Super Staff Tuesdays
Super Staff Tuesdays provide dedicated staff with ongoing professional development opportunities tailored to personal, leadership, and technical skills. Whether mastering new technologies, improving communication strategies, or exploring innovative approaches to problem-solving, Super Staff Tuesdays offer a supportive space for growth and learning.
1/14 MCRPA Presents: Vision Boarding with Microsoft Whiteboard
Instructors: Christine Crefton and Nghi Nguyen
Description:
Step into a creative space where your aspirations take center stage. In this one-hour interactive session sponsored by MCRPA, Christine Crefton will guide you on a reflective and inspiring journey to explore your goals, dreams, and ambitions. Once your ideas are flowing, Nghi Nguyen will introduce you to Microsoft Whiteboard, a versatile digital tool perfect for bringing your vision board to life. Learn how to use this technology to design vibrant, dynamic boards that keep you motivated and on track. Join us to dream, design, and discover your path forward!
Outcomes:
1. Participants will reflect on their personal and professional aspirations and identify actionable goals to include in their vision boards.
2. Participants will learn how to use Microsoft Whiteboard as a tool to create, organize, and enhance their vision boards digitally.
Register in Workday
1/14 Pegging Your Memory
Description:
Have you ever walked into a room and asked yourself, “Why did I come here? What was I supposed to get?” If you are like most people, you have experienced this situation. Discover an easy method for remembering short lists called a peg system: a memory aid that works by creating mental associations between two concrete objects in a one-to-one fashion that will later be applied to to-be-remembered information. Know what to do the next time you walk into the room!
Outcomes:
By the end of this session, participants will be able to:
- Use the peg system for remembering short lists.
- Be more efficient when completing tasks that require short-term memory recall of lists.
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1/14 Mail Merge: How to Send Personalized Emails with Microsoft Word
Description:
Have you ever received an email with your name at the top that was clearly part of a mass mailing? In this speed session, you’ll learn how to do the same using Microsoft Word. After a quick overview of Mail Merge basics, you’ll have the opportunity to practice sending your own personalized batch email.
Outcomes:
By the end of this session, participants will be able to:
- Identify when and why to use Mail Merge.
- Prepare an Excel spreadsheet for merge fields.
- Create and send customized batch emails using Mail Merge.
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1/14 Resilience and Thriving: The Secret Power of Stress
Description:
This workshop applies evidence-based research to explore, reflect and encourage participants to apply proven approaches to reducing stress.
Outcomes:
- Learn easy-to-use and practical skills for identifying and reducing stress at home and work.
- Increase your ability to effectively evaluate and address stress in your life.
- Understand how to use stress as a positive resource for resilience and thriving.
- Increase recognition of internal resources (healthy habits) to keep stress from building up.
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1/14 Intercultural Conflict – Team reflection and action
Description:
MC is a highly diverse college operating in one of the most multicultural communities in the nation, making our college campuses some of the most dynamic places in the county. How we handle cultural differences, under varying circumstances, can create frustration or conflict that is difficult to recognize and manage. In this class, we identify common derailers to working effectively in diverse teams and seek to strengthen our work by increasing our clarity of goal setting and commitment to accountability.
Outcomes:
In this Class:
- Complete an inventory to identify core approaches for managing conflict across ethnic and cultural differences
- Learn techniques to increase respect and ability to resolve conflict
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1/14 Activate Your Creative Superpowers
Description:
Everyone has creative potential, but how do we bring it to the surface? Whether you are searching for ways to be more creative in your work and personal life, or you are stalled in your creative pursuits, this workshop is designed to help you jumpstart your creativity. We will explore what it means to be creative and try out strategies to get creatively “unstuck.”
BEFORE THE WORKSHOP, please take five minutes to complete the Creative Pursuits Survey: https://www.kellogg.northwestern.edu/faculty/uzzi/ftp/page176.html and watch this seven-minute video “Unleash Your Creative Instincts” (https://youtu.be/ZEGWorKBl_E?t=620) by Gary Goodwin (start at the 10:20 mark).
Outcomes:
By the end of this session, participants will be able to:
- Define creativity
- Identify barriers to creativity
- Apply strategies that foster creative work
Register in Workday
1/14 Excel Open Lab: Time-saving Functions
Time: 2:15 PM – 3:15 PM
Instructor: Anna Donohoe
Description:
This open lab session will introduce a set of specific features and tasks (listed below) in the first half of our time together. The second half is structured as open office hours for participants to practice using the skills introduced and/or ask questions about anything related to Microsoft Excel.
Outcomes
By the end of this session, participants will be able to:
- Automatically process data using built-in functions: Flash Fill, Remove Duplicates
- Efficiently enter pattern-based information using the Fill Handle
- Format data as a Table to easily sort and filter based on a range of criteria