September 11, 2006

UCSC Extension launches new program in Knowledge Services and Enterprise Management

By Tim Stephens

A new graduate certificate program in Knowledge Services and Enterprise Management (KSEM) offered by UCSC Extension and the Baskin School of Engineering focuses on building the skills required to design and manage technology-based enterprises. All courses in the program will be offered at UCSC's Silicon Valley Center, located at the NASA Ames Research Center.

The KSEM program is intended to serve working engineers, primarily in Silicon Valley, who are looking to develop their management skills. Core courses and selected electives will be taught by UCSC faculty.

"This program will give students the skills to address challenges faced in high-tech enterprises that require an integrated understanding of both technology and business to solve complex problems," said Patrick Mantey, Baskin Professor of Computer Engineering at UCSC.

In addition to the KSEM program, other graduate courses will also be offered at UCSC's Silicon Valley Center this fall, including courses leading to an M.S. in computer engineering that were offered in previous years at the UCSC Extension site in Cupertino.

The KSEM certificate program is designed to prepare graduates for careers in areas such as enterprise systems design and management; portfolio management (products and services); service management and e-business; marketing and product positioning; global supply chain management; manufacturing and outsourcing; and risk management.

Tim Johnson, a retired associate dean of continuing education at UCSC who has been working on the development of the KSEM program, said he interviewed more than a dozen executives of technology companies in the process of designing the curriculum.

"We got absolute confirmation from those executives that this is exactly the right thing to be doing in terms of training people to meet the needs of their companies," Johnson said.

UCSC's Baskin School of Engineering offers a related program leading to a B.S. degree in Information Systems Management and is currently developing a graduate program in Technology and Information Management that will lead to M.S. and Ph.D. degrees. These programs are helping to define a new and distinct discipline within engineering that combines information technology, systems engineering, and technology management, Mantey said.

"By using, synthesizing, and extending ideas from traditional fields such as computer science, economics, and business management, we can improve use of information technology in more effective management of enterprises. More generally, this new discipline addresses problems in the design and management of complex systems involving people, technology, and organizations," Mantey said.

UCSC plans to begin offering the graduate program in Technology and Information Management (TIM) in fall 2008. Pending final approval, 15 units of KSEM course work may be used to satisfy TIM program requirements.