Master of Science in Advanced Financial Planning with Concentration in Taxation

at Golden Gate University USA

In the MSADA and certificate programs, students can gain essential skills that in-demand accounting professionals need in today's data-rich environment. The MSADA offers concentrations in CPA applied accounting, advanced analytics for accountants, essentials of leadership, or taxation. The Advanced Analytics for Accountants Concentration is a STEM-designated degree program.

Plus, graduate certificates are available in Accounting Data & Analytics, Accounting Foundations, Advanced Analytics for Accountants, and CPA Applied Accounting.

This MSADA program satisfies the 150-hour education requirement to become a licensed Certified Public Accountant (CPA) and the CPA Applied Accounting Concentration offers live instruction to guide students through the CPA exam.

Estate Planning Concentration

A structured graduate concentration program designed to prepare CFP-certificated students for a career in Estate planning and gift taxation. The concentration in Estate Planning gives CFP® students an intimate knowledge of estate law, such as lifetime gifting, marital deduction planning, and alternate forms of wealth transfer. In addition to estate planning, graduates with this concentration learn about dealing with the financial aspects of individual retirement plans and the laws surrounding taxation of trusts and estates as well as the interpersonal skills needed when dealing with such sensitive issues as estate planning and personal finance.

The Golden Gate University (GGU) MBA program will advance your leadership skills and business knowledge using an activity-based learning approach. Faculty members are seasoned professionals in their respective fields and will prepare you to lead in today's complex business environment.

GGU's MBA program builds your business acumen, leadership skills, and contextual knowledge throughout the practical degree design. It provides an integrated perspective of management, and allows you to tailor the program with one of several concentrations to meet your professional interests and goals. Concentrations include business analytics, entrepreneurship, project management and even the option to design your own.

Since launching the MBA program more than half a century ago, GGU has pioneered evening and online programs for working professionals to achieve their career objectives. You can proceed at your own pace in deciding how many courses to take in a given trimester and study fully in-person, completely online or a combination of both.

Students in the program come from the San Francisco Bay Area, the United States and more than 50 countries around the world. With our location in the heart of San Francisco's thriving business community, strong connections to Bay Area business leaders, and a distinguished community of more than 70,000 alumni, the educational experience and the networks available to you are unparalleled.

This degree program provides students with the academic and clinical training required to practice relationally informed clinical work and to prepare alumni for employment in a variety of mental health settings, including community mental health agencies, hospitals, schools, and private practice. Our students learn to practice from a stance of cultural humility and to maintain ethical and best practice standards.

Golden Gate University offers a license-eligible Master of Arts in Counseling Psychology. The program maintains a strategic partnership with the Psychotherapy Action Network, an organization that aims to organize, formulate initiatives, and collectively advocate for mental health policy that is based on the complexity of the individual and not simply on the identification of discrete symptoms. This is consistent with our program philosophy, which envisions psychotherapy as a complex process of individual growth and change and the therapeutic relationship as a key element in successful treatment.

Traineeship is an integral part of our program, providing an opportunity for students to apply the skills learned in class to the clinical encounter. Students are required to complete 300 face-to-face clinical hours under clinical supervision and to concurrently attend our practicum seminar over the course of at least three trimesters.

Our curriculum meets the MFT licensure requirements as set forth by section 4980.36 of the California Business and Professions (Cal. B&P) code. The program satisfies all the educational requirements set by the California Board of Behavioral Science Examiners and provides some hours of supervised experience fulfilling part of the practical experience requirements. Our curriculum also meets the educational requirements for Licensed Professional Clinical counselor (LPCC) licensure as required by section 4999.33 of the California Business and Professions (Cal. B&P) code. The curriculum also meets the educational requirements for MFT and/or LPCC licensure in some other states. If you intend to pursue licensure outside the state of California or are completing the program, including the traineeship, outside the state of California, speak with a faculty member in the Department of Psychology to discuss the licensure requirements in your state of interest prior to beginning the program.

