Skills Accelerator Offerings in Academic Year '25-'26

Fall 2025

The Writing Lab

Cristina Griffin

The capacity to clearly communicate ideas in writing is a prerequisite for nearly any career. In this course, students will practice taking a concept from initial idea to final draft with a focus on professional writing. We will tackle some common professional communication modes together, and practice a variety of ways to make every student a stronger and more confident writer. The bulk of the writing in this course will be student-driven and student-designed, individualized to each student’s particular career goals and fields. Our classroom will function both as a simulation of on-the-job writing and as a safe space for writerly experimentation: students will craft career-based writing projects in order to practice future writing tasks, and our classroom will also function as an experiential lab space for writing, revising, experimenting, failing, and writing again. Students will work with MS Word, Copilot, and test out drafting software (such as Worst Draft). Students will leave this class as more confident and more adept writers, ready—and even excited—to incorporate writing into their future careers.

Starting Something: Entrepreneurial Leadership Skills

Brenda Patterson

This course provides students with real-world tools and actionable steps for launching their own ventures as founder or leader of a for-profit or nonprofit startup. We'll cover the fundamentals of project and business planning, budgets and fundraising, and publicity and marketing. How can you have a unique impact in your community? How can you make a living while pursuing your deepest goals and values? These questions will frame the skills you'll gain, aimed at giving you the essentials of finding your niche and creating a sustainable, self-driven career with integrity and intention.

Data for the Rest of Us

Brandon Walsh

Data science might feel like the domain of rarefied experts: computer scientists, engineers, or statisticians. But data is all around us: anytime you use your smartphone, log into a social media site, or listen to music online, you leave a slew of datasets in your wake. Data literacy can prepare you for a range of careers across industry, the cultural heritage sector, and more—all without ever touching a programming language. This course will equip students with the skills necessary to work with the full lifecycle of data: collection, description, organization, cleaning, analysis, and distribution. Methods and tools covered will include web scraping, metadata standards, Google Open Refine, qualitative analysis, Microsoft Power BI, and GitHub. No previous experience with programming or data analysis necessary. We’ll focus, especially, on working with data drawn from the humanities, which tends to be messy, understudied, and scarce.

Problem-Solving Through Spatial Reasoning

Spencer Phillips

In this course, students will develop their ability to understand and approach critical contemporary issues through spatial reasoning. While the course is not intended to a complete technical GIS class, we will use Geographic Information Systems (GIS) tools and techniques to examine, analyze and articulate critical information about policy proposals, developing skills like spatial data creation, preparation, and management; basic geoprocessing (buffering, overlays, proximity, etc.); more advanced analysis using raster data (e.g. satellite imagery); and cartography (making maps that support understanding).  Along the way, we will consider issues like local land use and business development planning, access to health care, fresh food and recreational amenities, and on to biodiversity conservation and exposure to toxic pollution. The ability to understand these issues in their spatial context, especially in relation to other features of the human and natural and human-defined landscape (market areas, congressional districts, agency jurisdictions, natural resource deposits, wetlands, rare habitats, etc.) is increasingly important for sustainability practitioners, business leaders, policy makers, and those who support and influence them. Students will work in teams to complete a real-world spatial analysis project.

Spring 2026

Coding for Virtual Reality: Learning in the Metaverse

Marc Santugini
This immersive experience in virtual reality will be beneficial to the students and their careers as the future presents the possibility of working in a virtual world. Students will experience the wide-ranging possibilities of virtual reality as a cutting-edge medium but also (more importantly) give them the necessary coding and manipulation skills to succeed in the virtual world. Specifically, students will acquire the skills necessary to create and animate 3d models in virtual reality. Coding will be done via circuits that can be moved, wired together to calculate estimates, or plotting and animating data. Knowledge of calculus is expected.

