career change, Featured, Lifelong Learning, Parenting

On Lifelong Learning, Parenting, and Career Change

How a former professor turned stay-at-home parent enrolled with Udacity and became a Data Analyst

Lifelong Learning - Parenting - Career Change - Udadity

I’d like to introduce you to Kevin. He’s a husband, father, and today, a data analyst. But that wasn’t always the case. A few years ago, his family undertook a major change that significantly impacted his life and career. At that time, he was teaching Arabic as an assistant professor at Appalachian State University.

The change was set in motion when his wife was offered an incredible career opportunity in her hometown of Austin, TX. Together, they made the decision to put Kevin’s career on hold so that she could pursue hers. With their 1-year-old son in tow, they trekked west, and Kevin became a stay-at-home dad.

Suddenly, his daily schedule shifted dramatically from being on the university campus all day teaching, grading and conducting research, to being in their new Austin home with his son, feeding, diapering, bathing, dressing, cleaning up, doing laundry and managing naptime.

Artificial Intelligence, Challenges, Contests/Competitions, Featured

Introducing AI Challenger, a $300,000 Global AI Competition for Students

Udacity - Global AI Challenger

Artificial Intelligence has hit fever pitch in China. From cutting-edge tech powerhouses to established large corporations, everyone is setting up new AI Labs, hiring new talent, and announcing new platforms. “AI First” is the order of the day in China, and the excitement around this transformational technology is incredible. Udacity is thrilled to be playing a key role, through important partnerships with companies such as Tencent, Didi Chuxing, and Alibaba.

Career Guidance, Featured, Robotics

Your Exclusive Guide To Pursuing A Robotics Career

Robotics Career Guide

By 2019, over 2.6 million industrial robots are expected to be launched into operation across the world. Demand for employees with the skills to build and program these machines is already skyrocketing. Organizations such as American Robotics, a non-profit founded by Carnegie Mellon University, are predicting that more than 500,000 new manufacturing jobs will emerge in the next decade alone.

Embarking on a robotics career begins today, if you want to be at the forefront of this incredible industry.

But how do you get started? What do you need to learn, and where can you learn it? Who are the thought leaders shaping a vision for the future? Where are the jobs going to be, and who are the companies leading the way? What kinds of salaries do robotics engineers earn?

We’ve got the answer to all these questions and more in an exclusive Career Guide we’ve developed with our partners at Paysa. If you’re interested in pursuing a robotics career, this is your complete guide. To access this free Career Guide, just enter your email address below:

Featured, Google, Scholarships

Announcing 60,000 Challenge Scholarships from Udacity and Google

60000 Udacity Google Challenge Scholarships

Udacity and Google share a commitment to increasing learning opportunities for deserving students across the globe, and this mission has been the cornerstone of our partnership from the start. Most recently, together with Bertelsmann, we launched an ambitious scholarship initiative across Europe for aspiring Android developers. As a result, thousands of students earned the opportunity to master job-ready skills.

The results not only warmed our hearts, but inspired us to significantly expand our efforts.

Featured, Student Success

A New “New Collar” Success Story

New Collar Success Story - Udacity

How three-time Udacity graduate Nick Hester turned a supposedly high-risk learning path into a rewarding new career

Whether you believe, as the World Economic Forum does, that we are entering a Fourth Industrial Revolution, or are simply witnessing the increasing impact of technology on the employment landscape, the central truth remains the same—the world of work is changing, and we’re all having to adapt. As new technologies emerge and new innovations are made possible, competition increases, and growth expectations go higher. This in turn drives up demand for employees who possess relevant skills. Because these skills are often comparatively rarefied—given the newness of the technologies—companies are being challenged to consider more unorthodox ways of attracting the right kind of talent.

When Nick Hester was an undergraduate just beginning to think seriously about his future, he couldn’t conceive of a career in web development. He had spent five years jumping between majors, and while he was starting to realize that technology held the most promise, he had no idea where to start. He tried computer graphics, but while it interested him at the hobby level, he didn’t see it as a career path. Then Nick discovered programming. He was immediately intrigued, but the same concerns bedeviled him:

“I knew I wanted to get into programming, however, I had this assumption that it was a field reserved for math prodigies and geniuses. I knew I wasn’t either of those.”

Deep Learning, Featured, Student Success

Me, My Neural Network, and Game of Thrones

Zack Thoutt - Game of Thrones - Neural Network - Udacity

Editor’s Note: This post is written by Zackarey Thoutt. He’s a Udacity Nanodegree program graduate. You may recognize his name, as he’s been all over the media lately. Vice’s Motherboard magazine put it like this: Neural Network Wrote the Next ‘Game of Thrones’ Book Because George R.R. Martin Hasn’t. Zack created that neural network, and in this post, he shares how it all came to be.

As I was getting ready to graduate from Udacity’s Deep Learning Foundations Nanodegree program, I began to wonder what to do next. I needed a new project to keep my skills sharp. One episode into Season 7 of Game of Thrones (I’m a huge fan!), the idea hit me—why not train a network to write new chapters for the book we’re all waiting for?

Career Guidance, career path, Featured

Creating Your Own Career Path In The Adaptive Age

creating your own career path - udacity

Today, we are witnessing a rapidly-changing employment landscape that is the direct result of extraordinary technological advancement. These changes are profound enough that old rules about creating a “career path” are being rewritten in real time. On the employer side, the pressure to fill so-called “new collar” jobs is challenging organizations to pursue new strategies for identifying and recruiting qualified talent. On the employee side, everyone from first-time job seekers, to mid-career professionals, to those approaching traditional retirement age, is having to reevaluate their skillsets.