Learning Outcomes
Graduates of the Master of Arts in Counseling Psychology will possess the skills and knowledge to:

• Demonstrate comprehensive and integrative knowledge of the field of counseling psychology relevant to mental health professionals, including human development, psychopathology, and group, family, couple, and individual dynamics.
• Demonstrate knowledge of ethical and best practice standards that exist for professionals in their field.
• Demonstrate the capacity and willingness to practice psychotherapy from a stance of cultural humility.
• Demonstrate the capacity to practice individual, couple, family, and group psychotherapy from a relational and systemic lens.
• Demonstrate knowledge of research designs and parameters of psychological research, particularly within the field of counseling psychology, and the capacity to critically assess psychological research.

The skills students acquire throughout the course of their studies prepare graduates to assume leadership roles in industrial-organizational psychology in small, medium, and large organizations in a variety of fields — technology, pharmaceuticals, medical devices, entertainment — or work at global consulting firms. Graduates are also well-prepared to pursue doctoral study in industrial-organizational psychology and related disciplines.

Learning Outcomes

Graduates of the Master of Arts in Industrial-Organizational Psychology will possess the skills and knowledge to:

• Understand the main theoretical frameworks of industrial-organizational psychology with emphasis on organizational behavior, team and individual functioning, and leadership in a global context.
• Examine the dynamic and evolving nature of professional practice with focus on careers in industrial-organizational psychology, as well as human resources, executive coaching, and management consulting.
• Learn assessment tools to measure and diagnose individual, team, and organizational performance.
• Explore contemporary challenges such as diversity in organizations, managing generational differences, and the growing role of human resources technology.

Golden Gate University's Executive Master of Public Administration (EMPA) program provides working professionals with knowledge of public affairs, policy, and administration through a challenging and cutting-edge curriculum taught by instructors who are also professionals in the field.

GGU's EMPA program differs from other public administration programs in that it offers accelerated, real-world content intended for experienced professionals. Students can earn an EMPA in as little as 18 months in an entirely online format or through innovative, hybrid cohorts in San Francisco and Silicon Valley.

GGU is fully accredited by the Western Association of Schools and Colleges Senior College and University Commission (WSCUC) and has been an institutional member of the Network of Schools of Public Policy, Affairs, and Administration (NASPAA) since 1973.

Who Should Enroll

• The typical EMPA student has five or more years of experience in public or community service, and wants to build skills to move into a supervisory or leadership role.
• Students are highly motivated and diverse in both their experiences and backgrounds. Veteran students can draw upon extensive military benefits, including GGU's participation in the Yellow Ribbon Program.

Concentrations

• General Concentration
• Law Enforcement & Security
• Urban Innovations
• Declaring Concentrations

Our EMBA program is based on 100+ years of proven success developing and delivering programs for working professionals, and was designed to leverage the real-world professional experience and knowledge of the EMBA participants with GGU's renowned active and practice-based learning methods.

As you complete GGU's 16-month Executive MBA program, you will gain confidence not only from advancing your knowledge of business and leadership concepts, but also from mastering and applying what you learn to boost your professional performance.

From day one, you will have the opportunity to connect with a peer group of accomplished, high-energy professionals, in the heart of San Francisco's thriving business district. You will join an active alumni community that is 68,000-strong, and you will benefit from a network of corporate partnerships and entrepreneurs that GGU has forged during its 115-year history in the center of this world-changing business hub.

As a participant in the EMBA program, you will collaborate with and learn from executive coaches and instructors who are influential business leaders and who transform GGU classes into dynamic learning laboratories. More than 80% of our EMBA faculty members are scholar-practitioners, and they will constantly challenge you to enhance your business knowledge and hone your leadership skills by solving real, meaningful and practical business problems.

Learining Outcomes
Graduates of the executive MBA program will be able to:

• Work effectively in teams
• Sell their ideas
• Apply theory to understand real practical situations
• Think “outside the box” and develop novel solutions
• Integrate the functional department issues into a coherent strategic whole
• Analyze and synthesize problems
• Manage the development of their own careers

Graduates will be knowledgeable about:

• Current international and global issues
• Ethical and diversity issues
• Current technology and environmental issues
• Leading change in an organization
• Current management trends

The Master of Science in Human Resource Management degree program is recognized as being fully aligned with the curriculum guidebook of the Society for Human Resource Management. Our students learn how to consider the perspectives of employees and employers, the ways to effectively manage people, and the importance of employee engagement and development. Students study trends that managers and employees are likely to face in the future, and learn about legal requirements in dealing with employees.

