Well-established professionals who wish to develop greater expertise in a specific area and take advantage of Georgetown's outstanding course offerings may elect to pursue the Advanced Profession Certificate (APC) instead of the full master's degree. This five course, 15-credit option is available with the approval of the associate dean for Technology Management.  A miniminum cumulative GPA of 3.00 (solid "B") is required of all students for good standing and to be eligible for the certificate.

The same acceptance standards apply as for the full master's program. While all coursework completed for the APC can transfer to the MPS, additional credits (in core and foundation courses) beyond the 30 credits may be required to earn the MPS degree.  APC students are required to complete and submit the APC Tracking form, listing specific courses and learning goals approved by the Associate Dean, to the SCS Academic Affairs & Compliance Office during their first semester of study.

MPTM 500: Core Course in Applied Ethics (Core Course, 3 Credits)
Provides a firm foundation of essential concepts, skills, and strategies to allow for informed decision-making and effective leadership. The course emphasizes ethical responsibilities and core values endemic to the professional world, cutting across several disciplines but focusing particularly on the connections between applied ethics and areas such as technology, business management, and law. You will explore real-world dilemmas and the framework for reaching ethical decisions. Topics could include intellectual property rights, government regulations, privacy, and others. Professional guests from various fields—such as business, law, and government—will present case studies representative of their experiences.

MPTM 600: Management of Technology (Foundation Course, 3 Credits)
Provides theoretical and practical experience in using information technology to support organizational decision-making processes. You will examine the requirements of an organization to optimize its competitive strategy and core competencies. You will learn different tactical, strategic, and organizational factors relative to various information systems, as well as how to gauge the effectiveness of an organization's information system. The course addresses some of the unique issues in managing different types of IT professionals, from senior-level architects to junior-level infrastructure support personnel. You will explore tools and techniques related to hiring, developing, assessing, and retaining staff—as well as theories/methods of managing remote workers and virtual teams.

MPTM 700: System Requirement and Analysis (Foundation Course, 3 Credits)
Gives you a strong understanding of the system development life cycle (SDLC).  You will learn methods of gathering, analyzing, and prioritizing business requirements with a focus on the ease of use for IT staff and end-users alike. The course covers many of the specifics of gap analysis through correctness and completeness methods, the use of case models, process and data modeling, database design principles, and more. In addition, the course covers SDLC models, Unified Process and CASE tools, Rapid Application Development methodologies, Package Evaluation and Selection, and more. Finally, the course will be well-grounded in practice through the coverage of relevant requirements standards (IEEE Standard 830) and current government practices for requirements management (i.e., System Requirements Specifications (SRS)).

MPTM 800: Financial Analysis for Managers (Foundation Course, 3 Credits)
Provides theories and practical techniques related to acquiring, accounting for, and allocating an organization's financial assets. It analyzes basic business problems that managers face as they make technology decisions for their organizations. Some of the topics include return on investment, theories of portfolio management, financial statement and discounted cash flow analysis, interest rate determination, capital budgeting methodologies, concepts of risk and return, asset pricing, and valuation models. You will apply the knowledge you gain to issues you face within your work environment and to real-world examples through business cases and case studies.


ELECTIVE COURSES

Project Management and Leadership for Technology

Project Management for IT Professionals
Master both the practical and theoretical sides of project management for IT professionals. In keeping with the ANSI standard for project management, this comprehensive course covers such core concepts as triple-constant theory, critical path method, and tracking earned value. You'll follow the project lifecycle—from planning to monitoring to control—and learn how to avoid the most common challenges of successful project management.

Project Risk/Change Management
In this course, you'll learn to apply the appropriate change management processes to any situation. Course content covers how to plan, identify, assess, monitor, and respond to risk using tools such as ranking methodologies, decision trees, influence diagrams, and risk simulation. Gain in-depth knowledge of specific approaches—such as Gleicher's Formula and the ADKAR Model—as well as the overarching theories involved with change management at an organizational level.

