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 leadership skills necessary to manage change in your company. This certificate is recommended for mid-level managers and above.

Six Courses/18 Graduate Credits

  • Choose three of the following four courses:
    • Finance: Stakeholders and the Bottom Line
    • Socially Responsible Marketing
    • Strategic Thinking and Planning
    • Leadership in Business and Organizational Systems
  • Take three elective courses

Ecological Planning and Design
Become skilled at combining natural and social science perspectives to create sustainable solutions for today's ecological and social problems. This certificate is recommended for natural resource managers, land use and urban planners, policy analysts, environmental consultants, ecological designers and people working for nonprofits.

Six Courses/18 Graduate Credits

  • Choose three of the following four courses:
    • Economics and the Environment
    • Environmental Policy and Decision-making Processes
    • Integrative Environmental Science
    • Theories and Practices of Socio-environmental Change
  • Take three elective courses

Effective Communication Strategies
Learn how to design and implement effective communication strategies that advance creative, sustainable social change in organizations, communities and society at large. This certificate is 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 four courses:
    • Communications Media and Technologies
    • Communicating Across Cultures
    • Participatory Communication for Social Change
    • Using Media for Social Change
  • Take three elective courses

Integrated Skills for Sustainable Change
Core creative leadership course prepare you to lead long-lasting, positive change in your organization or community. This certificate is recommended for managers, consultants, community leaders and others who want to learn more about collaborative and systemic approaches to change. 

Six Courses/18 Graduate Credits

Courses include: Communication Design, Critical Inquiry and Ways of Knowing, Global Pluralism, Systemic Thinking for a Changing World, Sustainability and Transformative Leadership and Change.

Organizational Dynamics
Learn to use psychological principles to understand and create positive, sustainable change in organizations. This certificate is 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 four courses:
    • Organizational Theory
    • Practitioner Development
    • Group Dynamics and Facilitation
    • Overview of Organizational Development
  • Take three elective courses

Systems Thinking and Design
Learn to think in terms of contexts, interrelationships and dynamics, using systemic thinking to design sustainable, creative solutions to the challenges of today. This certificate is recommended for visionaries in corporations, nonprofits and government departments, social service agencies and other types of organizations.

Six Courses/18 Graduate Credits

  • Two systemic theory and philosophy courses
  • Two design theory and practice courses
  • One holistic perspectives course
  • One elective course