UL University “Educating the people who make the world a safer place”

For over 110 years UL has provided technical expertise to manufacturers in 35 countries, so that they can build safer products for their customers. UL University (ULU), as an ISO 9000 certified function at UL, is fully aligned with the UL’s safety mission and is dedicated to the ULU mission of “Educating the people who make the world a safer place”.

ULU consists of four colleges. Three colleges are dedicated to the training of UL employees so that internally UL staff are trained to the most up-to-date technical, customer focused and managerial practices. The Colleges of ULU are: the Leadership & Management College, Commercial College and Technical College. The 4th college — the Customer College — focuses on partnering with our customers to meet their educational needs.

To ensure that ULU course content is accurate and to the right level of complexity for various audiences, ULU is given tremendous support from UL’s subject matter experts. These come from all of the functions in UL including our Principal Engineers, Researchers, Operations Engineers, Laboratory Technicians, Field Inspectors and personnel from the Business Excellence Office, Quality Department and other functions. Meanwhile, ULU recognizes that individuals and companies vary widely in their capabilities, learning styles and needs when it comes to how knowledge and training is best delivered and best received. As a result, ULU has applied the ADDIE Model, Adult Learning Principles and Best Teaching Methods to ensure training is effective. At ULU, any prospective trainer has to go through a Train-the-Trainer process to be qualified to train others.

The ADDIE model is the generic process traditionally used by training developers. The five phases — Analysis, Design, Development, Implementation, and Evaluation — represent a dynamic, flexible guideline for building effective training and performance support tools. As an example of customization, in the case of designing training for low literacy learners, ULU’s trainers apply visual and heuristic approaches like theater, storytelling, pictures and visual media in order to easily get participants fully involved.

Online ULU: www.uluniversity.com

ULU is continually expanding its diverse course catalog to meet the ever-changing demands of the global economy. Simply log on to www.uluniversity.com and you can explore the UL safety standards training in areas such as Medical Devices, Medical Software, Industrial Control Panels, NEC, Plastics, Fire Safety, Hazardous Locations, Quality Training, OSHA, ITE and many more.

ULU offers a broad range of subject matter with flexible content delivery that meets the needs of any organization.

Public Workshops: In 2009, ULU will conduct over 1,000 public workshops on over 150 different subjects in various cities around the world.

Private, Custom and Round Table Workshops: ULU’s private workshops are led by technical experts and provide a company’s team members with up-to-date information or ever-changing global regulatory schemes and product safety requirements. This is an effective approach when five or more employees can benefit from a tailored and focused training experience.

Personnel Certification Programs: Personnel Certification is the validation of knowledge, skills, behaviors, experience and competencies for a given job, role or function. We work with companies to train and certify their staff.

Webinars and Pre-recorded Webcasts: ULU offers a number of live and on-demand one and two hour online training programs. Content of webinars and pre-recorded webcasts reflects the same expertise and knowledge that the public workshops deliver.

Online Courses: We offer a selection of self-paced online courses providing basic information on the National Electrical Code®, neon lighting, hazard-based safety engineering and UL’s Follow-Up Services (FUS).

Online Purchase of Books / Safety Videos: We also provide safety-related educational materials so that you can share them with members of your company or community at anytime.

All in all, whether your business is in the United States, Brazil, China, or virtually anywhere else in the world, ULU offers training customized to fit customers’ needs. Contact our UL University representatives at any UL office to find out more or simply ask what kind of educational services are on offer to help you.

Part of the above content is extracted from a presentation delivered by Patrick Boyle, President, UL University, at the World Congress on Safety and Health at Work, Seoul, Korea 2008.