When it comes to a career in ISD, the ever-expanding global marketplace continues to fuel demand for qualified professionals. As businesses grow, so do needs. These needs start at the foundation of a company’s mission and extend to all connected with its goods and services.

Great Opportunity in ISD

The great news when it comes to embarking on a career in ISD? The field, with its mighty reach and needs, has a great job outlook. Are you searching for a career that is rewarding, insightful, and rooted in development at both a basic and expert level? If so, check out the stats we’ve uncovered. A browse through them will tell you that there’s great opportunity and purpose in a variety of positions. These positions include training and development manager, learning manager, and education director.

ISD professionals are also in demand in a variety of industries such as:

• Professional
• Scientific
• Technical services
• Educational services
• State, local, and private
• Finance
• Insurance
• Healthcare
• Social

Furthermore, the demand will continue to grow as long as people need training and education. According to the Bureau of Labor and Statistics, the projected growth for training and development managers from 2016-2026 is faster than average (10-14%). In fact, as a direct effect of today’s mobile workforce, rapidly changing technology and growing global market, businesses need to make performance improvement and training a top priority. Job prospects should be favorable due to the constant need for workplace training and education.

This is great news for training and development professionals who strive to bring the most innovative approaches and cutting-edge practices into their work.

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Obtaining a graduate degree requires time, determination, and commitment. It also requires you make some choices because a multitude of options exist. Let’s flesh them out.

Earning advanced degrees such as master’s, doctoral, certificates, and non-credit training, can help you move forward in your career in different ways. No doubt, deciding which route to take can be overwhelming.

Is a Graduate Degree For You?

Let’s talk about a master’s degree. What is it, and what can it do for you? Well, whether you want to pursue a specialization in your field, advance beyond your current job, or discover a new area of study, a master’s degree could help you take that critical step towards success.

Graduate Degree Types

For starters, master’s degrees can be either research- or course-based. In research-based programs, students work independently on a research project of their choosing, with guidance from department faculty. Course-based graduate degree programs require more structured time in seminars and lectures, but also usually have a research component. Let’s further breakdown the categories of graduate programs by type of study. These categories include programs such as Master of Science (MSc, MS), Master of Arts (MA), Master’s of Professional Studies (MPS) and Executive Master’s. The MPS programs are geared for working professionals and address current industry needs. Also, they are typically applied, and offer flexible classes.

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Marie desJardins, associate dean of the College of Engineering and Information Technology and professor of computer science, recently wrote a piece for The Baltimore Sun about the importance of computer science education in K–12 schools. She is a leader in the artificial intelligence field and has been nationally recognized for her commitment to mentoring, work increasing diversity in computing, and success expanding computer science education in K–12 schools.

In the op-ed, desJardins writes about why it is important to expose K–12 students to computer science, for both their benefit (in terms of expanded career options) and the benefit of fields that rely on STEM talent. “The need for computer science and computational thinking skills is becoming pervasive not just in the world of software engineers, but in fields as varied as science, design, marketing, and public policy,” she writes.

desJardins describes in the Sun her work with “CS Matters in Maryland,” an initiative that seeks to ensure all students across the state have access to computer science education as part of their regular curriculum. “Our ‘CS Matters in Maryland’ project has trained high school teachers in all of the state’s school systems, emphasizing equity and inclusion for all student demographics and all school systems,” she says.

While this particular project focuses on the state of Maryland, desJardins has been honored across the U.S. for her work in the field. In the past month alone, she has received the Distinguished Alumni Award in Computer Science from UC Berkeley, her alma mater and was formally recognized as a fellow of the Association for the Advancement of Artificial Intelligence.

“I was absolutely overwhelmed when I learned that I had been named one of UC Berkeley’s two Outstanding Alumni in Computer Science for 2018, joining a group of computer scientists for which I have immense respect and admiration,” desJardins said. “It is hard to put into words how much it meant to me to have received this award in the same week that I was inducted as a Fellow of the Association for the Advancement of Artificial Intelligence, a recognition that only a handful of AI scientists receive each year. It is especially meaningful to me that the citations on both awards refer equally to my research and to my mentoring, teaching, and diversity efforts.”

A recent interview with Iridescent brings together desJardins’s research on “intelligent learning” — how robots can learn to solve complicated tasks in complex settings — with her work with students from diverse backgrounds, across all majors. In describing UMBC’s Grand Challenge Scholars Program, she highlights how technology matters, but can’t stand alone — how combining the perspectives of people from all backgrounds and all fields is essential to solving the world’s problems.

“Getting these students together from really different perspectives and having them talk about some of these hard problems is initially really exciting and also very hard,” she explains. “Then, it gets easier. The initial barrier is often just one of language and perspective.”

desJardins continues to work to bridge those divides through her teaching, advocacy, and research, and is now recognized by both Forbes and TechRepublic as a top artificial intelligence expert to follow online.

Read the entire piece in The Baltimore Sun, “All Kids Should Have a Computer Science Education.“