Storytelling Across Multimedia Platforms

Anna Katherine Clay

Storytelling is universal across languages, cultures, and communities. But being able to tell a story in a succinct, clear and powerful way is a learned, intentional practice, and one that can lead to success in a myriad of career paths. In this course, students will learn how to clearly and effectively share a story across platforms, whether audio/podcast, video/film, or written/digital. From articulating the narrative structure of a story to filming a powerful arc for social media, students will experientially learn how to be great storytellers. We will read, watch and listen to examples while analyzing them together. We will examine narrative structure, ledes, hooks, resolutions, and all the elements of storytelling that elevate a story or message, including in the context of a corporate setting. Students will produce their own storytelling across platforms, working individually and collaboratively to be effective, strong storytellers, producing stories that are, to quote UVA President Jim Ryan, “both great and good.”

Writing and Editing Text-Based Content using GenAI

Heidi Nobles

From business and policy proposals to social media content and more, we’re constantly
creating documents that foreground language—as in, text-based material for others to read.
What does it look like to create that content with the new suite of available genAI tools? And
how do these new workflows both shift and reinforce the human work of creating for an
audience? In this course, we’ll will work with a wide range of genAI tools to draft, critique,
revise, design, and distribute content for target readers. We’ll work individually and in teams to
explore what’s possible, evaluating outcomes along the way. By the course’s end, you should be
conversant in today’s genAI tools and have a better sense of writing processes old and new.

Skills Accelerator Offerings in Academic Year '24-'25

Fall 2024

Public Speaking

Anna Beecher

Captivating speakers have an edge in almost every professional sphere. This course will make you a more confident and compelling communicator, ready to connect with audiences of all sizes. Expect to analyze the strategies of great speakers, apply them through practical exercises and practice your skills in an encouraging environment. You’ll discover how to break a spoken text into distinct moments, how to prepare your voice, how to feel present and comfortable in your body when speaking, how to calm nerves and how to establish rapport with any audience.  Clear, authentic verbal communication is a life skill with far reaching applications and captivating speakers have an edge in almost every professional sphere.  

The Writing Lab

Cristina Griffin

The capacity to clearly communicate ideas in writing is a prerequisite for nearly any career. In this course, students will practice taking a concept from initial idea to final draft with a focus on professional writing. We will tackle some common professional communication modes together, and practice a variety of ways to make every student a stronger and more confident writer. The bulk of the writing in this course will be student-driven and student-designed, individualized to each student’s particular career goals and fields. Our classroom will function both as a simulation of on-the-job writing and as a safe space for writerly experimentation: students will craft career-based writing projects in order to practice future writing tasks, and our classroom will also function as an experiential lab space for writing, revising, experimenting, failing, and writing again. Students will work with MS Word, Copilot, and test out drafting software (such as Worst Draft). Students will leave this class as more confident and more adept writers, ready—and even excited—to incorporate writing into their future careers.

Mining and Analyzing Social Media Text Data Using R

Hudson Golino

Every day, millions of people across the globe use social media to interact with their friends, share their thoughts, provide updates on their daily lives, and much more. Tons of text data are generated every single day and are available on social media platforms such as Twitter. In this course, students will learn how to use R to extract text data from Twitter, to implement text mining techniques, to estimate topics and emotions in the text data using a plethora of methods and techniques. This is a hands-on course, with one single pre-requisite: some previous experience and basic knowledge of R.

Starting Something: Entrepreneurial Leadership Skills

Brenda Patterson

This course provides students with real-world tools and actionable steps for launching their own ventures as founder or leader of a for-profit or nonprofit startup. We'll cover the fundamentals of project and business planning, budgets and fundraising, and publicity and marketing. How can you have a unique impact in your community? How can you make a living while pursuing your deepest goals and values? These questions will frame the skills you'll gain, aimed at giving you the essentials of finding your niche and creating a sustainable, self-driven career with integrity and intention.

SPRING '25

Data for the Rest of Us

Brandon Walsh

Data science might feel like the domain of rarefied experts: computer scientists, engineers, or statisticians. But data is all around us: anytime you use your smartphone, log into a social media site, or listen to music online, you leave a slew of datasets in your wake. Data literacy can prepare you for a range of careers across industry, the cultural heritage sector, and more—all without ever touching a programming language. This course will equip students with the skills necessary to work with the full lifecycle of data: collection, description, organization, cleaning, analysis, and distribution. Methods and tools covered will include web scraping, metadata standards, Google Open Refine, qualitative analysis, Microsoft Power BI, and GitHub. No previous experience with programming or data analysis necessary. We’ll focus, especially, on working with data drawn from the humanities, which tends to be messy, understudied, and scarce.

