WASHINGTON - With the goal of helping credit unions improve their strategic options, Callahan & Associates and Georgetown University have teamed up to make it happen. The new "Shaping the Playing Field for Credit Union Success" course was developed by Georgetown University's McDonough School of Business and Callahan and will make its debut Sept. 21-24 on the school's campus. The course will focus on a number of areas such as cornering the "values marketplace," harnessing the power of network strategies to overcome size limitations, applying cooperative principles in developing strategy, and identifying changing consumer needs, according to Callahan. "We are in a new era," said Chip Filson, president of Callahan and one of the course's creators. "With their small size, credit unions need to out-think the competition-we can't outspend them." Paul Almeida, who will lead the course, stated that the intent of the program is to "help credit unions shape the playing field to their advantage." Almeida, who received his master's degree and doctorate from the Wharton School at the University of Pennsylvania, is a specialist on the role of strategy, innovation and knowledge management in attaining and preserving business competitiveness.