The explosive growth of the web and the vast improvements in computing power in the last decade have led to a strong need for education and research in human language technology. Human language technology is an interdisciplinary field that includes the following key technological and scientific areas:

  • Computer speech recognition and understanding
  • Natural language understanding and generation
  • Text-based information retrieval
  • Web-based dialog agents

CU Boulder's interdisciplinary certificate in human language technology, offered jointly by the Institute of Cognitive Science; the Department of Computer Science; the Department of Linguistics; and the Department of Speech, Language and Hearing Sciences, provides a rich and broad background for students interested in computational tools for human language processing.

To learn more about the certificate, visit the Institute of Cognitive Science website.

Required Courses and Credits

The curriculum for the certificate consists of five different courses, as shown in the course table below. Three of these five required courses must be taken at the graduate level.

Programming
One semester of programming required (waived for those with programming background).
CSCI 1300Computer Science 1: Starting Computing4
Core Courses
Choose three core courses from the list below; at least two must be outside the student's home department and college.9
Speech and Language Technologies
CSCI 5832
Natural Language Processing
CSCI 6302
Speech Recognition and Synthesis
Human Communication
SLHS 2010
Science of Human Communication
LING 5030
Linguistic Phonetics
LING 5420
Morphology and Syntax
LING 7800
Open Topics in Linguistics
Optional Course
Choose one from the optional course list (or two if programming was waived). Extra courses from the core list (beyond the required three) can also be counted as optional courses. 13
Total Credit Hours16