will be given to those participants who successfully complete the class. If you have questions, please contact us.

This program will review the Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) requirements for the Lockout/Tagout regulation.

Participants will learn:

  • Types of active and stored energy sources + controls
  • Lockout procedures
  • Tagout procedures
  • Understanding of employee verification responsibilities

This is a half-day program that can be taught at our facility or yours. If you have questions, please contact us.

We offer the OSHA 10-hour and OSHA 30-hour classes for General Industry or Construction. The classes qualify participants for the OSHA 10-hour or 30-hour card. Emphasis is placed on what OSHA requires from your company, the benefits of OSHA for industry, the most common causes of accidents and injuries and the basic safety standards for industry. Along with the 10- or 30-hour OSHA card, a certificate of completion will be awarded to participants upon successful completion of the course.

These are half-day courses that can be taught at our facility or yours. If you have questions, please contact us.

Life can be unpredictable, and every company needs a succession plan in case a big member of the team moves on. In this half-day training, participants will learn best practices in succession planning, including how to identify and focus on critical positions, identify competencies to inform learning and development plans and assess performance, identify succession management strategies, document and implement a succession plan, evaluate the effectiveness of succession plans, and best practices in succession planning.

In this team-building course, participants from an organization learn together how their Individual MBTI types contribute to the overall accomplishments of the team. A focus on how to identify everyone's dominant function along with learning ways to leverage each team member's strengths to maximize the team's efforts is explored. Using the foundation of type, the topics of appreciative inquiry, conflict resolution and leadership are explored. One-on-one coaching sessions can also be provided to enhance the individual participant's personal and professional development. This course is one half-day (4 hours) and includes handouts, MBTI assessment and interactive training.

The following courses can be taught alone or be part of your customized programming package. If you would like yourself or your team to experience all of these classes, we offer an annual Leadership Academy

This workshop emphasizes how diverse backgrounds and skill levels improve problem solving and encourage growth and change. Creating an inclusive environment relieves workplace stress and increases productivity from people at all levels. Discover ways to build a welcoming environment.

Adaptive leadership is a unique combination of skills, perspectives, and guided efforts that enable true excellence. This class offers strategies and tools to enable you to build agility, resiliency, and comfort with change. Pre-work assigned.

The Making Smart Decisions workshop will help you build the behaviors, mental habits, and practices to:

  • Avoid the traps and pitfalls in judgment.
  • Develop a core values statement and related non-negotiables to guide decisions.
  • Cultivate clarity through actionable questions.
  • Outsmart personal bias to improve decision making.
  • Communicate effectively with transparency and empathy.

This class focuses on leadership as active and action based and it equips participants with the knowledge, skills, and motivation to return to their teams committed to implementing change. Emphasis is placed on writing, speaking, discussing, analyzing, and planning. Gain understanding of effective confrontation and problem-solving skills to define individual responsibilities to achieve team goals.

Emotional intelligence is a set of skills that capture an awareness of our own emotions and the emotions of others. In this class, you will learn how to use this awareness to manage yourself effectively and form quality relationships. High degrees of Emotional Intelligence (EQ) result in higher effectiveness, productivity, and job satisfaction. Included in the class is a professional EQ assessment (EQ-i 2.0) for individualized feedback on your EQ. Pre-work assigned.

This workshop offers an opportunity to identify and think through the challenges of ethical living and leading. Exercises focus on examining the “invisible” challenges present in all workplaces and will assist you in making smart decisions that align with the core values of the organization. Pre-work assigned.

Creativity is reflected in everything we see that is man-made. Both in design and function, man-made items exist only because of creativity. Creativity allows individuals to solve problems, to create new products, to improve on old products, and to increase efficiency.

Contrary to popular belief, creativity is not only about aesthetics – it is the heart that drives the economy! Creativity is truly the lubricant that keeps the wheels of economic and commercial progress rolling. However, creativity is not just about problem-solving, product development, and improving efficiency; it is also an essential ingredient of strong leadership. Without creative thinking skills, leaders lack the ability to provide vision, to inspire teams, and to act in dynamic and unique ways to carry organizations to even higher levels.

The belief that creativity plays a vital role in both human life and in business life and that creativity has a distinct DNA that leaders can embrace and reinforce in the workplace in order to unleash the power of creativity as a driving force of an organization’s culture serves as the foundation upon which your leadership development will rest.

The following courses can be taught alone or be part of your customized programming package. You or your team can experience all of these classes in our premier Emerging Leaders Series - which also includes an orientation, leadership basics, and self-reflection exercise. Ask us about this option.

This class focuses on leadership as active and action based and it equips participants with the knowledge, skills, and motivation to return to their teams committed to implementing change. Emphasis is placed on writing, speaking, discussing, analyzing, and planning. Gain understanding of effective confrontation and problem-solving skills to define individual responsibilities to achieve team goals.

Understanding the perspectives of others is increasingly important in our world; 85 percent of job success comes from well-developed soft skills. The ability to understand and empathize with others is often seen to be the most valuable of these skills.

What: In this workshop, you will learn approaches to authentic listening, transformational empathy, understanding others’ perspectives, and building trust. You will increase your intercultural and interdisciplinary awareness, sensitivity, and understanding. You will become more capable of recognizing and addressing perceptual differences, contrasting points of view, or competing objectives in relational conversations. You will explore the value of conflict in collaborative relationships and learn to recognize when a particular approach to communication is unsuccessful and another strategy is required.

Benefits: Innovation is born of negotiation, collaboration, and connection across differences of all kinds. In this workshop participants will practice approaches to effective collaboration and will be able to apply the skills in their work and personal lives.

Who should attend: Professionals working in collaborative teams. Individuals wishing to increase their ability to connect in meaningful ways to others.

When: This is a 3-hour workshop.

It's the night before a presentation at work or a job interview. You are feeling anxious, you have butterflies in your stomach, and you're worried your performance will suffer because of it. What would you do if you had techniques in your back pocket that could help calm your nerves, engage your audience, and communicate a clear message? If you were a little less on edge before having to speak in public, what could you accomplish?

Professional actors are some of the best at grabbing and holding an audience. Our instructor, Greg Justice, is both a professor and an actor. In this Public Speaking & Presentation Skills workshop, he will equip you with the tools used by actors to:

  • Rein in stage fright.
  • Gain the attention of an audience.
  • Keep their audience focused on what is said.
  • Make their words memorable.

There's no need to worry about being put on the spot in this public speaking course; you can expect to be participatory, but you will never be put on the spot.

Who should attend?
Anyone who speaks in front of an audience in any situation and wants to learn how to do it with confidence and leave a good lasting impression.

Our instructor:
Greg Justice is a professional speaker, executive speaker trainer, actor, director, and associate professor in the School of Performing Arts at Virginia Tech. He has been offering workshops in the industry for over 25 years. His diverse list of clients includes several Fortune 500 companies, scores of CEOs, and hundreds of businesses and business organizations.

Communicate in the virtual world with confidence. The vast majority of demonstrations available on using video conferencing are about the technology. This workshop is about you.

Do you wonder if you're communicating effectively with your co-workers, business partners and others? This 2-hour workshop is designed to equip you with ways to communicate effectively when using online-conferencing tools.

These can be added on to any customized training package or used as stand-alone assessments for your team.

Are you ready to partner with Virginia Tech? Contact us.