(COLUMBIA, Tenn. - Aug. 27, 2012) - - - Columbia State Community College's Center for Economic and Workforce Development is offering a variety of professional development courses during the month of September. If you're looking to add to your skill set or fine-tune your current ones, Columbia State can help you achieve your goals.

Coaching for Successis offered in conjunction with the Leadership Series. This course will help you learn how to prepare people to successfully handle challenging situations and tasks; expand your team's capabilities to give the organization a competitive edge; delegate with confidence in your team's ability to assume new responsibilities; spend less time reacting to problems because you have prepared your work groups to succeed. This class will be at the Columbia campus on Monday, Sept. 3.

Online Medical Transcription is a course is offered through a partnership with Oak Horizons. The program consists of six consecutive blocks, and each block will take about six weeks to complete. Oak Horizons regularly networks with various employers to document skill needs and program value. Medical transcription is a healthcare profession that is in great need of knowledgeable and skilled professionals. This class will begin on Monday, Sept. 10.

Online Medical Coding is offered through a partnership with Oak Horizons. The program consists of six consecutive blocks and will take approximately 9 months to complete. Oak Horizons regularly networks with various employers to document skill needs and program value. This class will begin on Monday, Sept. 24.

Spanish for the Workplace will take place in six 2-hour training sessions. Anyone can benefit from this training, especially individuals whose work brings them into contact with Spanish speakers on a regular basis such as insurance companies, banks, restaurants and grocery stores. The class will be on Monday and Wednesday evenings beginning Sept. 10-26 at the Columbia campus.

Introduction to GIS covers basic skills involved in using Geographic Information System software. Upon completion of this 15-hour course, students will be able to display data, search data, edit data and produce simple maps. The class will meet Tuesdays for five weeks at the Columbia Campus. The first class is on Tuesday, Sept. 11.

Lean Lead Time & Improvement Tools Overview includes three 3-hour sessions that focus on key tools for improving the support, feeder and main processes in any organization. Manufacturing and process industries will be the focus however these tools can be applied more broadly. You will understand how to map a product, balance and stream line processes to reduce time, improve quality and reduce costs while increasing safety. This class begins on Tuesday, Sept. 11 and extends through Sept. 13.

Fundamentals of Real Estate covers a large portion of the Tennessee Real Estate Commission's pre-license course requirements. Topics include the real estate business, agency relationship, contracts, valuation and finance. The course will meet at the Columbia Campus for 15 beginning Tuesday, Sept. 11.

Project Management Basicsteaches you how to establish a project objective, generate tactics to accomplish your objective, set a time line for a project, identify resources needed, set key milestones for the project and establish other measurement metrics to assess progress. This class will be held on Monday, Sept. 17.

Introduction to Excel 2010 teaches you how to sort and analyze data, design custom charts and graphs, format worksheets using mathematical formulas. The course will be on Friday, Sept. 7.

Introduction to QuickBooks 2010 course covers banking and billing activities, working with reports and budgets, protecting and backing up data, and more. This class will be at the Williamson County campus on Saturday, Sept. 8.

Advance to Intermediate Excel 2010, and learn how to use multiple worksheets and workbooks efficiently, and start working with more advanced formatting options including styles, themes and backgrounds. You will also learn how to create outlines, subtotals and how to create and apply cell names and how to work with tables. You will save workbooks as Web pages, insert and edit hyperlinks, and learn to share workbooks by email. This class will be held on the Columbia campus on Friday, Sept. 21.

Microsoft Project 2010 teaches you how to effectively plan, implement and control projects using Microsoft Project 2010. You'll learn how to use Microsoft Project to think through and organize your project's details, plan a schedule, sequence tasks, produce a baseline, assign resources and costs, track your progress, identify and analyze variances, and revise your project plan. This class will be on Friday, Sept. 28.

Managing Change Effectively teaches you that effective implementation of change can be a major challenge for organizations. Why is it so difficult? Why do so many change efforts wind up as failures? This course helps you better understand the Change Cycle, what is normal that we should expect, and how to build support for change. This course will be on Friday, Sept. 28.

To register for these or any of Columbia State's other professional development or continuing education courses, visit http://registration.xenegrade.com/columbiastate. For additional information, including meeting times and course fees, please call (931) 540-2659.

Columbia State is a two-year college, serving a nine-county area in southern Middle Tennessee with locations in Columbia, Franklin, Lawrenceburg, Lewisburg and Clifton. As Tennessee's first community college, Columbia State is committed to increasing access and enhancing diversity at all five campuses. Columbia State is a member of the Tennessee Board of Regents, the sixth largest higher education system in the nation. For more information, please visit www.columbiastate.edu.