As a certified Franklin-Covey Facilitator at the University of Illinois (Urbana-Champaign), Dr. Valli mentors professional development and experiential learning. This internationally recognized practice represents an opportunity to leverage one’s existing strengths while honing in on commercial relevance. In essence, building self-efficacy and 'investability'. Coordinating outreach and professional development increases important touch-points with stakeholders and the business community at-large. This coordinated outreach offers a strategic roadmap, advancing innovation and entrepreneurship with a global footprint.

Sample of Learning Objectives:

Deliver leadership development training to students in the program that will improve their leadership capability, personal effectiveness, self-efficacy and ‘investability’.

Certification: Upon completion of the program, students will have gained the following competencies:

Self-awareness and adaptability: Students will gain an understanding of their own strengths, weaknesses, and behavioral tendencies in various situations and will create a plan to adapt their strengths and tendencies to maximize efficiency.

Leadership: Students will learn how to motivate others, set expectations and hold individuals accountable. Students will gain empathic listening skills and the ability to be transparent and honest in their communications, in order to understand others and build relationships of mutual trust.

Ability to work effectively in teams and create win-win situations: Students will learn to recognize strengths and tendencies in others in order to identify ways to leverage complimentary skills and increase effectiveness when working with others.

Time and task management: Students will gain the ability to focus on what matters most, based on personal and professional short and long term goals.

Professional Communication: Students will gain skills to help them clearly and persuasively communicate in professional settings.

Enhanced Experiential Learning

Employing a thematic-centric/applied-oriented (TCAO) focus on innovation and entrepreneurship, challenges students to identify a problem, take action and show results through solutions (e.g., PARS) . A key metric of success is based on heightened student and institutional investability i.e., self-efficacy, job creation and industry engagement. Rooted in positive psychology, this trending pedagogy in essence nurtures a blend of personal and professional development.

Clusternomics

Innovation ecosystems play an important role in accelerating third stream initiatives, where universities add to the traditional roles of research and teaching. The third mission emphasizes the transformation of research outputs that address wider societal needs. Many drivers underscore the increasing challenges of commercializing university ideas in an environment marked by changes in levels of public funding. Open Innovation practices have heightened the role that universities can play in regional economic development. Dr. Valli’s forthcoming book Clusternomics, ranks and analyzes emerging technology clusters.