Classes & Workshops

Note: All listings on this page reflect Pacific Time. Unless noted otherwise, classes are held virtually via Zoom.

2026 Winter Cohorts Now Open for Application

2026 UCOP Mentorship Program is an exciting opportunity to share and learn career skills and leadership practices, guide and navigate the UCOP culture, and establish long term professional relationships. Review the program FAQ and register for an info session! Apply to be a mentee or Apply and/or recommend someone to mentor others by December 5, 2025
2026 Take Charge: If you’re an administrative, support or entry-level staff member who’s ready to take your career to the next level, check out Take Charge: Developing a Career Strategy. This six-month L&D-sponsored program will give you the tools you need to thrive in the workplace for years to come. Complete an application October 31, 2025.

Class Spotlight

2026 Mentorship Program Info Sessions 3 opportunities: Tues. Oct 7, 2-2:30 pm; Thurs. Oct 23 11:30 am- 12 pm; Wed. Nov 5 12:30-1 pm

Difficult Conversations: online Tuesday, October 14, 10 am- 12 pm (PT) In this highly interactive course, you will learn Core Principles to successfully navigate disagreements and apply them through practice role-playing. By the end of the workshop, you’ll feel more confident in approaching difficult conversations with anyone in your life.

Excel Intermediate: online Wednesdays October 15 & 22, 9am-12 pm (PT)

STEP Deadlines & Resources for the 2025/20206 Performance year

STEP learning resources | Watch the short STEP overview video | Contact your STEP team | FAQs for quick answers

Check-In 1: Complete by August 29, 2025 | Check-In 2: Complete by December 5, 2025

Upcoming Classes and Workshops

Featured

GROWing Your Check In Conversations for Managers

online: Tuesday, September 23, 10 am -12 pm

GROWing your Check-in Conversations for Managers is a required two-hour virtual live workshop that provides managers with an opportunity to practice using the GROW model in STEP check-ins. Instructors will share tips and strategies for providing clear, thoughtful and constructive feedback to employees. Specifically, this training offers best practices on effective feedback and coaching conversations, and provides managers time for sharing and an opportunity to practice having Check-in conversations using the GROW coaching model.
This is part one of a two part required series on Check-in conversations for managers/supervisors.

Delivery Skills

online: Wednesday, September 24, 9 am - 12 pm

For many, public speaking and giving formal and informal presentations can be uncomfortable and daunting. Luckily, delivery skills ca be practiced and improved on with each presentation. This session will focus on identifying anxieties about presenting and how to prepare for them, explore different presentation styles and techniques to engage with your audience, and tips and tricks to making your next presentation a success! This session will be interactive and participants are asked to bring a recent presentation, outline, or presentation idea to practice

UCOP Creating Accessible Documents 2: PDFs

oline: Wednesday, September 24, 1 pm- 2:30 pm

This course focuses on Adobe Acrobat and advanced PDF accessibility remediation techniques. You will learn how to edit or enhance accessibility within a PDF file and check PDFs with a screen reader.

UCOP Wellbeing: 6: Vulnerability and Resilience – The Story We Tell

Online: Friday, September 26, 12:10 - 12:55pm

Take a mindful pause in your day and join us for this virtual monthly series for individual and collective wellbeing. There will be space for reflection, discussion, and real-life application. Bring

Sep 26: Vulnerability and Resilience – The Story We Tell

Imagine you’re feeling inadequate after a critical comment from your supervisor. Instead of going down the rabbit hole with this narrative, you can transform negative self-talk to constructive reflections by reframing the story.

Additional Topics

Oct 24: Strategies and Practices to Managing Stress
Nov 21: Thriving in a VUCA World – Embracing Positive Perspectives

Excel Power Pivot -2 Session Course

Online: Wednesday, October 1, 9 am - 12 pm

Advance your Excel skills with learning Power Pivot. In this class you will: Become familiar with the PowerPivot application and import data. Manipulate data in a PowerPivot worksheet. Create reports using PowerPivot data. Use DAX functions in PowerPivot. Distribute PowerPivot Data.

Attendance at both sessions is required. Both Sessions run from 9 am- 12 pm.

Wednesday Oct 1
Wednesday Oct 8

Change Essentials: 3 session course

online: Thursday, October 2, 10 am- 12 pm

Change Essentials is based on the best-selling book, Our Iceberg Is Melting: Changing and Succeeding Under Any Conditions, by Dr. John Kotter and Holger Rathgeber. Dr. Kotter’s research revealed eight key steps and four critical leadership principles that, when applied effectively, help to ensure successful change. This three-part workshop will provide you with a foundational level of knowledge and skill to help you identify strategies to apply those steps and principles to a current or anticipated change within a department, or as part of a broader organizational change initiative.