Storytelling Across Multimedia Platforms

Anna Katherine Clay

Storytelling is universal across languages, cultures, and communities. But being able to tell a story in a succinct, clear and powerful way is a learned, intentional practice, and one that can lead to success in a myriad of career paths. In this course, students will learn how to clearly and effectively share a story across platforms, whether audio/podcast, video/film, or written/digital. From articulating the narrative structure of a story to filming a powerful arc for social media, students will experientially learn how to be great storytellers. We will read, watch and listen to examples while analyzing them together. We will examine narrative structure, ledes, hooks, resolutions, and all the elements of storytelling that elevate a story or message, including in the context of a corporate setting. Students will produce their own storytelling across platforms, working individually and collaboratively to be effective, strong storytellers, producing stories that are, to quote UVA President Jim Ryan, “both great and good.”

Multimedia Design and Production

Matthew Burtner

Students in this course will gain fluency composing mixed media expressions that could be applied in a wide range of fields and for contexts such as scientific or scholarly presentations and authoring, community engagement, or interdisciplinary artworks. Students will learn critical media design practice aimed at issues of broad concern, while creating media works in a variety of forms and scales such as social media posts, presentation slideshows, videos, podcasts, soundscapes and interactive media artworks. The class will teach widely-used Adobe Suite tools such as Photoshop, Illustrator, Premiere and Audition, coupled with select open-source specialized software tools for scripting, interactive media, data visualization, and sonification. In addition to composing new pieces, the class will analyze select works of to learn a variety of approaches to multimedia design. 

Web Design and Development

Jennifer Stertzer

This project-based course provides students with the knowledge and tools necessary to conceptualize, design, and build functional websites that meet the needs of their target audiences.We’ll begin by creating a project, identifying the audience, preparing site specifications, and developing a workflow. Next, we will cover the basics of design—including both form and function—by evaluating user experience design (UX) and user interface design (UI). Once the outcomes of these exercises have been integrated into your site specifications and workflows, wewill evaluate the tools and platforms available to bring your project to life. This course will give students the skills they need to 1) develop project plans that include site specs, workflows,content modeling/information architecture, wireframing, and brand boards; 2) consider the elements of accessibility (broadly conceived) and approach website design from the perspective of the user; 3) evaluate and identify digital tools and platforms that support and facilitate site development; and 4) build a website that incorporates all elements of planning and design.

Emotional Intelligence and Effective Communication

Charlie Gleek

Effective communication depends on a range of skills, including an awareness of your audience, of yourself, and of the norms and aesthetics of the genre in which you are communicating. In this class, we will work on getting ideas across clearly and compellingly through several proven approaches. The first will be developing a greater awareness of the intellectual, rhetorical, and communicative tools you already bring to the table as a UVA A&S student. The second will be developing insight into the emotional components of compelling communication, including an awareness of emotional intelligence, or the ability to effectively perceive and engage relationally with others. Finally, we will focus on some of the technical aspects of effective communication through the Microsoft 365 ecosystem. Students should expect to leave the course with fluency in a variety of intellectual and digital skills that form the backbone of many contemporary workplace settings.  

Skills Accelerator Offerings in Academic Year '23-'24

Fall ‘23 Skills Courses

Problem-Solving Through Spatial Reasoning
Spencer Phillips

In this course, students will develop their ability to understand and approach critical contemporary issues through spatial reasoning. While the course is not intended to a complete technical GIS class, we will use Geographic Information Systems (GIS) tools and techniques to examine, analyze and articulate critical information about policy proposals, developing skills like spatial data creation, preparation, and management; basic geoprocessing (buffering, overlays, proximity, etc.); more advanced analysis using raster data (e.g. satellite imagery); and cartography (making maps that support understanding).  Along the way, we will consider issues like local land use and business development planning, access to health care, fresh food and recreational amenities, and on to biodiversity conservation and exposure to toxic pollution. The ability to understand these issues in their spatial context, especially in relation to other features of the human and natural and human-defined landscape (market areas, congressional districts, agency jurisdictions, natural resource deposits, wetlands, rare habitats, etc.) is increasingly important for sustainability practitioners, business leaders, policy makers, and those who support and influence them. Students will work in teams to complete a real-world spatial analysis project.

