
Creating and Motivating PCO Enterprises - April 2023
- Registration Closed
Faculty Member
Nancy Coleman, Ed.D.
Cost
Members: $459.00
Non-Members: $599.00
Description
The success or failure of a professional, continuing and online (PCO) enterprise is determined by its people – who they are and how they are organized, engaged, and managed. What is the best way to organize the human resources of an PCO unit? What are some of the structures employed in designing a PCO unit, and their pros and cons? How are teams assembled when designing and launching new programs? How do you integrate and work with those elsewhere in the university and outside entities (vendors, partners in business and government)? How can you maintain high performing operations that encourage agility, continuous improvement, and ongoing innovation?
This is an opportunity to step beyond a single institution or organizational model, and consider the vast array of organizational structures and ways to recruit, manage, and motivate professionals towards common strategic goals. Organized around a team model, participants will engage with colleagues from other institutions to develop a dynamic understanding of the issues.
This is essential learning for those who intend to better understand the internal world of professional, continuing, online educational enterprises – as a means of better preparing yourselves for growth in this arena.
Topics Covered
- Structure and Leadership
- Organizing for Agility
- Teams and Remote Work
- Strategic Outsourcing, Advocacy, and Change
- Culture and Inclusion
Learning Objectives
- Identify the ways in which a PCO unit can be organized
- Appreciate the complexity of faculty and stakeholder engagement
- Optimizing remote work for teams
- Understand how change affects PCO units
- Identify methods to break down internal barriers to change
Who should take this course?
This course is designed for those who work in higher education, especially those in professional, continuing, and online education who seek practical and applicable knowledge on how the human resources of a PCO unit are organized. This is a course for the curious and ambitious – those who want to learn from one of the national leaders in this field.
Format and Schedule
This is a four week course consisting of about five hours of weekly course work made up of readings, asynchronous activities, and a weekly one hour live class meeting via Zoom. The schedule for the weekly meetings will be shared soon.
Welcome to the Quick Start Guide
This guide is highly recommended if this is your first professional development course with UPCEA. Some tips are provided for navigating the course as well as information about how to obtain technical support.
Tips for Navigating this course
- Content pages need to be acknowledged. Once you have read, viewed, or otherwise completed the content, look for the button at the end to acknowledge you have completed the item. Sometimes, this step is required in order to advance to future items in the course.
- Future items may be hidden from view. For example, content for the coming week may not be visible until the course facilitator releases it to the class.
- Some items have prerequisites and do not become available until after you have completed the item it depends upon. Prerequisite items have a grey overlay (making them look translucent) with a lock next to them. When you click on the item, its acknowledgement button will note what item it depends on (see image below for an example).
Tips for Working with Discussions
- Discussions will take place in CORe, UPCEA's community forum. When you access a discussion assignment, you will see the prompt and a link that will take you to the discussion thread in CORe. If you are prompted to log in, please use the same log in credentials that you use to access the Learning Center.
- You are encouraged to update you CORe profile with a bio and headshot. CORe is a great place to engage with your classmates during and after the course.
- NOTE: Discussion posts are private and restricted to the participants in this course. Your posts will not be accessible on the public CORe forum.
Tips for Viewing Videos
- Some videos may be arranged in a playlist. A playlist will automatically play all videos in the series in order.
- The playlist will automatically play through all videos after you start the first video.
- You can view all videos in the playlist by clicking on the playlist icon (see image below where the icon is in a blue circle). You can skip to any video in the playlist by clicking on it.
For the Best Experience
- Use either the FireFox or Google Chrome browser app for the best experience. The course has been tested to work well with these two browsers.
Technical Support
- Email: pd@upcea.edu
- hours of operation: 8:00 am - 4:30 pm EST

Nancy Coleman, Ed.D.
Dean, Division of Continuing Education Harvard University
Nancy Coleman, Ed.D., is Dean of Continuing Education and University Extension at Harvard University. Prior to joining Harvard, Nancy was Associate Provost and Founding Director of Strategic Growth Initiatives at Wellesley College. Her career has spanned higher education, corporate and start-up ventures. At Wellesley, Coleman oversaw the work of Wellesley Extended, encompassing summer, online learning, and professional education. Previously, Coleman was VP of Academic Services at Keypath, an OPM provider, overseeing instructional design and student services for all global locations; and Director of Distance Education at Boston University leading a business unit overseeing online degrees and certificates across the university. She holds a doctorate from George Washington University, an M.B.A. from Boston University, and a B.S. in Marketing from Stonehill College.
Nancy has led several PCO organizations across a variety of organizational settings. She grew and restructured Boston University’s Office of Distance Education, she worked for a young company and developed much of its infrastructure, founded a new unit within Wellesley College, and then took over one of the major PCO entities in the nation at Harvard University. In each case, she invested her time and energy in organizational structure and the recruiting of talent.
See what past participants have said about this course
"Great course! I'm recommending it to all of my colleagues."
"Nancy is great! She has provided a handbook for those of us seeking to understand the structure of PCO and how to improve our divisions from the inside out."
"This course is very helpful for my current work environment. I am lucky to have access to this information during this climate. Thanks to UPCEA for the foresight to run these courses."
"I thoroughly enjoyed this course and I would say that the live sessions and the group assignment were the major highlights for me."
"I really enjoyed the group project. The conversations and support from the other group members enhanced my learning of how PCO unit run at different institutions."
"Nancy is an excellent communicator, and was able to share her experiences with the group just like she was a participant. The time she put into building the course was obvious, and appreciated."
"Dr. Coleman was great and I appreciate her work to our field and the content she selected for the course."
"Initially I did not think the case study would be a rewarding assignment but I really enjoyed it and getting to know my classmates better was a definite bonus. It was very insightful reviewing all the different responses to the same case study."
"Nancy was an excellent presenter and listener."
"I appreciate the instructors background and current experience. She allowed for guided conversations and open discussions during live classes."
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