Daniels offers more than a dozen programs that can be completed in a year or less
It seemed like a bit of a paradox. Nicole Gsell didn’t know what she wanted to do for a career—but she also didn’t know how to figure it out.
All she knew was that, for where she was professionally, a master’s degree felt like more than she wanted to take on.
“It was a lot of time to dedicate,” Gsell said, “and also I didn’t have a lot of experience in the working world. It was a big commitment to make if I’m not sure if it’s something I’m really passionate about.”
To this point, Gsell had bachelor’s degrees in English and art history. Her plans to work in art after graduation fell through for personal reasons. She thought about law school, but the time she spent at a firm wasn’t a fit either.
Gaining some hard business skills was a step in the right direction, she realized. And a graduate certificate from the Daniels College of Business was the perfect way to do it.
Students and working professionals can enroll in more than a dozen different graduate certificates in a wide range of disciplines, including business analytics, leadership, real estate development and corporate finance.
The programs are designed to maximize flexibility. Most offer both a streamlined 16-credit and a specialized, more in-depth 24-credit option. All students learn from experienced faculty, work with business-specific advisors, receive free lifelong career support from Daniels Career Services and gain access to a network of 40,000 Daniels alumni around the world.
Gsell was also drawn to the possibility of using a marketing analytics certificate as a first step toward a Daniels master’s program, if she decided she wanted to go deeper.
The six courses Gsell took for her certificate covered data science, digital strategies, mobile marketing, search engine optimization and more. In just a year, she gained a working knowledge of Tableau, Microsoft Excel, HTML coding, and Adobe Photoshop and InDesign—competencies that translate to a wide variety of industries.
“[That] experience was important,” she said, “and the classes I’ve taken, I can add to my resume to show that I know what search engine optimization is,” for example.
Now that she has completed the certificate, Gsell is eager to find a job that pairs her passions with her new skill set—and the renewed confidence that comes with it.