Graduate Certificate/ Graduate Diploma Programs

Introduction

The Graduate Certificate and Graduate Diploma programs have been designed to offer a higher degree of flexibility, especially for the professionals, in order to meet their targeted learning requirements in constrained time limits. Additionally, the students successfully completing the Graduate Certificate/ Diploma will have the opportunity to upgrade their earned certificate / diploma into diploma and MS program. The knowledge areas include Information Security, Software Engineering, Data Science, and Computer Science.

Eligibility Criteria

16-years of education in Computer Science or Software Engineering or any other 16-years degree in computing discipline preferably with 4 years degree program of BS (Computer Science or Software Engineering) or equivalent from HEC recognized university or degree awarding institute.

  1.  At least CGPA of 2.5 on the scale of 4.0 or 60 % marks in the previous degree.
  2. An industrial experience of five years is recommended.

Requirements for the Award of Certificate

After successfully completion of 3 credit hours course work he/she can claim their certificate.

Requirements for the Award of Post Graduate Diploma

After successfully completion of 5 courses each of 3 credit hours, he/she can claim their diploma.

Conversion Options

The inherent flexibility in the graduate certificate and graduate diploma programs will help the already enrolled students, as well as attract students for regular MS programs. The following conversion options are proposed.

  1. A student who enrolled  and successfully completed certificate(s) will have the right to enroll in the MS program later on such that the his completed certificate(s) will be accepted towards the total credit hour requirements of the MS program.
  1. A student who enrolled  and successfully completed graduate diploma will have the right to enroll in the MS program later on such that the his completed certificate(s) will be accepted towards the total credit hour requirements of the MS program.
  1. A student who enrolled in MS program and partially completed the coursework requirements and is not willing to continue, will have option to get certificate(s) or graduate diploma depending upon the successfully completed credit hours. One successfully completed course will equate one graduate certificate while five successfully completed courses will be equivalent to graduate diploma.
  1. A student who enrolled in graduate diploma and is not willing to continue, will have the right to get graduate certificates equal to the successfully completed courses.

Time Duration

It will be one semester long i.e. Spring (February-June) or Fall (August – January) Evening Classes, Monday to Friday, 05:30 PM to 08:30 PM.

Titles to Offer

Broadly, any candidate who fulfills the admission criteria, can enroll for graduate certificate/graduate diploma and can study any course, offered at the graduate level in the department of software engineering & computer science or the department of cyber security and data science. Specifically, the department(s) can offer specialized graduate certificate(s) / graduate diploma(s) according to the requirements of a group of professionals. For more information about the specific titles to be offered please refer to list of courses provided in MS programs.