Graduate Certificate in Technology Management

Dive deeper than design thinking, understand innovation from the inside, and start engineering your enterprise's future.

 
 
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The Maryland Smith Graduate Certificate in Technology Management prepares public and private sector leaders to identify, transition and leverage emergent technology into and across their organizations and markets. Through this unique program, you will join a diverse cadre of tech-oriented professors and peers to explore the practical challenges of technology development and adoption, learn best-practices in R&D management and innovation, understand the interface of public policy and private enterprise in science and technology, and craft strategies to cultivate emergent technology from concept to commercial use.

Valuable Outcomes

By the end of this program, you will be able to:

  • Understand how new tech is designed, engineered, tested, and commercialized
  • Identify/specify enterprise tech requirements and best practices in risk management
  • Assess and plan market and mission strategies for emergent tech
  • Model and manage the ethical implications of new tech
  • Quantify the useful life of tech assets
  • Use "lean startup" methodologies

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Learn from UMD’s Best

Learn from UMD’s Best

Faculty from the Smith School of Business, the Clark School of Engineering, and the School of Public Policy give you a comprehensive overview of how technology is created, commercialized and managed.

#8

FACULTY (U.S.)
The Economist
Full-Time MBA ranking, 2021

Saturday classes to fit your schedule

Attend cohort-based, in-person classes every other weekend at our convenient Washington, D.C., campus on Pennsylvania Avenue*, supplemented by self-paced online work. The program is completed in 10 months.

Take as a Stand Alone or a Flex MBA Specialty Track

Enrolled Flex MBA students can choose to replace 2nd-year electives with technology management track courses to graduate with both their MBA and Certificate in Technology Management. Or new applicants can earn just the certificate, with the option to apply 14 credits to a Flex MBA later.

#5

ONLINE MBA FOR BUSINESS ANALYTICS
U.S. News and World Report
“2022 Best Online MBA Programs”

#9

INFORMATION SYSTEMS
U.S. News and World Report
“2022 Best Business Schools”

Who is right for this program?

Who is right for this program?

Public and private sector leaders in need of broader strategic understanding and appreciation of the new economics of data, competitive innovation, and disruptive emergent technologies. This program is ideal for:

  • Public and private sector program executives and directors
  • U.S. national security leaders, planners, and program managers
  • Federal contractors supporting government acquisition and modernization efforts, reforms, or industry partnerships
  • Private sector consultants on technology applications and organizational redesign
  • Digital strategists, data scientists, cyber technicians, and security technology professionals
  • Start-up founders and aspirants

Not all competitive candidates need to be currently working in technology fields or have specific STEM credentials. However, the curriculum demands a strong interest and aptitude to understand technology concepts, processes, and applications.

Academics

Courses

Classes are held on alternating Saturdays, and each Saturday will have both a morning class that runs from 9 a.m. to 12:30 p.m., and an afternoon class that runs from 1:30 to 5 p.m.

Contemporary strategy, management approaches, and best-practices for research and development. This course focuses on private sector methods to manage technology programs, identify and specify technical requirements, communicate technology use and value, and assess new technologies and architectures. It includes instruction on technology scouting and assessing Technology Readiness Levels (TRLs). Through engagement with experts in creating and managing technology, participants are also exposed to human and behavioral factors that can influence technology adoption in the commercial and public sector.

Best practices and challenges in organizing and cultivating new ideas into successful public and private sector technology ventures. This course provides an integrated strategic framework for innovation-based entrepreneurs and technology professionals. It is structured to provide a deep understanding of the core strategic choices facing startup innovators, a synthetic framework for the development and implementation of entrepreneurial strategy in dynamic environments, and the ability to scale those ventures over time.

