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Professional Development

Upcoming Opportunities

New opportunities for 2023 will be posted here soon.


Past Professional Development Events

Select an event below for additional details.

Television, radio, newspapers, blogs, Twitter, Facebook, YouTube... When it comes to communications and the media, the only thing that hasn't changed in the past few years is the need to be prepared. This workshop will offer best practices, tips and techniques, and hyper-realistic on-camera interviews with the goal of educating and empowering you, whether media coverage is your top priority, your darkest fear, or something in between.

This workshop will teach the basics of grant writing – finding funding opportunities, understanding a Request for Proposals, organizing the production, crafting the proposal, communicating with the funding agency, and more. This session will offer practical information, real-life examples, valuable exercises, and tips from a grant writing and reviewing veteran, to help you secure grant dollars to accomplish your programmatic and research goals.

The goal of this workshop is to empower your writing. To accomplish this, I will provide practical advice on the Six Key Principles of Technical Writing: Purpose, Audience, Organization, Evidence, Tone, and Format. We will examine samples of “bad writing,” identifying what makes it bad and what can be done to make it “good writing.” We will also draft a few documents in response to selected scenarios and share those with our class.

This fun and engaging workshop will discuss Appalachian culture, including history, stereotypes, cultural characteristics, communication, health education and Appalachian folklore.

Message Framing: In this hands-on workshop, students will learn about the theory of culture and how it plays out in social issues. They will learn to articulate a project and/or story in front of a camera while being interviewed. Reporters use interviews to gather information and flesh out their stories. It is the basic tool of newsgathering and a great opportunity for you and your organization to communicate messages to target publics. Students will also learn how to best tell either their story or the story of social issues in different communications and media formats.

Communications and Media Training 101: Television, radio, newspapers, blogs, Twitter, Facebook, YouTube... When it comes to communications and the media, the only thing that hasn't changed in the past few years is the need to be prepared. This workshop will offer best practices, tips and techniques, and hyper-realistic on-camera interviews with the goal of educating and empowering you, whether media coverage is your top priority, your darkest fear, or something in between.