Some students in the program choose to take an internship in Human Resources Management, in lieu of one course, which allows them to gain meaningful "hands-on" HR experience. In some cases, these internships parlay into a job offer upon completion of the degree.

Learning Outcomes

Graduates of the Master of Science in Human Resource Management will be able to:

• Craft strategic solutions that align stakeholders, HR practices and business needs for successful organizational performance.
• Build ethical, sustainable and scalable partnerships with organizational business units that support enhanced employee satisfaction, efficiency and effectiveness.
• Identify and apply relevant federal, state and local laws and regulations to prevent and solve problems and ethically minimize risk.
• Assimilate, manage and analyze demographic and business data and metrics using Human Resource Management Systems (HRMS) to enable effective human-capital recommendations and decision-making.
• Promote and facilitate inclusion and employee engagement as a means of expanding and improving people’s contributions.

Gain Cutting-Edge Leadership Skills

Golden Gate University’s breakthrough leadership programs are based on extensive input from corporate partners, industry groups, leading scholars, and leverage the university’s decades-long successes in developing high achieving leaders in the innovative crucible of the San Francisco Bay Area.

Learn From Instructors Who Teach What They Do

Courses are taught by instructors who also work in some of the Bay Area’s largest and most successful organizations. They bring cutting-edge knowledge from the field to the classroom, teaching skills that are immediately applicable to the real world.

Future-Proof Your Career

The pace of change across industries is quickening. New technologies are disrupting established businesses at an accelerated rate. We are operating in an ever interconnected global world. Jobs once performed by professionals will soon be automated or outsourced. What was certain today well may be uncertain tomorrow. Are you prepared for how management and leadership will evolve as a result?

Project Management Concentration

This concentration is designed for the student who must be able to apply data analytics tools and techniques to information that the organization can use for strategic decision-making. Students taking this concentration will be introduced to specialized analytics tools and technologies.

The Golden Gate University (GGU) MBA program will advance your leadership skills and business knowledge using an activity-based learning approach. Faculty members are seasoned professionals in their respective fields and will prepare you to lead in today's complex business environment.

GGU's MBA program builds your business acumen, leadership skills, and contextual knowledge throughout the practical degree design. It provides an integrated perspective of management, and allows you to tailor the program with one of several concentrations to meet your professional interests and goals. Concentrations include business analytics, entrepreneurship, project management and even the option to design your own.

Since launching the MBA program more than half a century ago, GGU has pioneered evening and online programs for working professionals to achieve their career objectives. You can proceed at your own pace in deciding how many courses to take in a given trimester and study fully in-person, completely online or a combination of both.

Students in the program come from the San Francisco Bay Area, the United States and more than 50 countries around the world. With our location in the heart of San Francisco's thriving business community, strong connections to Bay Area business leaders, and a distinguished community of more than 70,000 alumni, the educational experience and the networks available to you are unparalleled.

Gain Cutting-Edge Leadership Skills

Golden Gate University’s breakthrough leadership programs are based on extensive input from corporate partners, industry groups, leading scholars, and leverage the university’s decades-long successes in developing high achieving leaders in the innovative crucible of the San Francisco Bay Area.

Learn From Instructors Who Teach What They Do

Courses are taught by instructors who also work in some of the Bay Area’s largest and most successful organizations. They bring cutting-edge knowledge from the field to the classroom, teaching skills that are immediately applicable to the real world.

Future-Proof Your Career

The pace of change across industries is quickening. New technologies are disrupting established businesses at an accelerated rate. We are operating in an ever interconnected global world. Jobs once performed by professionals will soon be automated or outsourced. What was certain today well may be uncertain tomorrow. Are you prepared for how management and leadership will evolve as a result?

Influence and Conflict Management Concentration

This concentration is designed for students who would like to further develop knowledge and skills in influencing and conflict management. Research suggests that the ability to manage conflict differentiates leaders who are most effective from those who are not.