Credential Builders for Engineers
Gain the skills to effectively compete in today’s fast-moving innovation economy through our online Credential Builders for Engineers Short Courses.
These Short Courses are designed with working professionals in mind – they are available 100% online tailored to career advancement with a shorter time commitment than typical semester-based programs (4-6 weeks). The short courses are segmented into approximately 20-minute videos and related assignments (total of 15-16 hours) with faculty dedicating time to answering questions and substantive interactions that is unique compared to what other programs are offering.
Learners earn 1.5 CEUs, a badge, and a certificate at the completion of the course.
Upcoming Courses for the Years 2021 and 2022
This course introduces engineering students to the concepts, theory, and practice of leadership in modern-day organizations through real-world examples and expert instruction. Students will develop their leadership framework and abilities through exploring topics such as ethical leadership, excellence in communications, managing conflict, developing effective teams, building organizational culture, leading and managing change, and professional credibility. The course is critical in a world where the only constant changes. Start Date: August 23, 2021 Registration is closed Effective communication is recognized as one of the core competencies for engineering leaders. Persuasion (with ethical intent) is often viewed as an essential element in the communications process in order to effectively inform and influence beliefs in and actions by others and achieve the desired course of action or outcome. This course focuses on understanding the science of persuasion and best practices in how it can be applied to develop more persuasive written documents and presentations. Students will have an opportunity to develop and deliver presentations evaluated by industry experts. Start Date: September 13, 2021 Registration is closed Business acumen, the ability to understand how companies work, make money, and execute on strategy, is a core competency that many engineering professionals lack. Developing this skill or competency can help engineers understand how the decisions they make in organizations impact an organization’s financial, operational, and sales results. The course provides an overview of some key aspects of business acumen, its importance in managing a business, and how developing this skill can help you become a leader in your organization. Learning will be advanced through understanding and applying the information in the course content and from the various activities within the course modules. Start Date: September 27, 2021 Designed especially for engineers, this course covers how budding professionals can apply knowledge of practical financial and budgeting processes across the full life cycle of their careers. Engineers in this course will understand how finance interacts with their field, improve decision making, enhance financial monitoring and performance, lead and evaluate resource tradeoff decisions, project financial outcomes, interpret balance sheets, and achieve the greatest targeted value for the cost of a project. This course covers the fundamentals of these financial concepts and provides students an opportunity to apply the concepts in real-world situations. Start Date: November 1, 2021 Disasters and human-made societal threats create crisis conditions that require leadership by those within engineering and technology-centrist organizations to stabilize, manage, and mitigate the impacts. This course assists students in developing and applying a complex, interdependent system-level of thought required to predict and plan for crises, and lead teams and organizations that can effectively implement appropriate responses for crisis situations. Start Date: Spring 2022 Email us at edge@eng.ufl.edu if you’re interested in getting notified once the date for the course is finalized and registration is open. In today’s cost-competitive, complex work environment, engineers will manage projects that implement their stakeholders’ or company’s products, services, or developments in an optimized, efficient manner. The Project Manager assimilates the components of the project utilizing leadership and management principles that embrace both knowledge and experience in building the structure, processes, components, and linkages within the team for successful project delivery. Start Date: Summer 2022 Email us at edge@eng.ufl.edu if you’re interested in getting notified once the date for the course is finalized and registration is open.
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Instructor
Samual Lopez, DBA
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Instructor
Bill McElroy, PE
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Instructor
Lawrence Tinker, PhD
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Instructor
Regina Rodriguez, PhD
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Artificial Intelligence Initiative
This is a 15-hour hybrid course. Learners will meet synchronously via Zoom and will have asynchronous activities. Learners will have eight weeks upon registration to complete the five modules which will require the students to complete at least three hours of work each week. At the end of the course, students will earn a badge for course completion. Learners will earn 1.5 continuing education units (CEUs). By the end of this course, students will be able to: Multi-layer Perceptrons (MLPs) Start Date: October 18, 2021 An overview of Artificial Intelligence (AI), approaching the concept from its origins to expectations for the future. The course will focus on various AI technologies, how to build Machine Learning models, and how to apply AI tools to solve real-world problems. Some of the concepts introduced in the course are types of AI and Machine Learning, Hacking and the IoT, AI today, and its outlook for the future. By the end of this course, students will be able to: Start Date: October 18, 2021 This course offers a top-down approach to the study of deep neural network-based solutions, beginning with introducing basic concepts and applications. Course participants are then guided by implementing common architectures and corresponding training and prediction procedures, which includes a simple environment setup and interactive participation using Anaconda Jupyternotebooks. The underlying principles are then reviewed to provide the foundation necessary for deeper understanding and interrogation of these large, complex mathematical models. We conclude this short course by revisiting notable applications to discuss lessons learned. Start Date: Spring 2022 Email us at edge@eng.ufl.edu if you’re interested in getting notified once the date for the course is finalized and registration is open. 
Dimensionality Reduction
Support Vector Machines (SVMs)
Random Forests
Gibbs Samplers
Topic Models
Convolutional Neural Networks (CNNs)
Autoencoders
Generative Adversarial Networks
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For any questions regarding the short courses above, please contact Dr. David Mazyck, UF EDGE Director, at edge@eng.ufl.edu>.