“My program gave me so many fundamentals for statistics and linguistic program design, which are essential to understanding the behind-the-scenes operation of the tools I’m using… People coming out of the HLT program have the opportunity to be highly valuable citizens of the world — to help society navigate through the rapid changes that are happening now and coming.”
– 2017 HLT alum Trevor Sullivan, senior artificial intelligence conversational engineer (read full story)
Discover the future of language and technology with our interdisciplinary Master's in Human Language Technology (HLT) at University of Arizona Online. You can also read a Q&A with program director Gus Hahn-Powell about the degree.
Why Choose Our HLT Program?
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Balanced, Practical Curriculum: Explore a dynamic blend of linguistics, computational linguistics, and practical skills. Our program covers everything from speech recognition and machine translation to web search engine technology and more, with a strong emphasis on artificial intelligence (AI) applications, including LLMs.
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High Demand for HLT and AI Professionals: The fields of HLT and AI are rapidly expanding, with a growing need for skilled professionals like programmers, computational linguists, data scientists, and natural language processing engineers. Our graduates are prepared for diverse careers across industries, not just academia.
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Real-World Experience: A highlight of our program is a hands-on internship where students apply what they've learned in a real-world NLP project. Our students have completed their internships with top companies including Lockheed Martin, Intel, Raytheon, IBM, Motorola, and tech start-ups. With a variety of options to document your internship, you'll be well-prepared whether your plans after graduation include academia or industry.
Program Highlights
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Flexible Online Learning: Designed for working professionals, our program is delivered entirely online with courses available in fall, spring, and summer. Study at your own pace with asynchronous content and weekly deadlines. Each course in the program is delivered over 7.5 weeks.
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Interdisciplinary Focus: Our program includes linguistics, computer science, AI, and more. We welcome students from various backgrounds, provided they have a passion for language and sufficient programming proficiency in Python.
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Career-Oriented: With more job opportunities in industry than traditional academia, our program prepares you for a competitive workforce. You’ll be equipped with the skills needed to excel in roles that bridge language and technology.
Career Opportunities
Graduates from our HLT program are prepared for careers in:
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Software Development
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Artificial Intelligence and Machine Learning
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Data Science and Analytics
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Natural Language Processing
What You’ll Learn
Our curriculum includes:
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Statistical and symbolic methods in Computational Linguistics
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Natural Language Processing
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Speech Technology (automatic speech recognition and text-to-speech)
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Text Retrieval and information extraction
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Neural Network-based models
You’ll also gain training in professionalism for the tech industry to enhance your career prospects.
Internship
In addition to program coursework, students are expected to complete a minimum of 6 credit hours of internship. The internship requirement can be met any point during the program, though we typically suggest waiting until finishing the first 2-4 courses. The internship experience provides real-world training in preparation for a career. We're very flexible about the form the internship can take (project at a startup, academic institution, non-profit, intelligence agency, etc.).
For more information, please look at our frequently asked questions.
More Information
For additional information, please visit our HLT online website.