Natural Language Processing

The certificate of achievement in Natural Language Processing prepares students for careers as NLP developers. The program provides the analytical, methodological, and technical skills required within the NLP industry, and serves as a foundation for further studies in NLP or other relevant technologies and fields such as Computer Vision (CV), Deep Learning (DL), and Generative AI (GenAI).

Projected 20 annual completers

Natural Language Processing (NLP) is one of the most exciting and rapidly evolving subfields of artificial intelligence. With the increasing availability of vast amounts of textual data and the growing need for businesses to extract valuable insights from this data, the demand for professionals skilled in NLP technologies is rising exponentially. Applications of NLP are already transforming industries such as healthcare, finance, e-commerce, customer service, and entertainment. Popular technologies and applications, such as chatbots, voice assistants, recommendation systems, language translation tools, and sentiment analysis models, rely heavily on NLP techniques.

The demand for AI specialists, including NLP professionals, is projected to grow rapidly in the coming years. Companies, ranging from tech giants like Google, Microsoft, and Amazon, to startups and enterprises in sectors like healthcare, media, and government, are looking for individuals with expertise in machine learning, deep learning, and NLP to develop cutting-edge solutions.

This certificate will serve multiple demographic groups: (1) Community College Students — Many students are eager to pursue cutting-edge fields like AI and deep learning, GenAI, NLP, and Computer Vision (CV). A certificate offers students a clear pathway to gaining valuable expertise and enhancing their job-seeking potential. (2) Working Professionals and Upskilling — A growing number of professionals are looking to upskill or shift their careers to AI-related fields. A certificate in deep learning/GenAI/NLP/CV can provide them with the specialized knowledge and practical experience needed to transition into roles such as Data Scientist, AI Specialist, or Machine Learning Engineer. (3) Career Changers — Individuals making a career change to deep learning will have a venue of taking courses and showcasing their knowledge and skills in deep learning to their potential employers. This certificate program can help them achieve that goal while also showcasing their newly acquired expertise to potential employers. (4) AI Enthusiasts — College certificates will provide these learners with planned pathways to enjoy the AI technologies being introduced to them.

Also, Laney College has been chosen to be the AI Center of Excellent (CoE) in Northern California by the Bay Area Community College Consortium (BACCC), and the Certificate of Achievement in Natural Language Processing will be shared with the Bay Region as stipulated in the supporting Regional Joint Venture (RJV).

Item 1. Program Goals and Objectives

Students will be able to find employment in the Artificial Intelligence (AI)/Natural Language Processing (NLP) sector. This NLP sector offers high-paid positions with job titles including NLP Specialist, NLP Analyst, Natural Language Generation Developer, NLP Engineer, NLP Researcher, NLP Scientist, Software Engineer Researcher, etc. Sectors that benefit from NLP include Health Care, Finance, Education, Business, IT, and Data Science.

Program Outcomes

Upon successful completion of this program, students will be able to:

• Analyze and apply NLP transformers to produce selected applications or projects.
• Apply and practice advanced NLP technologies such as Bidirectional Encoder Representation from Tranformers (BERT) and Generative Pre-trained Transformers. (GPT).
• Design and develop NLP modeling used in applications such as chatbots, story creations, etc. using NLP libraries and toolkits.

Item 2. Catalog Description

The certificate of achievement in Natural Language Processing prepares students for careers as NLP developers. The program provides the analytical, methodological, and technical skills required within the NLP industry, and serves as a foundation for further studies in NLP or other relevant technologies and fields such as Computer Vision (CV), Deep Learning (DL), and Generative AI (GenAI).

Item 4. Justification and Master Planning

Natural Language Processing (NLP) is one of the most exciting and rapidly evolving subfields of artificial intelligence. With the increasing availability of vast amounts of textual data and the growing need for businesses to extract valuable insights from this data, the demand for professionals skilled in NLP technologies is rising exponentially. Applications of NLP are already transforming industries such as healthcare, finance, e-commerce, customer service, and entertainment. Popular technologies, such as chatbots, voice assistants, recommendation systems, language translation tools, and sentiment analysis models, rely heavily on NLP techniques.

The demand for AI specialists, including NLP professionals, is projected to grow rapidly in the coming years. Companies, ranging from tech giants like Google, Microsoft, and Amazon, to startups and enterprises in sectors like healthcare, media, and government, are looking for individuals with expertise in machine learning, deep learning, and NLP to develop cutting-edge solutions.

This certificate will serve multiple demographic groups:

• Community College Students — Many students are eager to pursue cutting-edge fields like AI and deep learning, GenAI, NLP, and Computer Vision (CV). A certificate offers students a clear pathway to gaining valuable expertise and enhancing their job-seeking potential.
• Working Professionals and Upskilling — A growing number of professionals are looking to upskill or shift their careers to AI-related fields. A certificate in deep learning/GenAI/NLP/CV can provide them with the specialized knowledge and practical experience needed to transition into roles such as Data Scientist, AI Specialist, or Machine Learning Engineer.
• Career Changers — Individuals making a career change to deep learning will have a venue for taking courses and showcasing their knowledge and skills in deep learning to their potential employers. This certificate program can help them achieve that goal while also showcasing their newly acquired expertise to potential employers.
• AI Enthusiasts — College certificates will provide these learners with planned pathways to enjoy the AI technologies being introduced to them.

Also, Laney College has been chosen to be the AI Center of Excellent (CoE) in Northern California by the Bay Area Community College Consortium (BACCC), and the Certificate of Achievement in Natural Language Processing will be shared with the Bay Region as stipulated in the supporting RJV.

Item 5. Enrollment and Completer Projections

Interest in this Natural Language Processing Certificate of Achievement is expected to be modest at first and will grow quickly through marketing efforts bringing this program into broader community awareness. Enrollment and completion of the Natural Language Processing Certificate of Achievement are projected to be at least 20 per year after inaugural first two years of this program.

Item 6. Place of Program in Curriculum/Similar Programs

• There are no active inventory records that need to be changed in connection with the approval of the proposed program.
• This program does not replace any existing program on the college’s inventory.
• Only Laney has the AI program in the district with a certificate of Achievement in Natural Language Processing. Laney's CIS department has a Data Science Fundaments CA which includes some of the coursework.

Item 7. Similar Programs at Other Colleges in Service Area

None in the service area and the Bay Region. Evergreen is developing its own certificate but they are focusing on entrepreneurship and AI.

This work is part of the Digital Center for Innovation, Transformation, and Equity and will be shared with other colleges across the state for replication.

Laney College has been chosen to be the AI Center of Excellent (CoE) in Northern California by the Bay Area Community College Consortium (BACCC), and the Certificate of Achievement in Applied Generative AI will be shared with the Bay Region as stipulated in the supporting RJV. Evergreen College is also developing a CA but with a focus on entrepreneurship and AI.