Managing Diverse Organizations in a Flat World
This timely course focuses on defining project structure and reporting relationships; assigning project roles and responsibilities; and staffing, motivating, and leading an organization that can compete effectively worldwide. Specific topics include conflict resolution, process control and automation, outsourcing, off-shoring, real-time access to information, and others practices required for effective management in the changing demands of the flat world.

Technology Entrepreneurship
This course examines the startup process from both sides—exploring the perspective of the entrepreneur as well as the corporation pursuing a model of open innovation. Based largely on case study discussions, the course focuses on intellectual property, high-tech product development, venture finance, high-tech market strategy, strategic alliances, and entrepreneurial leadership skills.

Marketing and Exploitation of Technology Trends

Marketing Technology Products and Services
Discover how to leverage the Internet and identify new marketing opportunities for technology-based products and services. In this up-to-the-minute course, you'll learn to develop and execute marketing plans that integrate social networking tools and other emerging media options. Content also covers market research, strategy development, customer segmentation, and competitor analysis—with a special focus on Business Intelligence and related technological methods of effective information and resource management. 

e-Business Technology Trends
Effective corporate e-business strategies demand on an in-depth understanding of the various technologies that enable electronic business. In this course, you'll examine how emerging trends—in telecommunications, search engines, security, portals, website and user interface design, electronic payment systems, e-publishing and digital download features, mobile commerce, and pervasive computing—impact industry, corporate strategy, and competitive dynamics. Specific topics covered include: Web 2.0, Service Oriented Architecture, On-Demand Computing, and Open Source Software.

Enterprise Modernization and Technology Assertion
Enterprise modernization changes every dimension of an organization—how it views itself, responds to its needs, and conducts its business. In this course, you'll focus on the management challenges posed by emerging technologies and learn how to overcome these obstacles. You'll explore how these technologies affect (and are affected by) political, social, economic, and cultural factors. Specific topics include emerging standards, nanotechnologies, artificial intelligence, artificial life, and expansion of the digital world.

R&D Management
What challenges do managers face as they seek to make R&D serve the needs of the corporation in an increasingly competitive global marketplace? This course explores managing R&D in a corporate environment from both strategic and tactical perspectives—providing a deep understanding of technology as a powerful tool of competitive advantage and growth. Topics include key R&D business processes, issues in global R&D management, and methods of measuring and optimizing the return on R&D.

System Design, Development, and Management

Software Lifecycle Management
Gain a deeper understanding of the process of analyzing and designing enterprise-wide systems. This course focuses on the software engineering principles that can be leveraged for software application development. You'll focus on object-oriented analysis and design concepts using Unified Modeling Language methodology use cases, classes and object diagrams, inheritance, behavioral modeling, data abstraction, and information hiding.  Additional topics include overloading, polymorphism, and programming languages such as .NET and Java.

Software Testing Techniques
Learn how to design and implement practical steps for structured software testing. This course will introduce you to different methods for testing software and provide a step-by-step methodology for testing applications. Specific topics include test cycles and objectives, common software errors, effective test case design, testing tools review, test group management, problem tracking systems, and effective test result documentation. You'll also explore how testing can impact project schedules and budgets.

Human-Computer Interaction
This course introduces you to the complete life cycle of interface development—from the user's point of view. In exploring the field of Human-Computer Interaction, you'll discover basic human factor approaches and develop technology to build interfaces. In keeping with the standard pattern of product development, you will explore key aspects of the design process including: the analysis of users needs, the formalization of these needs, the exploration of possible solutions to address these needs, the evaluation of the potential of these solutions, and the Implementation of prototypes and their evaluation.

Database Analysis, Design, and Management
Master the fundamentals of databases—from structure to security—in this comprehensive course. You'll begin with the core principles of database design, analysis, deployment, and use: data models, entity-relationship diagrams, data normalization, data dictionaries, database security and access rules, and common database applications. Move on to advanced topics, including connectivity technologies, scripting languages, API interface designs, warehousing, and data mining methods. You'll also explore how to implement a relational database management system.

