Professional Seminars

Know People, Know Success

HDO’s Professional Seminars allow businesses, nonprofits, and individuals the opportunity to deepen their knowledge of particular subjects often unavailable in an executive-friendly format. These courses, customized for specific group needs, are aimed at improving attendees’ understanding of particular issues affecting work culture.

These brief classes will allow groups to take part in focused sessions guided by members of our esteemed faculty. These classes will explore issues and themes within the Liberal Arts and provide specific practical suggestions for employing this knowledge in organizational settings.

HDO’s seminars are intended for executives, professionals, managers, and others who seek growth and well-roundedness in their careers. All HDO custom seminars are designed to deepen attendees’ enjoyment of their professions, leading to an increase in job satisfaction and higher levels of success.

Businesses and nonprofits often call on specialists in various fields to provide employees with information that will improve overall efficiency. HDO’s short courses can help employees become internal consultants. When a number of employees from one company attend a Professional Seminar, they are able to return to work and put these distinct skills into practice. By exploring specific human, cultural, and communicatory aspects of business, attendees leave HDO Professional Seminars more well-rounded employees.

Please contact us for more details on our customized programming.

Select Professional Seminars are being taught on campus for interested parties. Registration in these seminars costs $500, which includes parking, breakfast, lunch, and course materials.

Bring HDO Seminars to Your Business

Writing Persuasive Business Proposals

Business proposals are persuasive arguments. In this course, Associate Professor of Rhetoric and Writing Clay Spinuzzi will teach participants how to take these proposals apart, examine their underlying components, and put them back together in ways that make them more persuasive. The class will allow time for attendees to apply these new skills to their own work.

Thinking about Right and Wrong

How do we determine the moral value of actions? How does culture influence the ways in which people decide about right and wrong? Is there a universal or common morality shared by people in all cultures? This course, lead by Religious Studies Professor John Traphagan, explores moral decision-making in different cultures and examines the ways in which humans vary in their concepts of right and wrong.

Working Successfully with Your Client: Effective Techniques from Psychoanalysis

Effective communication is at the core of provider-client relationships. This seminar, taught by Associate Professor of Architecture Elizabeth Danze and Adjunct Professor of Architecture and psychoanalyst Stephen Sonnenberg, MD, will examine in detail the challenge of designing a unique facility providing arts education for troubled teens and vocational training for unskilled young adults, to illustrate, examine, and train participants in communication skills derived from psychoanalysis. These skills are learning to: (1) listen to clients and understand their interests and needs; (2) help clients define and redefine what they want to accomplish and what they expect from you; (3) negotiate goals and expectations with clients; (4) put themselves in the shoes of clients to better understand their histories, goals, and expectations; (5) examine their personal roles in these relationships, including difficult roles such when the client feels you have erred; and (6) convey confidence that you can get the job done and meet the client’s expectations.