Certificates
If you want to get a feel for the program before you commit to pursuing the full Master’s Degree or if you want to concentrate on a particular subject area, taking subject-specific courses is an excellent place to start! Certain courses are available to take without enrolling in the Master’s Program.
Courses taken for credit go onto an official transcript and are transferrable. This means you can apply these credits towards the Master’s Degree here at a later time, or at a different institution as a transfer credit. You’ll also receive a certificate of completion for your records if desired.
You may also opt to take courses for no credit and be awarded a certificate upon completion. In this arrangement, assignments are optional and professors do not grade completed work.
You can obtain a diploma in either Non-Profit & Community Management or Linguistic Development Education by taking four credit-bearing courses (requirements detailed below).
Certificates and Diplomas are the ideal path for those looking to tailor their education to their interests, or for those who are still exploring their interests. Reach out to our Registrar if you have questions on any aspect of the process—we’re here to help!
Increase Your Knowledge and Skills In
Introduces students to SEED-SCALE as the underlying theory and method of this Master’s degree. This process allows communities to evolve site-specific designs that grow change, use resources possessed by the community, and initiate action that emerges from the community’s current socio-economic reality.
Addresses the most frequently mentioned needs to growing an enterprising organization—community, society, and economics. Students will apply concepts to their own organization or an idea they wish to explore. Emphasis will be placed on strategy to bring clarity and focus in order to grow their organization’s effectiveness and impact. Special consideration will be given to key stakeholders, including volunteers (an underleveraged asset in most non-profit organizations.) This course presents specific strategies to motivate, recruit, track, and retain social engagement. Community labs will allow participants to plan and design analysis, social impact measurement, funding, as well as key issues identified by students in the class.
Your words and actions are change-making tools waiting to be used! Learn by experiencing Gandhi’s life and apply his approach for motivating others to come together in your work.
Equip Yourself to Make the Change You Wish to See in an opportunity to begin your path towards creating more just and lasting futures for all. As the Mahatma has said, “The difference between what we do and what we are capable of doing would suffice to solve most of the world’s problems.”
Click here to learn more!
Interested in sustainable agriculture and entrepreneurship? Then this opportunity is for you! This program will guide you to use one of our state’s greatest “untapped” forest resources and join the rapidly growing sap and syrup industry.
The Maple Sap and Syrup Collection training combines lecture and field work with a mentor program to get you in business. The training options include:
- 4 weeks of online training
- 3-day field residential sessions on Sap Collection & Syrup Processing
- Choose one: Date option 1: Nov.30 – Dec.2Date option 2: Dec.7 – Dec.9
- ✱✱Please note, these will be held in the southern and central regions of the state
- Mentorship sessions in the spring with a Maple Producer
The mentorship opportunities included with this course allow you to work with local producers as they tap their trees, process their sap, and close out their season.
By the end of this course students will be able to:
- Set up a sap collection system
- Evaporate sap to make maple syrup
- Understand the science behind sap and syrup production
- Evaluate the economic potential of the maple industry as it relates to their livelihood objectives
Check back for updates on field residential locations and more!
Specifically for teachers affiliated with our Bending Bamboo project in Vietnam, these four certificate courses build teacher confidence for excellence in language instruction that supports bilingualism, climate resilience, and sustainable development.
- Theory & Practice Of Language Acquisition
- Lifelong Development Education
- Bridging & Negotiating Differences
- Action Research For Learning Enhancement
Learn how to foster:
Collaborative leadership: How to build a community-based team to realize change without waiting for inspirational leaders to take charge;
- Community-led development: How to identify, and ground your efforts in existing successes, strengths, and resources;
- Effective action: How to develop a realistic action plan and monitor your community’s progress towards its goals;
- Behavioral change: How to harness human energy for observable community change;
- Positive growth: How to evaluate your progress for continual refinement
Reasons to Pursue a Certificate/Diploma
- Enhance your skills to further your career
- Get new skills to earn a promotion or change careers
- Update & broaden your knowledge base with best practices
Certificate / Diploma Admissions Requirements & Process
- Interest in the Subject Matter
- A Desire to Make a Difference
- No bachelor’s degree required
- Submit a Certificate Student Application
For More Information or to Ask a Question
Contact: Jodie Wimer
For more information on how to turn your certificate into an accredited Master’s course or diploma, contact our registrar at registrar@future.edu
Diplomas
Offered at both the undergraduate and graduate level, diplomas are a great option for those desiring more flexibility in their education and are equivalent to one year of graduate study. You can select the courses most relevant to your life and work and combine them into a custom-built diploma program! Certificates and Independent Study credit may also be applied towards the receipt of a diploma.
Earn Your Diploma In One of Two Areas
Earn a Graduate Level Certificate in Non-Profit & Community Management by taking four courses.
ACC 601 – Introduction to Community Change introduces students to SEED-SCALE as the underlying theory and method of this Master’s degree. This process allows communities to evolve site-specific designs that grow change, use resources possessed by the community, and initiate action that emerges from the community’s current socio-economic reality.
ACC 603 – Going to Scale advances knowledge to improve participatory processes of research and action with communities and agencies that support them. Traditional and alternative approaches to scaling up are introduced for critical comparison. Students develop a grant proposal or case study for expanding impact through SEED-SCALE.
PRC 603 – Monitoring and Evaluation presents a conceptual framework and practical skills for conducting iterative critical examination of programs and projects in community development work. Students learn to use suitable metrics for specific programs and projects, and focus on key performance indicators as a scientific method to simplify complex data collection and analyses.
Pick One of the Following Two Courses
PSK 605 – Social Entrepreneurship addresses the most frequently mentioned needs to growing an enterprising organization: community, society, and economics. Students will apply the concepts they learn in the course to their own organizations or ideas they wish to explore.
OR
PSK 601 – Nonprofit Management teaches the organizational skills and strategies for planning, funding, managing, and partnering necessary to effectively lead a non-profit organization.
Combine the four certificates or courses to earn either an Undergradute Level or Graduate Level Degree
PSK 607 – Theory & Practice of Language Acquisition draws on psychology and linguistic theory to create innovative, motivating, and effective methods, techniques, and strategies for combining language and development learning. Students engage concrete steps of curriculum design and delivery for diverse age groups – elementary, secondary, tertiary, and adult learning.
PSK 608 – Lifelong Development Education presents the challenge of inter-generational and integrated modes of education that inform the quest for well-being. Students learn how a country’s pursuit of the 2030 United Nations Sustainable Development Goals strategizes the balance of local contextual experience with global knowledge and collaboration.
PSK 610 – Bridging & Negotiating Differences situates students in broader development literature, theories of change, cross-cultural wonder, power differentials, and inter-disciplinary work. Students move back-and-forth between very different realities, beginning with rural and urban, and then rich and poor, and ask of their own context and work, “Whose reality counts?”
PSK 611 – Action Research for Learning Enhancement introduces students to an iterative process of continual monitoring, evaluation, and participatory research for improved curricular design and delivery. Students learn to refine principles, strategies, and techniques for teaching and learning excellence. They identify indicators of change for self- and collective-evaluation.