Ethnographic Techniques for Business and Development 

Tess Farmer

Organizations as diverse as Meta, Alphabet, Amazon, and government institutions employ ethnographers to help them understand what people are doing and why they are doing it; to give them insight not just into what people say is happening, but to spot patterns and unspoken systems that can powerfully shape outcomes. Beyond contributing to the development of the soft skills that employers always clamor for (critical thinking, the ability to work with others, resilience, agility), ethnographic skills offer privileged insight into who the power brokers are and how things are getting done that no org chart or employee handbook can give you. These abilities can be translated into portable skills such as market research, user-centered and participatory design, and organizational analysis. They can also help you to be a savvier employee and more successful friend by teaching you how to systematically understand some of the hidden logics in the social relationships and organizational contexts that you find yourself in. Building on the skills of applied anthropology, this course will involve discussion of assigned readings and media material, in-class activities, regular fieldwork assignments, and workshops on systematizing and analyzing observations.

Multimedia Design and Production

Matthew Burtner

Students in this course will gain fluency composing mixed media expressions that could be applied in a wide range of fields and for contexts such as scientific or scholarly presentations and authoring, community engagement, or interdisciplinary artworks. Students will learn critical media design practice aimed at issues of broad concern, while creating media works in a variety of forms and scales such as social media posts, presentation slideshows, videos, podcasts, soundscapes and interactive media artworks. The class will teach widely-used Adobe Suite tools such as Photoshop, Illustrator, Premiere and Audition, coupled with select open-source specialized software tools for scripting, interactive media, data visualization, and sonification. In addition to composing new pieces, the class will analyze select works of to learn a variety of approaches to multimedia design.

Starting Something: Entrepreneurial Leadership Skills
Brenda Patterson

This course provides students with real-world tools and actionable steps for launching their own ventures as founder or leader of a for-profit or nonprofit startup. We'll cover the fundamentals of project and business planning, budgets and fundraising, and publicity and marketing. How can you have a unique impact in your community? How can you make a living while pursuing your deepest goals and values? These questions will frame the skills you'll gain, aimed at giving you the essentials of finding your niche and creating a sustainable, self-driven career with integrity and intention.

Spring ‘24 Skills Courses

How to Do Democracy

Lise Clavel

We all agree democratic participation is important, but beyond voting, what does it actually mean? This course aims to situate students in the practical skills of "doing democracy" via the political process: how to work on an advocacy or electoral campaign, run for office, and translate ideas into governing. Some of the questions we will address include: How do policy proposals win top billing in an electoral campaign? What happens to campaign promises on impact with the reality of governing? How can students get a foot in the door with campaigns? With these in mind, we will explore specific elements of policymaking, from advocacy campaigns that build public awareness around a policy proposal, to political campaigns’ framing of policy promises, to the realities of governing and actually effecting policy change. Through applied exercises, readings, and a semester-long project, students will gain experience with advocating for their ideas in the midst of what is often a mess of politics, public opinion, and special interests.

Web Design and Development

Jennifer Stertzer

This project-based course provides students with the knowledge and tools necessary to conceptualize, design, and build functional websites that meet the needs of their target audiences.We’ll begin by creating a project, identifying the audience, preparing site specifications, and developing a workflow. Next, we will cover the basics of design—including both form and function—by evaluating user experience design (UX) and user interface design (UI). Once the outcomes of these exercises have been integrated into your site specifications and workflows, wewill evaluate the tools and platforms available to bring your project to life. This course will give students the skills they need to 1) develop project plans that include site specs, workflows,content modeling/information architecture, wireframing, and brand boards; 2) consider the elements of accessibility (broadly conceived) and approach website design from the perspective of the user; 3) evaluate and identify digital tools and platforms that support and facilitate site development; and 4) build a website that incorporates all elements of planning and design.

Financial Decision Making

Ross Blankenship and Miller Kreider

This course offer a broad survey of personal and business finance concepts. For personal finance, this will include taxes, credit cards, car loans, and home mortgages. Emphasis will be given to the industry structure behind these common institutions so that students can develop a logical intuition to navigate their personal financial decisions. A similar analysis will follow on personal investing, discussing the inherent risks, opportunities, and expected returns when investing in stocks, bonds, crypto, VC/PE etc. We will then flip from consumer and investor finance to entrepreneur and business finance to discuss startups, raising money, and how financial decision making changes as a business matures. Finally, the course will conclude with a discussion of how individual values shape decisions about money and what constitutes a “good” financial decision. Through a mix of case studies, group discussions, lectures, and mixed media (e.g., podcasts, videos), the course will provide opportunities for students to learn how to navigate the world of finance in an informed way. Students will leave with practical tools for making decisions about money that align with their life goals, and coursework will culminate with a final activity/project that serves as a capstone to the coursework. Nota bene: Some quantitative methods will be provided so students can gain exposure to relevant tools, but the curriculum will focus primarily on concepts.

Storytelling Across Multimedia Platforms

Anna Katherine Clay

Storytelling is universal across languages, cultures, and communities. But being able to tell a story in a succinct, clear and powerful way is a learned, intentional practice, and one that can lead to success in a myriad of career paths. In this course, students will learn how to clearly and effectively share a story across platforms, whether audio/podcast, video/film, or written/digital. From articulating the narrative structure of a story to filming a powerful arc for social media, students will experientially learn how to be great storytellers. We will read, watch and listen to examples while analyzing them together. We will examine narrative structure, ledes, hooks, resolutions, and all the elements of storytelling that elevate a story or message, including in the context of a corporate setting. Students will produce their own storytelling across platforms, working individually and collaboratively to be effective, strong storytellers, producing stories that are, to quote UVA President Jim Ryan, “both great and good.”

Mining and Analyzing Social Media Text Data Using R

Hudson Golino

Every day, millions of people across the globe use social media to interact with their friends, share their thoughts, provide updates on their daily lives, and much more. Tons of text data are generated every single day and are available on social media platforms such as Twitter. In this course, students will learn how to use R to extract text data from Twitter, to implement text mining techniques, to estimate topics and emotions in the text data using a plethora of methods and techniques. This is a hands-on course, with one single pre-requisite: some previous experience and basic knowledge of R.

Emotional Intelligence and Effective Communication

Charlie Gleek

Effective communication depends on a range of skills, including an awareness of your audience, of yourself, and of the norms and aesthetics of the genre in which you are communicating. In this class, we will work on getting ideas across clearly and compellingly through several proven approaches. The first will be developing a greater awareness of the intellectual, rhetorical, and communicative tools you already bring to the table as a UVA A&S student. The second will be developing insight into the emotional components of compelling communication, including an awareness of emotional intelligence, or the ability to effectively perceive and engage relationally with others. Finally, we will focus on some of the technical aspects of effective communication through the Microsoft 365 ecosystem. Students should expect to leave the course with fluency in a variety of intellectual and digital skills that form the backbone of many contemporary workplace settings.  

Skills Accelerator Offerings in Academic Year '22-'23

Coding for Virtual Reality: Learning in the Metaverse
Marc Santugini
This immersive experience in virtual reality will be beneficial to the students and their careers as the future presents the possibility of working in a virtual world. Students will experience the wide-ranging possibilities of virtual reality as a cutting-edge medium but also (more importantly) give them the necessary coding and manipulation skills to succeed in the virtual world. Specifically, students will acquire the skills necessary to create and animate 3d models in virtual reality. Coding will be done via circuits that can be moved, wired together to calculate estimates, or plotting and animating data. Knowledge of calculus is expected.

