Education | ELDER: Eldercare Management Certificate with CEUs

Growth through Innovation, Partnering and Marketing

October 23, 2015

SMASH, the annual Senior Care Marketing Summit, just ended and we at ELDER agree that the world of marketing is rapidly changing– while senior living and senior health care struggle to keep up. Of the many concepts discussed*, those that resonated most with us include:

-listening to your audience for clues on how to best engage them
-relationship building and engagement with local community
-delegating core responsibilities across team members

The conference is over, now what?

Here’s an idea: build on growth ideas presented during fall conference season by developing your own plan. Grow with the support of award winning practitioners who are handling the rapid changes in the world of senior marketing and relationship-building first hand:

Erin Read is Director of Strategic Planning at Creating Results, where she focuses intently on Baby Boomers and seniors. She is the “Dean” of the agency’s in-house training program, the Mature Marketing Academy, and regularly addressed regional, national and international audiences.

Kate Salmon from Salmon Health is Director of Marketing Communications and Community Relations at Salmon Health and Retirement, where she works with all campus teams developing marketing, sales, and community outreach.

Together, Erin and Kate will combine their expertise to teach our upcoming Marketing Course in January.

Mark Friedman is the Owner of Boston Senior Helpers where he experiences the senior market in its current state of change first hand. As partner at ESCI, a strategy consulting firm, Mark presents at schools of management and online on how to find growth through innovation. He applies those concepts to the senior continuum with the ELDER Management-Lasell College program.

David Becker, CEO of Penacook Place, is an expert in partnering realities in the reimbursed market space. As CEO He works daily on partnering across the continuum to provide better patient care in northeastern Massachusetts.

In our upcoming Partnering course, Mark and David will be exploring Blue Ocean Strategy and how to create growth innovation via partnering relationships.

All 4 of these practitioners focus on how you manage your team for growth— to link growth strategy and marketing strategy together. For a short time, we are allowing a limited number of registrants to take both courses for the price of one. Register for Partnering Across the Eldercare Continuum and get Marketing: Developing a Mature Consumer Strategy for free! Get more info here.

*See keynote slides from SMASH 2015 here.

North Hill donates 3 Scholarships to improve management in aging

August 3, 2015

We want to compliment North Hill for designating 3 generous scholarships as support for 3 participants of The Strategic Management Track, where you can earn a Professional Certificate in Eldercare Management by Spring 2016.

ELDER and Lasell College would like to give a special thank you to North Hill for helping to inspire the eldercare profession through collaboration, teaching and leading the way to more educational opportunities for managers in senior living.

Improve Management Skills in a Supportive Environment With the Help of Your LeadingAge Association

July 13, 2015

Special thank you to LeadingAge of Massachusetts, New Hampshire-Maine, and Rhode Island for their dedication to developing opportunities for their members.

ELDER and Lasell College are partnering with LeadingAge Massachusetts, LeadingAge Maine-New Hampshire, and LeadingAge Rhode Island, to offer the Strategic Management Track which complements their existing efforts to support and strengthen managers at our member organizations.

Designed for supportive learning, the track offers five mini management courses spaced out to be manageable. You meet live five evenings between October, 2015 and March, 2016 at Lasell College in Newton, MA, conveniently near the Massachusetts Turnpike and 128/95.

Members of LeadingAgeMA, RI, ME & NH will receive a discounted price

Management courses, for the eldercare field, based on your scarcest resource: your time!

As a response to interviews with your leaders, the classes are now “lumped”. You spend a few hours a week mid October through Thanksgiving working on strategic goals, then you’re completely off until mid January, when you study marketing, or how to communicate according to your strategy. You start again through late March, building on the work earlier in the year, learning about managing a plan or project to completion.

Earn your Professional Studies Certificate from Lasell College while earning CEUs.

No application required. CEUs available for Social Workers, Nursing Home Administrators and Nurses.

Why is a live classroom or an online classroom a great place for adult learners? Unlike mandatory training, people who show up in a live or online classroom want to be there. But that doesn’t mean that everyone is sure what they will experience: in our courses, you learn alongside managers from peer organizations who have varied perspectives in varied parts of the eldercare field. To get the most out of the opportunity, your obligation is to share ideas and apply the concepts from class to your organization. The faculty and experts help you do this. This is why our classes are called “experiential learning.”

Supportive learning: with the guidance of a leader in your field, each assignment is one step towards better management.

Our instructors give you small assignments that build your management skills to apply to work. Each assignment is a step towards a strategic initiative, a step towards a marketing plan for a segment of the market, an approach to a partner on the continuum, or the analysis of a conflict or change effort. All with a great leader in the field who has the tools to help you manage better.

Compliments the Leadership Academy

All senior managers, managers or supervisors in senior serving organization qualify, regardless of educational background, and regardless of your organization’s place on the continuum. Our participants tell us that the diversity of perspectives enriches the learning. The most important factor for success is a desire to improve your skills, to help your organization move towards the future, and a willingness to invest time in learning.

This program is appropriate for graduates of LeadingAge Massachusetts Leadership Academy, but one need not have attended Leadership Academy to be eligible or to benefit from the curriculum. The two programs compliment each other.

Call ELDER with questions about CEUs, hotels, or what the experience is like. karla@eldermgt.com or 617-953-8429.

You asked for it, we listened – What’s New With E.L.D.E.R. Management Education This Summer?

