IBM and SU Partnership
Through our partnership with IBM, the Southern University College of Business provides access to in-demand learning credentials. Utilizing the IBM Academic Initiative and IBM Skills Academy stackable micro-learning credentials are offered to students in our college and across our five campuses. This training and related technology assets contribute to student learning objectives and helps with career competitiveness and preparation. It also offers value to the companies by providing a pipeline for talent who will have already been introduced their tools and some products.
The IBM Academic Initiative provides no-charge access to an assortment of classroom resources. Faculty and students get cloud access, e-learning courses with certificates, courseware, tutorials, software, enterprise platforms, and data sets. They learn about artificial intelligence (such as Watson), blockchain, systems data science and analytics, Internet of Things, and cybersecurity.
The IBM Skills Academy trains university educators in high-demand skill areas such as artificial intelligence, data science, cloud computing, and quantum computing. Faculty use the same resources to teach. So students learn the up-to-date content quickly and without cost and, as a result, gain a competitive advantage in the job marketplace. Since program implementation, over 500 credentials have been awarded to our students. IBM partners with Acclaim by Credly to administer the badges once all course requirements have been met. Once awarded, the badges can be shared via LinkedIn, Meta, Twitter, Instagram, and Email with various stakeholders as evidence of skills acquired.
A description of the in-demand skill areas is included below:
Artificial Intelligence
Students taking IBM Artificial Intelligence will:
- Understand the evolution and relevance of AI in the world today.
- Explore opportunities brought by the intersection between human expertise and machine learning.
- Analyze existing and future implementations of AI solutions across multiple industries including: automotive, education, policy, social media, government, consumer, and others.
- Gain a competitive edge using low-code cloud-based AI tools and pre-built machine learning algorithms.
- Understand AI technology building blocks, including: natural language processing, machine and deep learning, neural networks, virtual agents, autonomics and computer vision.
- Develop a deeper understanding of machine learning techniques and the algorithms that power those systems.
- Learn in-demand agile industry practices for design thinking and AI through an end-to-end industry use case experience.
- Engage in role-playing challenge-based scenarios to propose real-world solutions to different industries using AI and design thinking.
Blockchain
Students taking IBM Blockchain will:
- Understand how blockchain solutions are transforming the industry landscape.
- Develop a deeper understanding of blockchain technical topics such as consensus, cryptography, privacy and security.
- Acquire hands-on expertise using popular blockchain open source technology, including Hyperledger Fabric.
- Design and develop for a permissioned blockchain.
- Explore a variety of blockchain case studies, including food provenance, container tracking, payments, identity.
- Experience teamwork agile industry practices using Design Thinking.
- Engage in role-playing challenge-based scenarios to propose real-world blockchain solutions.
Cloud Computing
Students taking IBM Cloud Computing will:
- Understand the evolution and impact of cloud computing in the world today.
- Explore cloud by industry domains: retail, media and communication, telecom media and entertainment, financial services.
- Explore end-to-end case studies for every key cloud industry and identify common patterns: public cloud, private cloud, hybrid cloud.
- Understand technical aspects of cloud solutions: software as a service, platform as a service, infrastructure as a service.
- Build cognitive solutions, leveraging AI and data science in cloud solutions.
- Understand industry practices to design and build agile cloud solutions, using the Cloud Garage methodology.
- Work in teams jointly exploring real-world cloud scenarios.
- Prototype bespoke cloud solutions leveraging industry-proven concepts, technologies and methodologies.
Cyber Security
Students taking IBM Cybersecurity will:
- Analyze top targeted industries and trends.
- Explore how cyber criminals are using operating system tools to get control.
- Uncover why cyber criminals are changing their techniques to gain illegal profits.
- Determine what steps you can take to protect your organization against these threats.
- Understand tools used by penetration testers and ethical hackers (network CLI tools, Telnet, SSH, Nmap, Wireshark, and many others).
- Leverage high-end security enterprise solutions in high demand such as: IBM QRadar SIEM, Vulnerability Manager, UBA, IBM QRadar Advisor with Watson, I2 Analyst Notebook and IBM Cloud X-Force Exchange.
- Gain real-world practice on critical threat modeling methodologies and frameworks such as MITRE, Diamond, IBM IRIS, IBM Threat Hunting, and security intelligence approaches to threat management.
- Participate in Security Operation Center (SOC) role-playing scenarios: experiencing research insights through design thinking practices.
- Experience the basis for SOC—enacting the roles of triage analysts, incident response analysts, and threat intelligence analysts.
Data Science
Students taking IBM Data Science will:
- Understand the evolution and relevance of data science in the world today.
- Explore end-to-end data science industry use cases using the data analytics lifecycle.
- Understand the scientific method for science projects, and the data science team key roles.
- Acquire technical expertise using popular open source data science frameworks including Jupyter notebooks and Python.
- Gain a competitive edge using low-code cloud-based platform for data science -IBM Watson Studio.
- Data engineering and data modeling practices using machine learning.
- Explore data science industry case studies: transportation, automotive, human resources, aerospace, banking and healthcare.
- Experience teamwork agile industry practices using design thinking.
- Engage in role-playing challenge-based scenarios to propose real-world solutions.
Design Thinking
Students taking IBM Design Thinking will:
- Understand what came before Design Thinking and how it built upon previous approaches
- See how design thinking is introduced in an organization and understand the transformation
- Get an overview of the whole approach to design thinking
- Learn 7 key habits of effective design thinkers
- Understand the importance of iteration
- Learn how to observe, reflect, & make
- Understand the importance of user research
- Appreciate empathy through listening
- Learn Ideation, Storyboarding, & Prototyping
- Understand user feedback and the Loop
- Learn the different types of user feedback
- Understand the challenges of teaching EDT
- Learn valuable hints and tips
- Understand the domains that are applicable
- Learn about digital versus physical
- Explore some technology specializations
Internet of Things (IoT)
Students taking IBM IoT will:
- Understand the evolution and impact of IoT in the world today.
- Explore IoT by industry domains: automotive, connected homes, manufacture, energy & utilities, transportation, healthcare, aerospace.
- Explore end-to-end case studies for every key IoT industry and identify common patterns.
- Understand technical aspects of IoT solutions: devices and networks, data, cloud, applications, blockchain, analytics and security.
- Build cognitive IoT solutions, leveraging artificial intelligence and data science.
- Understand industry practices to design and build agile IoT solutions, using the design thinking methodology.
- Work in teams jointly exploring real-world IoT scenarios.
- Prototype bespoke IoT solutions leveraging industry-proven concepts, technologies and methodologies.
Quantum Computing
Students taking IBM Quantum Computing will:
- Learn about the motivation, history and future research paths of quantum computing.
- Understand qubits: superposition, representations and mathematical view.
- Gain insight into the concepts of entanglement and representations.
- Explore the concepts of quantum volume, including gates and error rates.
- Understand the various technologies for quantum hardware.
- Perform hands on coding with Qiskit and learn programming with Aqua.
- Explore use cases for quantum in industries such as chemistry and finance.
- Learn about algorithms through projects such as: