Welcome, welcome, welcome to the Aspiring Project Manager! We're so glad you're here, and so glad to be supporting you as you take your next steps into learning more about project management as a purpose-driven leader.
The Aspiring Project Manager, or the APM, is a forever-free overview of what it can look like to build your skills and your project management competency while working in helping professions (like higher ed, nonprofit, healthcare, and many others). Hear us when we say: your skills are powerful and important. We want to encourage you to strengthen your competency to keep leading meaningful work, and we know project management skills can help you do that.
Why We Built the APM
To share a little more about the APM and why it exists:
What the APM Is NOT
Course Structure
We structure this course by introducing you to foundational project management principles that will underlie your work in anything you do – this is Lesson 1.
From there, Lessons 2-6 cover off on the project management life cycle – aka the building blocks of all projects.
Finally, Lessons 7 and 8 wrap up with some thoughts to guide your next steps, and we also provide a comprehensive list of resources.
Lesson 1: Basic Project Management Principles
Lesson 2: Project Initiation
Lesson 3: Project Planning
Lesson 4: Project Execution
Lesson 5: Project Monitoring & Controlling
Lesson 6: Project Closing
Lesson 7: Mindset Work (Review Anytime)
Lesson 8: Pursuing Certification (Review Anytime)
Resources (Review Anytime)
How to Approach the APM
My strong recommendation is to work through Modules 1-6 in order, completely, before accessing any of the other content. Do not skip lessons or modules. Spend all the time you need to before moving on from a lesson. Do not access the "Review Anytime" modules until you've finished the "Learn In Order" modules.
My rationale here is that 1) the content builds on itself, and 2) if you ask me questions about later content, my response 99% of the time is going to ask you whether you've reviewed the content completely and in order. I know the temptation to rush ahead or skip around is real... and I've built this so that once you've gone through it once, you can review over and over and skip around as much as you like! But do try, until you get to Module 6, to go slow and go in order.
This is really good. Why is it free?
Because we believe that project management is for everyone, and that if you're here – as a purpose-driven leader working in a helping profession – we need your voice around the table.
Caroline Horste built this course and released it for the first time back in 2021. Since then, hundreds of professionals have gone through it (and we're hoping to hit 1000 in 2026 and then just keep going). This is its third iteration, brought current to the PMBOK 8 Standards in the spring of 2026.
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