Attendance is required for all three sessions. All sessions run from 10 am- 12 pm.

Thursday Oct 2
Thursday Oct 9
Thursday Oct 16

People Leader Forum: Managing Newer Professionals

Online: Friday, October 3, 1pm- 2 pm

The People Leader Forum is a monthly opportunity for people managers to connect with one another to develop leadership skills, build community, share best practices, swap strategies for navigating current challenges and learn to better support themselves and their teams.

Oct 3: Managing Newer Professionals

Nov 7: Building Effective Teams

Dec 5: Team Wellness

Smartsheet Essentials: Project Planning Made Easy

online: Tuesday, October 7, 10 am - 12 pm

Learn the core skills needed to manage projects effectively using Smartsheet. This foundational session is designed for new users and project managers seeking to understand how to leverage Smartsheet for project planning and execution. Through practical demonstrations and hands-on activities, participants will gain the knowledge to set up and manage projects confidently, using features such as Gantt charts, task assignments, and resource allocation. This workshop focuses on the essentials, helping participants create organized workflows and understand best practices for using Smartsheet in real-world scenarios. Whether you’re planning a single project or managing multiple teams, this session equips you with the tools to stay on track and deliver successful outcomes. Key Takeaways:

Understand Smartsheet’s project management basics, including workspaces and sheet creation.
Build and manage Gantt charts with dependencies and critical paths.
Assign tasks and manage resources effectively.
Explore Smartsheet templates for efficient project planning.
Learn best practices for reporting project progress.

Mentorship Program Info Session

online: Tuesday, October 7, 2-2:30 pm

Come learn about the UCOP Mentorship Program. The Mentorship Program is an exciting opportunity to share and learn career skills and leadership practices, guide and navigate the UCOP culture, and establish long term professional relationships. The goal of the Mentorship Program is to create mentor–mentee pairings that provide a supportive structure for UCOP employees to cultivate contacts, explore challenges and enhance their effectiveness as they grow both personally and professionally.

Two other sessions available

Thursday Oct 23, 11:30 am- 12 pm;
Wednesday Nov 5, 12:30-1 pm

Box Advanced

online: Wednesday, October 8, 1-2 pm

Want to know how to securely store sensitive data in Box? Interested in how to get data into Box via email or URL? Sign up for this advanced Box class and we will cover a wide range of topics including setting up alerts to monitor folders and using Box groups to manage department collaborations.

Difficult Conversations

online: Tuesday, October 14, 10 am- 12 pm

Ever had a disagreement with someone where the conversation didn’t go quite the way you wanted it to? As conflict is inevitable, join us in exploring strategies for navigating difficult conversations in both your personal and professional life. In this highly interactive course, you will learn Core Principles to successfully navigate disagreements and apply them through practice role-playing. By the end of the workshop, you’ll feel more confident in approaching difficult conversations with anyone in your life.

Excel Intermediate/Advanced - Session 1

online: Wednesday, October 15, 9 am- 12 pm

Microsoft Excel has hundreds of features and hundreds of functions. Getting the right feature, at the right time, used in the right way, in the right sequence is very often a problem. In this two-session course you will become aware of a few core Excel features that you can use right away and that other capabilities do exist that you can build on later as your Excel knowledge increases. Knowledge gaps will be filled in and you can rapidly build your skill-sets around the featured tools in this class. We start with these features, and if time permits, cover other interesting features.

SumIFs, AveregeIFs, CountIFs : Get what you need from your data with minimal effort
Tables (with structured referencing): Look good and be organized
Pivot Tables: The easiest, best method to get unexpected and expected answers from you giant, messy data set

Attendance is required for the two sessions. All sessions run from 9 am- 12 pm (PST)

October 15
October 22

UCOP Safety: Basic Awareness

online: Thursday, October 16, 1:00- 2:00pm

Melissa Collins, Program Manager for Security, Risk and Resilience, will facilitate this 30-minute live virtual class that will provide basic safety tips to help employees feel informed, alert, and safe as they travel to and from the workplace. Extra time will be allotted for questions and feedback. Melissa recently joined UCOP after serving 20 years with the UC San Diego Police Department, retiring as a lieutenant, and is a safety expert.

