Sharpen your skills this summer: July classes are just around the corner
June 16, 2026 •
July is a great time to invest in yourself and your career. UCOP Learning and Development has a full lineup of upcoming courses to help you learn something new, sharpen existing skills and stay engaged throughout the summer — all offered free to UCOP staff.
Select each course name to register; listings reflect Pacific Time. Unless stated otherwise, classes take place via Zoom.
Career and leadership development
Career Development Tools
July 7, 10 – 11 a.m.
UCOP offers various on-demand career development tools available to you at any time. LinkedIn Learning and My UC Career are two tools that you can utilize at any point in your career development journey. We will review their capabilities and how to make the most of their resources. Additionally, come learn best practices for building your story-driven LinkedIn profile and brand.
Influencing Without Authority: Leadership as an Individual Contributor
July 17, 10 a.m. – 12 p.m.
Dive into the leadership skills all “rockstars” need to become influential contributors: building trusting workplace relationships, managing up, carving out a niche area of expertise and connecting the dots from their role to the organizational mission. In this training, you’ll gain insight into your unique position of influence at UCOP while exploring the leadership skills of relationship-building, managing up, honing expertise and aligning your work with our organizational mission. Then, you’ll put your skills to work by identifying one skill to strategically focus on for the next month.
Crafting an Effective Resume
July 31, 10 a.m. – 12 p.m.
Learn how to turn your experience into a resume that gets noticed! In this interactive two-hour workshop, you’ll learn how to highlight your strengths and avoid the most common mistakes recruiters and hiring managers see. The session will focus on telling a cohesive story, formatting, sections to include and strategies to minimize the impact of unconscious bias in a recruiting process. We’ll also discuss AI and the Applicant Tracking System (ATS). Come prepared with your most current resume to reflect on during the session.
Software and technology
PowerPoint Techniques
July 9, 10 – 11:30 a.m.
In this highly interactive session, you’ll explore practical, real-world PowerPoint strategies that go beyond basic slide creation. Through scenario-based examples — including building a marketing plan, developing content-rich slides and crafting a customizable sales presentation — you’ll learn how to design, format and deliver presentations that save time, engage your audience and leave a lasting impression.
UCOP Creating Accessible Documents 2: PDFs
July 22, 1 – 2:30 p.m.
Building from skills gained in the Creating Accessible Documents 1: MS Office training (a pre-requisite to this course), this session offers a deep dive into using Adobe Acrobat Pro to manipulate, tag and test PDF documents for accessibility. We will cover tagging documents, common accessibility errors, tables and building accessible PDF forms. To fully participate in this class, you will need to have Adobe Acrobat Pro (not just Acrobat Reader) installed on your computer. Learn how to request software.
Box Fundamentals
July 29, 10 a.m. – 12 p.m.
Get an overview of Box.com, the cloud-based service that offers secure file storage and file sharing at UCOP. Learn how to use Box to collaborate with people in and outside of UCOP. Plus, discover file comments, folder permissions, shared links and other tools to help you get the most out of Box. IT administrators will review the platform’s best features, then answer questions.
Communication skills
July 10, 10 a.m. – 12 p.m.
Reflective listening is a crucial skill for today’s workplace — for leaders and team members — and it’s a skill that you can learn. This course will introduce you to some of the fundamentals of Reflective Listening, allowing you to start practicing today. This course is part of the UCOP Communication series certificate.
For new employees
New Employee Orientation
July 14, 9 a.m. — 12 p.m. | Join us on-site in Oakland
July 16, 10 a.m. – 2 p.m. | Join us virtually
Welcome to UCOP! As a new employee at one of the nation’s top research and teaching universities, you have a world of opportunity ahead of you. Our orientation provides an overview of UC and UCOP, along with tools and resources to help you to onboard successfully.
For people managers
Manager and Employee Conversations Part 1: Feedback and Coaching Employees
July 24, 10 a.m. – 12 p.m.
GROW is a popular coaching framework used around the world for problem solving, goal setting and performance improvement. This interactive session provides managers with the opportunity to discuss and practice using the GROW framework as a strategy and tool to support engaging STEP check-in conversations.
Check out all upcoming classes on the Link Classes and Workshops page. For questions, contact ucopld@ucop.edu.
Tags: professional development, UCOP Learning and Development
