Coursera Training

The SCINet Initiative and the AI Center of Excellence are excited to provide a training opportunity through Coursera. This program will provide a limited number of Coursera licenses free to ARS scientists and support staff to complete courses and specializations focused on scientific computing and artificial intelligence over a 3-month period. Successful completion of courses and specializations will result in widely recognized certificates and credentials. Note that you should expect to spend 2-3 hours per week on many of these classes, especially for the more advanced courses.

Programs of Study

The ARS-Coursera portal includes Programs of Study related to scientific computing and artificial intelligence from top-tier institutions. The ARS Programs of Study are actively growing catalogues, and Coursera continues to add classes on a regular basis. ARS employees are encouraged to request additional courses/specializations to be added to our portal by sending an email to scinet-training@usda.gov.

SCINet: The courses and specializations focus on general computational and data-science skills (course catalogue at: https://www.coursera.org/programs/scinet-program-of-study-a6nd3).

AI Center of Excellence: Content in the courses and specializations are varied, ranging from high-level introductory to technical classical machine learning and deep-learning (course catalogue at: https://www.coursera.org/programs/ai-center-of-excellence-program-of-study-yunri).

Application Process

Below are the steps for submitting an applicatoin to obtain a Coursera license. Please do not submit multiple applications per person (e.g. submit multiple applications for different periods).

1. Click the below button/link to access and submit the application form. It is critical that both your email and your supervisors email are entered correctly. If they are mistyped the application process will fail.

Ars-Coursera License Application

1. Your supervisor will receive an email from Microsoft “Power Automate” to either approve or reject your application.

2. If rejected, you will receive an email stating “your application was not approved by your supervisor”.

3. If approved, you will receive an email stating “your application was successfully submitted”.

If you do not receive a confirmation email you should:

1. Check with your supervisor to make sure they approved the request.
2. Email scinet-training@usda.gov with additional questions.