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Professional Development for Staff

Professional development is a wide-ranging term that applies to activities and opportunities that help one grow in terms of performance, satisfaction, and status within the workplace. We believe that personal and professional growth and fulfillment of one’s potential are integral to each other.

Professional development can involve job enrichment and expanding one’s current position through adding new responsibilities or taking on new projects; lateral movement into different area of the organization; and/or vertical movement to positions of higher status and greater responsibility.

Opportunities for Staff

Emory provides a growing number of opportunities that staff can undertake to reach their full potential professionally and personally. Given our academic environment, professional development activities can take the form of staff attending classes, lectures, conferences, and other academic and cultural events that are part of the university calendar; participating in a number of service opportunities at the College and University levels; and undertaking training and mentoring opportunities aimed at staff.

Staff are encouraged to actively pursue professional development and to achieve their full potential personally and professionally. Staff professional development is an important dimension of Emory’s Affirmative Action program.

New and existing employees may avail themselves of training opportunities. Lead staff are expected to ensure that each new employee receives training in the tools, policies and procedures relevant to their position and assigned duties. Existing employees may be recommended by supervisors for training during the performance evaluation process (or at any other time) as a means to addressing a skill gap, in response to expanded job duties and new roles, or as a means of professional and personal enrichment.

Learning Management System (Brainier)

Attend or enroll in online courses and review learning records in Brainier Learning Management System.

Brainier Learning Management System (LMS) is our new training location, replacing Emory Learning
Management Systems (ELMS). It will be launched in two phases—the first launch will provide courses from
Open Sesame, and the second phase will contain the rest of the training that you’re used to seeing in ELMS.

Open Sesame is a training content vendor, with eLearning available in different formats on a variety of topics, such as business skills, leadership, compliance, wellness, DEI, and software and web services.

Courses from Open Sesame are searchable through Brainier. The purpose of this user guide is to demonstrate step-by-step how to log in to Brainier, search for Open Sesame courses, and begin training.

Step-By-Step Brainier/Open Sesame User Guide

Learning & Organizational Development

Emory's Learning and Organizational Development offers a variety of training courses, certificate programs, and Learning Labs.

Leadership Development

To ensure our leaders are prepared for the challenges that lie ahead, we offer several development programs for every stage of leadership.

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General Courses

You can customize your own professional development by choosing general enrollment courses from any of the following categories.

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Supervisory Series

These short sessions cover topics such as providing feedback, motivating employees, cultivating resistance to stress, surviving work-life during a pandemic, and more.

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Administrative Professional Program

This program enables administrative staff to build professional relationships and make meaningful contributions within their careers.

View details

Learning Labs

These courses are designed to help you build your skills and expand your learning in a quick and cost-effective way.

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Upcoming courses

Browse the current list of virtual and in-person courses currently being offered.

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HR Toolkit

Designed for those with Human Resources responsibilities in their departments or schools, the HR Toolkit courses provide an overview of Emory's Central HR division and HR practices and procedures.

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Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion

Emory University employees have access to a variety of self-learning classes and tools that provide personal and professional growth in job and people skills.