Project Managers are Purveyors of Change

As the longest active instructor with the UW Tacoma PDC, Cass Tang taught many, many classes, mainly focusing on her specialty- project management. 

All through her whole career Cass has mentored and coached project managers. Sharing paths to success and continually encouraging project managers led to creating project management offices at several organizations. These offices acted as a central repository for project management tools and templates and a place to go for assistance. Cass was with Tacoma Public Schools for four and a half years and then she went to the University of Washington where she is currently the Director of Project Management and has six project managers. 

When she started with the PDC, Cass created her own curriculum by interweaving chapters from the PMBOK with templates and tools that she had developed. She also created her own interactive, Montessori-like teaching style. “(My classes are) tactical and tangible. Using the brain, using the ears, and collaborating. It’s just an immersive type of training that works really well with my students. For professional education, we have to up our game (as instructors). We have to be really animated and energized. We have to keep people involved and they really need to find value because they’re adults and they don’t have to be in that class listening to a tenured professor,” notes Cass. 

In her opinion, UW Tacoma’s Professional Development center fills an important role in the community.

“I love teaching project management to people in the Tacoma area especially. They really need attention. They are from manufacturing, nonprofit, or government. They are from all walks of life. They are people from Foss, Habitat for Humanity, UW, Piledriver, Goodwill, Boeing, Weyerhaeuser. It’s just such a mix of people. It’s been pretty amazing!”

When asked why she thinks people should seek out professional development opportunities, Cass gets to the core of it. “People are voracious learners. When given the time, they will seek to improve, adapt, and apply. Going back to the classroom is really invigorating. It is an investment in self that reenergizes. It pays off in the long run,” says Cass.

And for Cass, teaching doesn’t stop after the course is over. Cass has an active Facebook group for former students where they can continue to connect, network, and learn. She wants her students to know that they will get pushback in the workplace and how to handle it. “You get pushback because project managers are purveyors of change. The reason we get hired is that there is some kind of change going on. There’s always a constant and the constant is change,” notes Cass. 

When not at work or teaching, she can be found spending time with her husband learning about worldwide cooking channels and enjoying the results in their kitchen, watching Korean TV dramas or Disney Star Wars, feeding their wide variety of wild birds, and growing fruits, vegetables, and propagating flowers.