October 2025 Newsletter

In this scenario, a team member and a product owner face a standoff over mid-sprint scope changes. The team must apply Agile principles to collaboratively negotiate changes, conduct trade-off analysis, and establish clear criteria for future decisions. Success depends on maintaining team morale, stakeholder trust, and documenting a process for handling similar conflicts while preserving productivity.

Whether you are new to leadership, or aspiring to be a leader, you need to focus your efforts on building some basic leadership skills that will benefit you in your career. These skills include Communication, Situational Leadership, Managing People Through Change, Understanding and Communicating Corporate Strategy and Vision, Managing Performance, and Creating Effective Teams. We will delve into each one of these skills during Merri's Improving Your Management Skills Leadercamp, discussing why they are the most important, and how you can develop each of them.

A panel discussion featuring project management practitioners from within the CSU, designed to equip you with practical tools and insightes to successfully lead the unexpected projects that come your way.

In this workshop we will reflect on key guidance from the bestselling book, Atomic Habits by James Clear. The book provides practical, clear, and actionable strategies for creating systems that will aid you in breaking bad habits and in developing lasting desired habits with resilience. Use the advice from this book to jump start your own positive habit formation and become the architect of your life!

Join us for a high-energy, low-pressure Customer Engagement Boot Camp! In just two hours, you’ll get the inside scoop on what customer engagement actually means, how to rock it in person, on the phone, or over email, and how to build a game plan to level up your skills back on the job. 

The communication skills we teach focus on a specific kind of interaction: those when stakes are high, opinions vary, and emotions run strong. This is not a course on winning friends or winning people to your way of thinking; it’s about strengthening relationships and securing results in the moments that matter most.

From overcoming difficulties to building a fulfilling life, our mindset plays a powerful role in shaping how we show up and engage with the world. Mindset Matters is a three-part Learning Lab series that introduces practical tools to help strengthen our thinking, improve our responses to challenges, and support both our professional and personal growth. This session, Mindsets for Personal Potential, explores mindset tools for our sense of confidence, self-leadership, and agency.

Have you ever experienced how altering the pattern you breathe improves your state of mind? Come experience the intimate link between our breath and our emotions. During the session, we will do some light gentle stretches and guided meditation. Come prepared to leave this 30-minute virtual session afresh, anywhere you are! 

Weekly Dose of Mindfulness is an opportunity for all CSU community members to experience guided mindfulness practices with a trained facilitator. 

Forbes and Harvard both describe lack of connection to colleagues and the "bigger picture" as the leading reason for dissatisfaction in the workplace. Through idea sharing, interactive activities, and observation of the positive change that belonging and engagement can bring to the workplace through data, the aim of this session is to find our common Heartbeat, and emphasize connection that goes beyond our title of "employee."

From overcoming difficulties to building a fulfilling life, our mindset plays a powerful role in shaping how we show up and engage with the world. Mindset Matters is a three-part Learning Lab series that introduces practical tools to help strengthen our thinking, improve our responses to challenges, and support both our professional and personal growth.

This session, Mindsets for Performance, explores mindset tools for our goals, tasks, and projects. 

This engaging workshop empowers professionals to enhance their communication skills by focusing on clarity, tone, and purpose across various workplace settings. Participants will learn to choose appropriate channels, practice active listening, interpret nonverbal cues, and craft concise, effective messages tailored to their audience. 

Understanding your values is essential to being an inclusive leader. We can’t live by values that we can’t name. This session challenges anyone who wishes to build their leadership skills to take the first step by naming their values. We’ll explore transactional leadership vs transformational leadership, managing vs leading, and inclusive leadership in action.

Discover how Microsoft OneNote can become your central hub for organizing information, capturing meeting notes, outlining plans, and boosting productivity. This introductory course will walk you through the core features of OneNote, helping you streamline your workflow with this powerful digital notebook tool.

Learn how to protect your personal information and the proper steps to take for recovery from identity theft. 

From overcoming difficulties to building a fulfilling life, our mindset plays a powerful role in shaping how we show up and engage with the world. Mindset Matters is a three-part Learning Lab series that introduces practical tools to help strengthen our thinking, improve our responses to challenges, and support both our professional and personal growth.

This session, Mindsets for Performance, explores mindset tools for our goals, tasks, and projects

Drop-in workshops with hands-on learning activities

This session is dedicated to planning SkillShops with facilitators and submitting proposals for SkillShops you or student staff/assistants in your departments want to offer. See SkillShops calendar for each date and time - every other Thursday starting on September 25th.