Ethnographic Techniques for Business and Development 
Tess Farmer
Organizations such as Meta, Alphabet, Amazon, and government institutions employ ethnographers to help them understand what people are doing and why; to give them insight not just into what people say is happening, but to spot patterns that can powerfully shape outcomes. These abilities can be translated into portable skills such as market research, user-centered and participatory design, and organizational analysis. They can also help you to be a savvier employee and more successful friend.

Starting Something: Entrepreneurial Leadership Skills
Brenda Patterson
This course provides students with real-world tools and actionable steps for launching their own ventures as founder or leader of a for-profit or nonprofit startup. We'll cover the fundamentals of project and business planning, budgets and fundraising, and publicity and marketing. How can you have a unique impact in your community? How can you make a living while pursuing your deepest goals and values? These questions will frame the skills you'll gain, aimed at giving you the essentials of finding your niche and creating a sustainable, self-driven career with integrity and intention.

Writing While Working
Charlie Gleek
This course develops students' writing abilities towards the demands of clear professional communication across a wide range of genres in workplace settings. It also provides an orientation to the widely used Microsoft Office suite. We will develop and apply interdisciplinary, multi-genre writing skillsets by offering writers an immersive, fictional environment where they take on various roles in a semester-long simulation. Writers will address a series of wicked problems amongst agricultural, commercial, environmental, and governmental interests relating to growth management and comprehensive planning in an imaginary city. Throughout the course, writers will learn the intellectual, practical, and digital writing skills that employers consistently look for.

Spring 2023 Skills Courses

Mining and Analyzing Social Media Text Data Using R
Hudson Golino
Every day, millions of people across the globe use social media to interact with their friends, share their thoughts, provide updates on their daily lives, and much more. Tons of text data are generated every single day and are available on social media platforms such as Twitter. In this course, students will learn how to use R to extract text data from Twitter, to implement text mining techniques, to estimate topics and emotions in the text data using a plethora of methods and techniques. This is a hands-on course, with one single pre-requisite: some previous experience and basic knowledge of R.

Storytelling Across Multimedia Platforms
Anna Katherine Clay
 Storytelling is universal across languages, cultures, and communities. But being able to tell a story in a succinct, clear and powerful way is a learned, intentional practice, and one that can lead to success in a myriad of career paths. In this course, students will learn how to clearly and effectively share a story across platforms, whether audio/podcast, video/film, or written/digital. From articulating the narrative structure of a story to filming a powerful arc for social media, students will experientially learn how to be great storytellers. We will read, watch and listen to examples while analyzing them together. We will examine narrative structure, ledes, hooks, resolutions, and all the elements of storytelling that elevate a story or message, including in the context of a corporate setting. Students will produce their own storytelling across platforms, working individually and collaboratively to be effective, strong storytellers, producing stories that are, to quote UVA President Jim Ryan, “both great and good.”

Navigating Complex Decisions in Work and Career
Ross Blankenship
This course draws on organizational psychology and complex-decision making models to help students develop a language and a framework for how to think systematically and pragmatically about different types of work. We will consider the psychology of values and interests and how they can shape decisions about work. The course will provide opportunities for students to talk about and write about their strengths and areas for development/growth, how to find work they might enjoy, and how to discuss and position their education in a work context. Students will leave with practical tools for making decisions that align with their life goals, including individual assessments and exercises to help build self-awareness. This work will culminate with a“Statement of Work” that defines their first principles for career decision-making and serves as a living document they can continue to revisit and revise as they navigate their careers.

Writing While Working
Charlie Gleek
This course develops students' writing abilities towards the demands of clear professional communication across a wide range of genres in workplace settings. It also provides an orientation to the widely used Microsoft Office suite. We will develop and apply interdisciplinary, multi-genre writing skillsets by offering writers an immersive, fictional environment where they take on various roles in a semester-long simulation. Writers will address a series of wicked problems amongst agricultural, commercial, environmental, and governmental interests relating to growth management and comprehensive planning in an imaginary city. Throughout the course, writers will learn the intellectual, practical, and digital writing skills that employers consistently look for.