SAN DIEGO STATE UNIVERSITY
Department of Linguistics and Asian/Middle Eastern Languages
Basic Certificate in Computational Linguistics

Who can benefit from earning the Basic Certificate?
The Basic Certificate in Computational Linguistics is directed at individuals in the following groups:
	Undergraduate students from any major looking to provide a focus to their curriculum and enhance their resumes after graduation
	Community members 
	Professionals working in the areas of language processing or related fields wishing to update their knowledge of the field
	Professionals in related fields who want to enhance their marketability by pairing computational linguistics certification with another degree.

Where is the Certificate useful?
We are offering the Computational Linguistics Certificate as an assessment tool to prospective employers.  Individuals who hold the Certificate are prepared to employ their computational linguistics skills in a variety of areas:
	in the area of Speech Recognition
	in the area of Machine Translation or Machine-Assisted Translation
	in various areas of text-mining or text-filtering, such as customer service support analysis or SPAM detection
	in the area of Litigation Support
	in various areas of Information Retrieval, such as web search

Certificate Requirements

The Basic Certificate requires 12 units: four 3-unit courses.

Courses and areas:
Introductory Linguistics: Ling 420 or Ling 520
Scripting or Linguistic Databases: Ling 571
Intro to Computational Linguistics: Ling 581
Mathematical/ Programming Tools: Ling 572

Transfer Credit
Transfer credit is sometimes possible for one equivalent course (or, rarely, two equivalent courses) taken elsewhere.  All applications for transfer credit are evaluated individually by the Certificate Program.  No academic credit for course work is granted for work experience.  

Registration and Academic Credit
You can register, and pay for, courses for the Basic Certificate in any of four ways:
1. as an undergraduate candidate for a bachelor's degree, taking the courses as electives (Note: Linguistics and Liberal Studies majors may count all Certificate course work toward their major requirements, but other majors may count no more than six units toward both an undergraduate major or minor (other than a Linguistics minor) and the Certificate, unless otherwise stated).  Information regarding fees can be found at the following web site: http://bfa.sdsu.edu/fm/co/sfs/studentfees.html
2. as a graduate candidate for a master's degree, taking the courses as electives.  Additional information is available at: http://arweb.sdsu.edu/es/admissions/graduate/faq.html
3. as an unclassified graduate student (that is, one not pursuing a degree) seeking the Certificate only.  The link directly above provides additional information.
4. through the College of Extended Studies ("Open University").  Additional information is available at: http://www.ces.sdsu.edu/open_info.htm
For alternatives 1-3, you must have been admitted to San Diego State University through the regular application process. For alternative 4, no application or acceptance procedure is necessary; the College of Extended Studies is the division of the university open to the general public. (Note: the course work and all Certificate requirements are the same regardless of the way you register and pay for them, and there is no difference between Certificates earned by individuals registering through Extended Studies and those earned by individuals registering as admitted students.)

Obtaining the completion of certificate document  After completion of the coursework for the certificate, students should contact the department office and provide an unofficial transcript showing that relevant coursework has been completed. 

For more information or to obtain an application, please come to the Linguistics Office (BA334). 

If you have any questions about the computational linguistics certificate requirements, please email to the certificate advisor, Dr. Jean  Mark Gawron  (gawron@mail.sdsu.edu).