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Jack Baskin School of EngineeringUC Santa Cruz

Knowledge Services and Enterprise Management (KSEM)

A UCSC Extension graduate-level certificate program at the UCSC Silicon Valley Campus in cooperation with the Baskin School of Engineering, University of California, Santa Cruz.

Information technology plays a key role in today's business environment

Knowledge Services and Enterprise Management (KSEM) is a new interdisciplinary graduate certificate program from UCSC Extension (www.ucsc-extension.edu) in cooperation with the Baskin School of Engineering. KSEM studies the application of information technology (in general) and knowledge services (in particular) to the management of high tech enterprises (and other complex systems), synthesizing ideas from fields such as computer science, economics, and business management, and extending these to address challenges faced in today's global and knowledge-based economy.

Key factors of the program:

  • Core courses and selected electives taught by UCSC faculty;
  • Emphasis on building the range of skills required to design and manage technology-based enterprises, including relevant technologies and an understanding of the operational, financial and marketing dimensions of the high tech enterprise;
  • All courses offered at UCSCs Silicon Valley Center, located at the NASA Ames Research Center, Moffett Field, CA

Program requirements

  • XSC 280S: Special Topics in Technology and Information Management (2 units, Winter). A weekly seminar/lecture series of current research on special topics in Information Systems and Technology Management.
  • XSC 280M: Special Topics in Technology and Information Managemente (2 units, Spring). A weekly seminar/lecture series on special topics in Information Systems and Technology Management.
  • 16 units from the following core and elective courses, at least two of which must be core courses:

Core courses (choose two or more)

XSC 209: Knowledge Services and Data Analytics (5 units, Fall). Provides students with a system methodology and corresponding set of analytic tools to address the field of knowledge services in an integrated manner, specifically focusing on data, text, and business analytics.

XSC 245: Data Mining (5 units, Winter). Covers the principles, algorithms and applications of data mining, including mining sequential data, structured data, stream data, text data, spatiotemporal data, biomedical data and other forms of complex data. Topics covered include: an introduction to data warehouse; OPAL analysis, data cleaning and preparation; mining association rules, correlation analysis and similarity search; clustering and classification; evaluation and mining text data; mining time sequence data; casual modeling and social networks; trend lines, plots, projections and contour plots; web mining, novelty and anomaly detections; ontologies; data mining for business intelligence, health informatics and personalization; and, data mining tools.

XSC 211: eBusiness Technology and Strategy (5 units, Spring)

Surveys the structure of modern information technology, the relation of that structure to the structure of the industry that creates it, and the economic forces that drive the players in the industry. Building on these technological and economic concepts, students study how firms can craft a technology and business strategy to create and capture value in the information technology product and or services sectors.

Electives

XSC 205: Management of Technology (5 units, Fall).

XSC 270: Services Engineering and Management (5 units, Winter).

XSC 260: Information Retrieval (5 units, Spring).

Selected UCSC Extension courses in leadership, management, marketing and project management. See quarterly course offerings and schedule for specifics.

Program prerequisites

Training in the basics of statistics, stochastic process and other algorithmic approaches (i.e. UCSCs CE 107: Introduction to Stochastic Methods of System Analysis).

Relevance to careers of graduates

The KSEM program is designed to prepare graduates for careers in areas of:

  • Knowledge management systems design and management
  • Enterprise systems design and management
  • New product/service development
  • Portfolio management (products and services)
  • Service management and e-Business
  • Marketing and product positioning
  • Global supply and value change management
  • Manufacturing and outsourcing
  • Business intelligence, i.e. dashboard/cockpit/decision support system design and management
  • Risk management (multidimensional and temporal)

About UC Santa Cruz in Silicon Valley

The UC Santa Cruz Silicon Valley Campus is located at the NASA Ames Research Center, centrally located in the South Bay at Moffett Field and is comprised of a set of educational and research activities that together increase the presence of UC in the Silicon Valley. UCSC brings its world renowned and cutting edge research to the area via the Silicon Valley Center, currently located at the NASA Ames Research Park.

The UCSC Silicon Valley Campus activities include:

  • UCSC academic programs, including the UCSC Extension KSEM graduate-level certificate program, UCSC M.S. degree in Computer Engineering, and future M.S. and Ph.D. programs;
  • The Bio-Info-Nano Research and Development Institute (BIN-RDI);
  • The Collaborative for Higher Education; and
  • The University Affiliated Research Center (UARC)

Contact Information

For more information, please contact one of the people below:

Lucia MacLean, Asst. Dept. Manager, (831) 459-1384,

Patricia Guevara, Dept. Manager, (831) 459-5752,