Information Technology

Data Warehousing and Business Intelligence
Explore the role of a data warehouse in business intelligence applications. This course provides a complete introduction to data marts, data warehouses, and data mining. Learn the finer points of data warehouse planning, design, implementation, and administration—and the basics the ETL (Extract, Transform, and Load) methodology and related theories. You will also review and compare various business intelligence applications, methodologies, analytical techniques, tools, and models. 

Essentials of Network Technology
Designed for professionals responsible for designing and managing organizational networks, this course covers the technical foundations of computer networks, including: Internet architecture, network technologies and protocols, routing algorithms and policies, network applications, emerging network technologies, and network security.  You will also explore the business, economics, and policy of networking.

Managing Information Security
Designed for managers charged with protecting IT systems, this course prepares you to anticipate the threat of Internet attacks—and develop effective strategies to defend against them. Learn the core concepts of data security, signature algorithms, key distribution, hash functions, and identification schemes. You'll even explore public/private key cryptography, secret key schemes (DES and IDEA), public key schemes (RSA and ElGamal), and systems based on elliptic curves. The pertinent implementation aspects and current security estimations will be covered for all schemes.

e-Business Architecture
Web portals, m-commerce, website design, security, e-marketing, B2B, e-payments—learn which e-business applications to choose and how to use them. Using best practices, this course introduces you to the various technologies used in e-business and their strategic implications. You'll not only explore the technical infrastructure but also the business impact surrounding the analysis and implementation of an e-business. 

Service Oriented Architecture
Learn the standards of SOA implementation and gain a thorough understanding of the value, benefit, cost, effectiveness, and challenges of moving to an SOA. In this course, you'll master the basics of modeling, designing, and implementing an SOA—and discover the theories and best practices behind interoperability.
 

Information Assurance/Information Security

IT Security Compliance/Forensics
This course examines the various laws related to information security and protection of data focusing on private and government sectors and contemporary policy issues related to forensics. Also covered in the course are information security operations that may be at issue in legal proceedings such as the identification, preservation, collection and analysis of digital evidence for legal purposes. Legal and ethical issues will be covered. Best practices and tips for collecting forensic data will be discussed.

Information Assurance and Risk Assessment
This is an overview of enterprise security, privacy and information security assessment and management, and cyber security. This course intends to concentrate on tangible and intangible costs and examines concepts of information assurance and security risk assessment security. This course will help students understand how to assess information security risks and develop solutions. Topics covered include social engineering, risk assessment, recovery and response, enterprise security, and formal techniques and policies.

Cryptography & Network Security
This fundamental course covers the theory of encryption and standard protocols for data communications and network security. Students will learn the goals of cryptography such as data privacy, authenticity and integrity. Topics that may be covered include PKI, digital signatures, message authentication codes, hash functions, etc. An examination of network security defenses and countermeasures are also covered.

Threats/Vulnerabilities
Focuses on threats, vulnerabilities, patch management, incident response, and security operations to identify and protect against internal and external threats. Various security threats will be covered including hacker attacks, e-mail borne viruses, backdoor problems, and internal sabotage. Cybercrime, cyber security, and global information security will be discussed. Students will learn how to prevent and respond to such types of attacks using various assessment tools, intrusion detection systems, etc.

Other Courses

Other courses in the Master of Professional Studies in Technology Management program provide theoretical and practical experience in using information technology to support organizational decision-making processes through examining how an organization to optimizes its competitive strategy and core competencies. In the MPS in Technology Management program you will explore tools and techniques related to hiring, developing, assessing, and retaining staff—as well as theories/methods of managing remote workers and virtual teams.

The curriculum for the Master of Professional Studies in Technology Management program will ensure that you have a strong understanding of the system development life cycle, the use of case models, process and data modeling, database design principles, and more. You will also explore application of techniques related to acquiring, accounting for, and allocating an organization's financial assets.  Your academic experience will prepare you to tackle business problems that managers and executives face as they make technology decisions for their organizations, customers, or clients.