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Description
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Building upon the national
Preparing Future Faculty Program (PFF), and as part of its
Professional Development Program, the Graduate School at
UT-Austin offers a course in Academic and Professional
Consulting. The rationale for the course is that
professionals and academics with advanced degrees will
likely serve as consultants sometime during their careers.
In this class, students explore the varied roles of
consultants, both as internal and external partners in
organizations, and discover how to translate academic
expertise to address the practical and technical needs of
such clients. The course emphasizes the development of
skills such as conducting needs assessments, cultivating
client relationships, contracting, training, building
independent businesses, and evaluating consultant
effectiveness. The structure of the class involves group
discussions of readings and experiences and guest speakers
who bring their expertise as academic and professional
consultants.
Some course goals
are
- students should be able
to identify and explain the types of consulting practices
that someone with their academic background might
do;
- students should be able
to explain and apply theories from their academic fields
to "real world" problems and communicate those
applications to non-academic audiences;
- students should be able
to identify, explain, and choose the most appropriate
business options they may have as
consultants;
- students will have
conversations with consultants from diverse fields and
organizational types; and
- students should be able
to make contacts with a host organization (either
internal or external to the University) for a consulting
project.
http://www.utexas.edu/ogs/grs/GRS390C.html
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