Foundations of Artificial Intelligence - PBC

About This Certificate

Artificial intelligence draws on mathematics, statistics, and computing.

USU’s nine-credit Foundations of Artificial Intelligence post-baccalaureate certificate offers a focused path through the mathematical methods behind data science, the principles and practice of machine learning, and modern deep learning. Students connect these ideas to work with real data and develop a stronger understanding of how AI models are built and used.

Offered through the Department of Mathematics and Statistics, the certificate can be earned on its own or alongside another degree. Students study within USU’s broader data science and AI community, which includes the university’s Data Science and Artificial Intelligence Center.

What You Will Learn

The Foundations of Artificial Intelligence certificate connects the mathematics of data science with the methods used to build modern AI systems. Students will draw on linear algebra and multivariable calculus to understand machine learning models, study supervised and unsupervised approaches, and gain experience implementing selected methods with real data.

The curriculum also examines how neural networks, the backbone of modern AI tools, are trained through backpropagation and stochastic gradient descent, along with regularization methods that help models generalize. Students will explore important neural network architectures such as convolutional networks, transformers, and large language models. This combination of theory and practice will provide students with the foundation to read machine learning and AI research and understand the mathematical and computational choices behind its results.