Graduate Certificates
If you want to gain the essential skills needed to create sustainable change in your workplace, your community and the world, consider a graduate certificate in the Center for Creative Change. You can learn the technical and collaboration skills necessary to become a vital leader in creating long-term solutions for today's complex social and environmental challenges.
The certificates can be completed in just nine months. If you have a bachelor's or master's degree and want to strengthen your skills as a leader of sustainable change, these graduate-level certificates can give you an added career advantage, offer opportunities for networking and provide an easy way to see if graduate school is what you’d like to pursue.
Certificate Programs
Convenient Classes
Classes meet for one extended weekend a month, so you can continue to work while earning your graduate certificate. You take six courses for a total of 18 credits and complete the program in nine months.
For information on applying to a certificate program, click here.
Certificate Program Descriptions
Business Leadership and Change Management
Learn the business and people skills necessary to lead and manage change in your business or company. Recommended for mid-level managers.
Six Courses/18 Graduate Credits
Choose three of the following courses and complete three electives:
- Managerial Finance and Accounting
- Socially Responsible Marketing
- Strategic Thinking and Planning
- Leadership in Business and Organizational Systems
Ecological Planning and Design
Become skilled at creating sustainable solutions for today's environmental and social problems. Recommended for natural resource managers, land use and urban planners, policy analysts, environmental consultants, ecological designers and those who work for nonprofits.
Six Courses/18 Graduate Credits
Choose three of the following courses and complete three electives:
- Theories and Practices of Social-environmental Change
- Integrative Environmental Science
- Economics and the Environment
- Environmental Policy and Decision-making Processes
Effective Communication Strategies
Learn how to design and implement communication strategies that advance creative social change in organizations, communities and society at large. Recommended for journalists, writers, filmmakers, media strategists, communications consultants, community leaders and social-change advocates.
Six Courses/18 Graduate Credits
Choose three of the following courses and complete three electives:
- Communication Media
- Communicating Across Cultures
- Media for Social Change
- Participatory Communication for Social Change
Integrated Skills for Sustainable Change
Strengthen your ability to lead sustainable change in your organization, business or community. Recommended for managers, consultants, community leaders and others who want to learn about collaborative and systemic approaches to change.
Six Courses/18 Graduate Credits
- Communication Design
- Critical Inquiry
- Global Pluralism
- Systemic Thinking for a Changing World
- Transformative Leadership and Change
- Sustainability
Organizational Dynamics
Learn how to use psychological principles to understand and change organizations. Recommended for professionals who work in human resources, organizational development, labor relations, training and executive coaching.
Six Courses/18 Graduate Credits
Choose three of the following courses and complete three electives:
- Practitioner Development
- Group Dynamics and Facilitation
- Intervening in a System
- Overview of Organizational Dynamics
Sustainable Food Systems and Permaculture Design
Develop a solid understanding of the social, ecological and political issues of food systems—from soil to plate—and acquire tangible skills to help you design and implement sustainable changes in these systems. Recommended for people working in organic farming, permaculture, ecological agriculture, urban and rural sustainability, community supported agriculture and food services.
Six Courses/18 Graduate Credits
Complete the following courses and two electives:
- Theories and Practices of Social-environmental Change
- Food Systems and Their Alternatives
- Political Ecology of Eating and Consumption
- Permaculture and Sustainable Systems Design
Systems Thinking and Design
Explore the links among things that seem unconnected and then use this holistic understanding to design new and elegant systems to solve the problems of the 21st century. Recommended for big-picture thinkers in businesses, nonprofits, government departments, social service agencies and other types of organizations.
Six Courses/18 Graduate Credits
Complete the following courses and two electives:
- Applications in Human Systems
- Design for Social Innovation
- Meaning and Change
- Systemic Change and Continuity