Systems engineering approaches to the definition, design, development, implementation, integration, verification, and validation of successful systems. Taught by faculty from the Clark School of Engineering, this course exposes technology managers to the critical collaboration between business leaders and IT leaders in the early stages of program definition and how to effectively leverage and assess business-driven enterprise, product, and program development. It covers contemporary product lifecycle phases and the systems engineering technical processes associated with research and product development organizations in industry and government. It also explores currently popular development methodologies such as incremental, spiral, evolutionary, lean, and agile and how these are driven by concept and requirements development, systems analysis and modeling, and system architecting and are measured by technology prototyping, research validation, technology testing, and program/product evaluation.

Application of financial management principles and techniques to science and technology investments and research and development projects. This course enables technology managers to estimate return on investment of R&D projects, value technology assets, quantify risk and make sound replacement and upgrade decisions for S&T projects. By the end of the course, participants will be able to build financial models and make presentations to senior executives explaining the value creation potentially arising from investments in R&D and new product development, as well as infrastructure necessary to sustain the enterprise.

Challenges and best practices of successfully marketing emergent technologies. This course begins with a discussion of past successes and failures in marketing emergent technologies, followed by a study of the effective approaches and frameworks that help technology managers identify and understand customer needs. Participants also focus on analyzing how identified customer needs can guide design and development of emergent technologies, how to translate customer needs and market conditions into effectively positioning emergent technologies, and maximizing success in converting new technologies to market or mission-ready products.

A mastery session consisting of a series of intensive in-class lectures/discussions and a tabletop simulation focused on the cyber threat landscape, motives and effects of threat actors, methods and challenges to measuring cyber risk, and optimizing resource allocation in the defense of complex organizations. Taught by faculty from the School of Public Policy and Information Sciences, this course will explore the range of technical complexity, and their vulnerabilities, introduced in modern organizations including the integration of Internet of Things (IOT), Industrial Internet of Things (IIOT), cloud computing, and other distributed systems. It will also expose participants to the process of hacking; categorizing and defining the range of threat actors and motives including criminal organizations, nation states, and hacktivists; analytic models and methods to quantify primary/secondary effects of cyber-attacks on organizations; analytic methods to quantify societal effects of cyber-attacks on interdependent organizations; and consolidating and visualizing complexity in organizational risk and techniques for translating technical vulnerabilities in systems to the operations they support.

A mastery session consisting of a series of intensive in-class lectures/discussions on issues surrounding corporate structure and law relevant to technology business, development and innovation. This course will educate participants on the range of legal mechanisms by which enterprises can market and manage technology solutions, understanding decisions and outcomes associated with technology from merger and acquisition activities, and accounting for legal management and protection of intellectual property (IP).

As technology provides us with new opportunities, it also presents new ethical questions, such as privacy, or new dimensions to familiar ethical questions that must be addressed in order for society to recognize net gains from these advancements. This course focuses on raising participants’ awareness of the ethical dimensions of technological advancements. Structured as a mastery session consisting of a series of intensive in-class lectures, discussions and case studies, it addresses anticipating common ethical dilemmas faced by technology managers, anticipating the most common reasons and rationalizations one would encounter when proposing the organization do the right thing, and then exploring one’s own personal communication style, risk aversion and purpose in order to find an appropriate way to attempt to influence the organization to do the right thing.

Experiential practicum to apply the skills and learning outcomes accumulated throughout the Technology Management curriculum toward solving real-world problems and cases. Projects will be chosen and executed in teams, and when possible sponsored by student employers or school public and private sector partners. Project selection and maturation receive iterative faculty facilitation.


Expert Faculty

The program’s amazing faculty are passionate about research, teaching and mentorship. Their commitment to creating a vibrant, intellectual community where you’ll be challenged to learn and grow is unmatched. Your teachers will be supportive, accessible and dedicated to creating a learning environment where students can succeed. They will be part of your network for life.

Joe Bailey

Joseph P. Bailey
Assistant Dean for Specialty Undergraduate Programs
Associate Research Professor
Robert H. Smith School of Business

Joseph P. Bailey's research and teaching interests span issues in telecommunications, economics and public policy with an emphasis on the economics of the Internet. This area includes an identification of the existing public policies, technologies and market opportunities that promote the benefits of interoperability. Bailey is currently studying issues related to the economics of electronic commerce and how the Internet changes competition and supply chain management. Bailey is also the executive director for the QUEST program at the University of Maryland.