GROW Plus: Accountability Conversations for Managers

online: Friday, October 17, 9:30 am- 12 pm

GROW Plus: Accountability Conversations for Managers is the second part in the required live training series on manager and employee performance conversations. This training answers the question: What do I do when my coaching is not improving performance? In this virtual, live, and highly interactive workshop, we will cover: providing productive critical feedback, managing emotions, creating efficient documentation, and holding effective accountability conversations. Managers will also practice having role Accountability Conversations using the UCOP GROW Plus framework.

FSAP Webinar - Navigating Aggression, Threats, & Digital Harassment in the Workplace

online: Tuesday, October 21, 12:00 - 1:00 pm

In today’s health care and educational environments, professionals are encountering more frequent instances of aggression, threat and digital harassment that can take a toll on personal well-being. This webinar offers practical tools to transform fear into strength. Attendees will learn how to recognize and respond to threatening situations, individual strategies to enhance physical and emotional safety and resources available to support physical safety and personal recovery.

UCOP Creating Accessible Documents 1: MS Office

online: Wednesday, October 22, 1:00- 2:30 pm

Digital accessibility is about ensuring users with disabilities can easily access and engage with any digital content. In this course, you will learn the principles of digital accessibility, how to generate accessible Microsoft Office Documents and how to export these to PDF. This is the first course in the series and a prerequisite for UCOP Creating Accessible Documents 2: PDFs

Subtle Acts of Exclusion

online: Wednesday, October 29, 9:00 am- 12:00 pm

The term “microaggression” has become widely used, yet just as widely misunderstood. Join us as we reframe microaggressions as Subtle Acts of Exclusion (SAE). Explore the SAE framework and participate in group dialogue on how to normalize interrupting these acts and engage colleagues in discussion. In this session, participants will: Reflect on socialization and its impact on our outlook, attitudes, and behaviors Understand the shift in language from Microaggressions to Subtle Acts of Exclusion Explore the Subtle Acts of Exclusion Framework Participate in group dialogue on best practices to interrupt SAEs

GROWing Your Check In Conversations for Managers

online: Thursday, October 30, 10 am - 12 pm

This workshop is the first session of a two-part series required for managers and supervisors. GROW is a popular conversation framework used around the world for problem solving, goal setting and performance improvement. This interactive session provides managers the opportunity to discuss and practice using GROW framework as a strategy and tool to support engaging employee-manager conversations.

Manager Essentials at UCOP: Compensation

online: Tuesday, November 4, 9:00 am - 12:30 pm

This course is required for all people new to a management or supervisory positions at UCOP since 2020 (internal promotions and external hires). All experienced managers are welcome to attend as well. For more information about ME@UCOP, read the series overview.

This session is a live, virtual, instructor-led session where we will discuss UCOP Compensation policies and procedures.

Box Fundamentals

online: Wednesday, November 5, 11:00 am - 12:00 pm

This course will give you an overview of Box, the cloud-based service that provides secure file storage and file sharing.

How to use Box
How to collaborate with UCOP and non-UCOP people
Commenting directly on files, folder permissions, shared links, and many other tips that will help you when using Box.

Administrators from IT will be on hand to answer your questions and review the best features of Box. More info on Box can always be accessed on our webpage.

Additional Classes

ME@UCOP Managing in the Modern Workplace

Broadway, 10001: Tuesday, October 21, 9:00 am - 3:30 pm Register for ME@UCOP Managing in the Modern Workplace on Tuesday, October 21

In this session, we will discuss UCOP processes and strategies that support building inclusive and engaged teams. Topics include: -Managing remote and hybrid teams, People Development, and Fostering Community and Belonging as a Manager This is part of the Manager Essentials at UCOP (ME@UCOP).

Mentorship Program Info Session

online: Thursday, October 23, 11"30 am - 12 pm Register for Mentorship Program Info Session on Thursday, October 23

Two other sessions available

Tuesday, October 7 11:30 am- 12 pm;
Wednesday Nov 5, 12:30-1 pm

Using the UC Learning Center

Registration: Log in to the UC Learning Center using your UCOP login and password. In the Search box on the left, enter the name of the class you want. Select the session you want, then select the Register box and Submit.

Cancellation: You can cancel your registration through the UC Learning Center. We ask that you cancel 48 hours before the scheduled class time so that others may sign up, or contact the Learning & Development Team.

If you require any assistance or accommodation with finding, registering or attending a class please email the Learning & Development Team.