Casey Campbell is founder and owner of Elemental Studios, a community ceramics studio that offers classes, workshops, and monthly memberships grounded in wellness education and practice. With a mission to help build community around ceramic arts education and wellness principles and practices, Casey and his team work to help people engage creatively and develop self-care practices they can use in and out of the studio. Casey worked with the PCC SBDC to start his business and now, after hiring five employees and continually increasing revenue, Casey continues to work with the PCC SBDC as Elemental Studios reaches its next growth phase.

Sheldon Levy, PhD, MPH is an instructor in the RCC-Institute for Health Professionals Foundations of Clinical Research. 

When managing a collaborative team, you'll occasionally mediate between team members experiencing conflict. Even collaborative team members can sometimes butt heads and disagree in ways that stall communication and your work. It's the manager's job to fairly evaluate what has gone wrong, assist in group reconciliation, and find a path forward that accommodates everyone.

Explore the Mediation program at PCC.

That is harder than it sounds, and it still sounds pretty difficult! Many managers opt to train in specific strategies for mediation rather than assuming they'll just muddle through it. As a result, their teams can grow confident that their managers can handle and resolve conflict actively, rather than leaving everyone to fend for themselves. Actively resolving conflict helps teams work together better by not leaving tensions unspoken, where they could fester and damage working relationships or become a bigger issue later. These are just some of the benefits of mediation training for managers, with bigger boosts in confidence and effectiveness that can come down the road.

When planning a trip, airfare and accommodations take center stage, but ensuring a seamless, worry-free vacation involves more than booking. If you aspire to an illness-free adventure (and who doesn't?), packing your essential herbal travel emergency kit is as crucial as your tickets and reservations. Don't embark on your journey without it

A smooth stomach is a travel pleasure, but things often don’t go your way. All that flying and driving can lead to a pretty snarly tummy. If you get queasy all too easy, think ginger. Ayurveda calls ginger the "universal medicine", and for good reason—it's a medicine cabinet in a jar. Ginger has long been recommended as a remedy for many conditions, but no condition has been studied more in connection with ginger than nausea.

Perhaps you're interested in exploring property management roles and how they fit into the broader real estate landscape. A reasonable question is whether you'll benefit from working as a property manager since the rent goes to the landlord or owner of the property. On the other hand, you might worry that you can't get into real estate because you don't have the capital to invest in property right now.

In either case, you should take heart that property managers can build thriving businesses without investing in property themselves. Real estate is a very stable place to earn your income since everyone needs a place to live. Real estate and property management is a business like any other, and working for a management company isn't very different than working at any company.

Real estate brokers have a lot of opportunities in the Portland market. You may be more familiar with the generic term real estate agent, but in Oregon, to be officially licensed to sell and buy homes as an agent for the sellers and buyers, you must pass the exam to become an official real estate broker. That career is exciting since much of your income comes from your hustle and the networks you can build. Even when markets are in flux, great real estate brokers make their business connections, shift from working with lots of sellers to working with more buyers and find creative ways to grow their reach.

Once you've found success in this field, there are many opportunities to use your experience to start your team and lead other real estate brokers as a Principal Broker. It allows you to combine your leadership skills with the work you have developed a strong ability to do.

Updated March 1, 2023

Healthcare is a field that never goes out of style. With the rise in chronic illnesses and an aging population, the demand for healthcare professionals is only growing. Working as a pharmacy technician is an accessible and quick entry point into a fulfilling healthcare career. 

With flexible hours, a solid salary, and the opportunity to help others, being a pharmacy technician is a wonderful way to help people while securing your financial well-being. Here, we cover the ins and outs of what a pharmacy technician does to help you determine if it's the right career path for you.

Do you ever find yourself in the kitchen without knowing why you came in there? No, not you. Whatever it was, it must have been important, for here you are. Maybe if you go back out into the living room, you’ll magically remember why you traipsed to the kitchen. Or, just maybe, some herbal medicine can jog that aging memory. 

Teachers have been improving how they differentiate students' abilities for many decades. Most teachers now recognize that different students have different strengths and benefit from different approaches and perspectives on learning. Teachers take professional development coursework to continue learning how other educators implement differentiation in their classrooms, helping more students have positive outcomes from the schooling process.

Let's look at what equitable grading is and what it can contribute to efforts to improve equity and inclusion in the classroom.