Tim Eveleigh

Timothy John Eveleigh
Lecturer
The Institute for Systems Research
Maryland Applied Graduate Engineering
A. James Clark School of Engineering

Timothy J. Eveleigh is an INCOSE-certified systems engineering professional with over 34 years of experience in engineering, designing and building systems of all sizes for the government and in the private sector. He has taught graduate and doctoral-level systems engineering for 16 years and has also served as a visiting professor of engineering management and systems engineering at The George Washington University where he developed seven systems engineering courses. Eveleigh has a 38-year career with the USAF Reserve where he served as a frequently mobilized jet mechanic, intelligence analyst, targeteer, developmental engineer and senior innovation lead.

Brent Goldfarb

Brent Goldfarb
Professor
Academic Director, Dingman Center
Robert H. Smith School of Business

Brent Goldfarb is Associate Professor of Management and Entrepreneurship in the M&O Department at the University of Maryland's Robert H. Smith School of Business. Goldfarb's research focuses on how the production and exchange of technology differs from more traditional economic goods, with a focus on the implications on the role of startups in the economy. His primary research areas are technological entrepreneurship, technological change & policy, applied econometrics, industrial organization, economic & business history and science policy. Copies of Goldfarb's publications and working papers have been downloaded over 1,200 times.

Anil Gupta

Anil K. Gupta
Michael D. Dingman Chair in Strategy and Entrepreneurship
Robert H. Smith School of Business
 

Ranked by Thinkers50 as one of the world's most influential management thinkers, Anil K. Gupta holds the Michael D. Dingman Chair in Strategy, Globalization, and Entrepreneurship at the University of Maryland’s Robert H. Smith School of Business. His primary research areas are emerging markets (especially China and India), frugal innovation, global strategy & organization, and corporate innovation and entrepreneurship. He is the author of several books as well as over 80 papers.

Charlie Harry

Charles Harry
Associate Research Professor
Director, GoTech
Senior Research Associate, CISSM
School of Public Policy
 

Charles Harry is a senior leader, practitioner and researcher with over 20 years of experience in intelligence and cyber operations. Harry is the director of the Center for Governance of Technology and Systems (GoTech) and Associate Research Professor in the School of Public Policy. He holds a joint appointment in the College of Information Studies and serves as the operations director for the university’s Maryland Global Initiative for Cybersecurity (MaGIC) and is a Senior Research Associate at the Center for International and Security Studies at Maryland (CISSM). Harry’s research focuses on categorization and measurement of effects of cyberattack as a means of enabling policy makers to assess strategic risk and assess consequences of strategic cyber attack.

Yogesh Joshi

Yogesh Joshi
Associate Professor
Robert H. Smith School of Business
 

Yogesh Joshi is an associate professor at the Robert H. Smith School of Business at the University of Maryland. He works in the areas of marketing and innovation. His research focuses on strategic marketing decisions, product differentiation, brand strategy, social influence, the diffusion of innovations and new product development. He teaches customer-centric innovation in the undergraduate program and innovation and product development in the MBA program. His research has been published in leading academic journals, and he has been recognized as a Marketing Science Institute Young Scholar. His prior industry experience includes work as a strategy consultant at McKinsey & Company, on issues related to marketing, operations and technology.

Admissions

We welcome ambitious, highly motivated professionals who seek a rigorous academic program taught by our world-renowned faculty in a supportive environment. Applicants are accepted on a rolling basis.

Admissions Requirements

Enrolled Flex MBA Students: Internal screening during Year 1 of enrollment in the Flex MBA program. Applicants must submit an updated résumé and statement of purpose.

Certificate Only Students: Application for admission must include a résumé, essay, recommendation letter & previous academic transcripts.

Information Sessions

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