Suffolk Launches Innovative Center for Continuing & Professional Education

Suffolk University has announced the launch of an innovative new continuing education center that is purpose-built to meet industry needs in a rapidly evolving economy, while also enabling busy working professionals to develop the skills they need to advance in their careers.

The Center for Continuing & Professional Education offers short-term, noncredit, online educational programs that combine Suffolk’s signature academic quality and rigor with industry-relevant content, including new certificate programs designed by Suffolk faculty.

“As the economy changes, so do our workplaces. What we’re hearing, from both industry and employees, is that there’s an intense need for programs that provide specific new skills and competencies, and do so in a compact period of time,” says the center’s director, Dee Masiello, EdD. “That’s exactly what the Center for Continuing & Professional Education is designed to do. It’s why we developed these specific new certificate programs, and it’s why we will continue to expand our range of other courses and certificates.”

The featured certificate programs all focus on vital needs in today’s workplaces:

• Becoming a Culture Change Agent: Harnessing the Power of Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion
• Design Thinking: Applying Discovery and Innovation in Practice
• Ethical Principles, Critical Thinking, and Writing for Today’s Business

Live interactions, flexible scheduling

What differentiates Suffolk’s certificates from other asynchronous online courses, Masiello says, is that “we have purposefully built them to ensure that individual students have live interactions with our subject matter experts.”

The goal is to “take this kind of learning a step further,” she said. “We provide flexible learning modules that enable people to work at their own pace, according to their own schedules, while also giving them the opportunity to engage with specialists in their field.” Certificates can be completed in as few as ten weeks.

For corporate partners, the center can curate timely, relevant training programs that will enable their employees to learn valuable skills quickly, Masiello said, “enabling them to stay on top, and even ahead, of industry demands.”

In addition to Suffolk-designed certificate programs, the Center for Continuing & Professional Education is partnering with MindEdge, a leader in noncredit continuing education, to offer hundreds of affordable courses in dozens of fields ranging from banking to cybersecurity, data analytics, finance, HR management, marketing, and web design.

Not only does the Center for Continuing & Professional Education deliver on a key goal of Suffolk’s 2025 Strategic Plan to expand its career education initiatives, said University President Marisa Kelly, “it also connects powerfully to our founding mission of creating access and opportunity—and to our commitment to meet students where they are and provide them with the kind of education they need to succeed.”

On Thursday, October 13, Suffolk will celebrate the grand opening of its new Center for Career Equity, Development & Success from 4-6 p.m. As part of the celebration, the Center for Continuing & Professional Education will hold a raffle, and the winner will be able to enroll in the certificate program of their choice for free.

For more information about courses and enrollment, please visit the Center for Continuing & Professional Education’s website, or contact [email protected].