Natural Language Processing Undergraduate Certificate

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The 12-credit Natural Language Processing (NLP) Undergraduate Certificate provides students the confidence and training they need in natural language processing: teaching computers to use language by extracting knowledge from text, and then using that knowledge in meaningful ways.

The certificate will signal to employers that students have dedicated the time and energy necessary to develop the skills and confidence for working from these types of data. It is designed to train both technically minded students as well as less technically minded students in the basic skills necessary for gathering insights from NLP data.

Learning Outcomes

  • Students will able to critically analyze a data science problem to determine how natural language processing techniques might be applied
  • Students will be able to code a variety of natural language processing algorithms and techniques and apply them to specific data science problems

Declaration or Application Process

A certificate can be completed as a stand-alone program or alongside an undergraduate degree. There are no additional application requirements for the Natural Language Processing certificate.

If you are a current University of Arizona student, you may declare your certificate here:

Declare my Certificate

If you are not a current University of Arizona student, you can apply for admission as a certificate-seeking student.

The Natural Language Processing Certificate is available via main campus and Arizona Online.

Requirements

Students are required to maintain at least a 2.0 average in certificate coursework to complete the certificate. Students who wish to graduate with an undergraduate certificate should submit a certificate application to graduation services when they have finished the certificate requirements. There is a one-time $15 graduation fee. There are no deadlines to apply to graduate with a certificate.

Up to 2 courses may be shared with a degree requirement (major, minor, general education) or second certificate.

6 units must be completed at the University of Arizona (not transfer).

Learn more about University of Arizona undergraduate certificate requirements.


Courses

View or Download Certificate Fillable Checklist (PDF)

Required Courses

  • 12 units are required for the certificate

Student will choose either ISTA 130 (4 units, description below), CSC 110 (4 units), LING 201 (3 units) or LING 408 (3 units):

ISTA 130: Computational Thinking and Doing

AND student will choose either ISTA 355 (3 units) or LING 388 (3 units):

ISTA 355: Introduction to Natural Language Processing
LING 388: Language and Computers

AND student will take LING/ISTA/CSC 439 (3 units):

ISTA 439: Statistical Natural Language Processing (Cross-listed LING 439)

Elective Courses

Complete at least 3 units from the following courses (ISTA course descriptions below):

  • LING 408 (3 units)  
  • LING 438 (3 units) 
  • LING 478 (3 units) 
  • ISTA 131 (3 units) 
  • ISTA 455 (4 units)  
  • ISTA 456 (3 units) 
  • CSC 483 (3 units) 
ISTA 131: Dealing with Data
ISTA 455: Applied Natural Language Processing
ISTA 456: Text Retrieval and Web Search