June 29, 2015

With the wrap up of our final spring course, ELDER is busy this summer working on next year’s CEUs for nurses, nursing home administrators, and social workers. In preparation for our Strategic Management Track launching in the fall, we’ve also been reviewing feedback from our students. So, what do our participants think? They say our courses are…

-“timely and relevant to managerial challenges we all face.”

-“an important reminder to focus on a specific measurable goal that supports the bigger strategic picture rather than executing day to day tasks.”

-“great for networking and for exchanging ideas.”

Since launching our very first course, our participants have provided helpful feedback. Based on group evaluations, we’re streamlining our management education experience to maximize learning and minimize travel time. In our upcoming Strategic Management Track, students can expect:

Assignment demonstrations

For some of the trickier assignments, we’ll have step-by-step instructions on how to complete the work!

Greater % online content

Though some of our course material is best shared in person, a majority of it is just as effective presented online. We’ve moved more content online, and will be requiring only one live meeting per course. You said: we love being together, but we could take more courses if they were available online.

Learning Cohorts

What else to expect in our newest learning track? A cohort of managers who’ll take all 5 mini courses together. Our classes are known for great discussion with peers from other organizations in the continuum, action learning, and learning from leaders in your field. A cohort will provide a deeper sense of understanding and camaraderie amongst participants.

We’d like to thank our participants and instructors for a great year. For more information about ELDER, click here. Check back for more ELDER updates next week!

Which Kind of Management Education is the Right Fit for You?

February 13, 2015

Professional Studies vs Grad School: Which is the right fit for you?

by Valerie Williams:

Valerie completed her Masters in Communication at Lasell College in June, 2014, and now works as the Marketing Communications Coordinator for ELDER. After observing and interacting with ELDER participants, faculty and experts, she wrote this to summarize the information many prospective participants need.

You are a manager in a terrific CCRC, Assisted Living, Nursing/Rehab organization, Adult Day Health provider, medical provider or agency with a large senior population, and you want to build your management and leadership skills. You’re managing programs, community relations, hospitality, social work, development, marketing, activities, care coordination or you are an executive director. You and your team face daily challenges from changes in the market that require you to build new capabilities internally.

What is the right educational path?

It depends, like many things, on your goals and your budget. Both professional and graduate studies are higher-level management education opportunities that can propel your career forward—but which is the right fit for you? Here are the questions you many of our participants examined when making the decision.

What type of Credit or CEU will I get and at what cost?

Graduate studies, often 2-year programs, are the next step after earning a bachelors degree. Courses usually last a full semester, whether online or live, and cover a topic in great detail over the course of months, and require a substantial amount of reading and writing. Content is king, so to demonstrate that knowledge the requirements are is substantial and the work is graded. One can usually find a program that is oriented towards health care, or there may be a few specialized classes about long-term care. Click here to view the details of Lasell College’s MSM in Management, with a concentration in Eldercare. If you have the academic qualifications, and seek the recognition that comes with a Master’s degree, then this credential may be the right option for you.

ELDER’s management courses, offered by Lasell College and BU’s School of Social Work, are classified as Professional Studies.
They are for managers currently or recently working in the field of Eldercare. These courses are short (2 to 4 weeks), employ action-learning, and require you to make a plan for yourself or your organization. The richness comes from highly selected content (much less reading than graduate school), but mostly from the interaction with the experts from the field, who teach, and with peers in the room. The cost of a course is between $600 and and $900 depending on the bundle of courses offered together, and the experts involved. These are non-credit courses, though CEUs are offered. Most ELDER courses are approved for 10-20 CEUs for social workers. Anyone may earn academic CEUs (generally 1 or 2) per course. Your work is graded for your personal feedback, but your transcript says “P” if you get above a 70%. There is no application for joining these courses. Work experience in an organization serving seniors is the only criteria for joining.

In ELDER’s program, if you take 6 short courses, Lasell College will grant you a Professional Certificate in Eldercare Management. You may also get one class removed from your requirement for graduate school. Depending on the course selection and bundle, this certificate may cost around $4,500. About 80% of ELDER participants have had their class paid for by their organizations.

Who will be in my classes?

In a Masters in Management program, your classmates will come from many fields and organizations. In ELDER’s Professional Studies program, you are with peers from organizations serving seniors. An agency serving Medicaid population may be very different than a CCRC serving a high-income population, but many of the challenges of defining strategic initiatives, marketing, budgeting and managing teams are similar.

Who will be teaching my classes?

In a Masters program, usually an academic faculty member, sometimes with knowledge of a specific field, is teaching. In ELDER’s Professional Studies Program, every class is co-taught by faculty and experts who are practitioners in the field.

Where are my classes held?

Some classes are offered online, some are face to face, some are hybrid. Ask this question about every single class.

ELDER’s classes are offered online in bundles through both Boston University’s Center for Aging and Disability Education and Reach and Lasell College. ELDER’s classes are also offered live at Lasell College, though less often.

What is online learning like?

Online learning takes self-discipline and the ability to work independently. Your responsibility is to log on, read your materials, and answer questions in a forum-style discussion with your peers. To make the most of online learning, it’s important to fully engage in the discussion by responding to your classmates in a timely and thoughtful manner.

Questions about professional, graduate, or other learning opportunities? Email ideas@eldermgt.com or leave us a comment below– Karla or Valerie will get back to you!