UCLA Launches First Accredited Blockchain Engineering Course
Blockchain courses are being adopted by more institutions as a way of teaching and equipping the next generation of crypto engineers to meet the ever-increasing demand for the technology and its applications. Now, the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA) is gearing up to offer its first blockchain engineering course, thanks to a sizable donation from MouseBelt Blockchain Accelerator.
UCLA to Offer Accredited Blockchain Course
The university, which previously organized blockchain and cryptocurrency seminars through its Anderson School of Management, has now announced that it will be running a full technical blockchain programming course from January 2019.
The course will be offered as 4-credit special topics course, which would be an upper-division elective requirement that is open to both students of electrical and computer engineering and computer science. It will cover topics including an overview of blockchain-related concepts, Ethereum, decentralized apps (dApps), crypto tokens, smart contracts, hash functions, and more.
The class will be led by Professor John D. Villasenor, a professor of management, electrical, and electronics engineering, as well as public policy. He will be assisted by Jason Huan and Andrew Battat, both of whom have been running various workshops on blockchain through Blockchain at UCLA, a student organization. MouseBelt Blockchain Accelerator is known for making investments in blockchain-based projects and startups, providing them with access to crypto engineers and developers to work on their projects, as well as dedicated support staff, marketing officers, and business management personnel to help secure real-use cases.
The company has also stated that it is making plans to add more schools to the university program in 2019 and that moves towards international expansion are already in the works.
Patrick McLain, Chief Operations Officer at MouseBelt, told CCN via email:
“While the market is scary right now, we believe the future is bright. No better way to invest in the future than investing in the youth. For us, this is only the beginning of building the bright future ahead through our University Program.”
Seats Quickly Filled up
The course is accredited through UCLA, and it does require some background in programming from some other basic-level classes. According to a MouseBelt representative who spoke with CCN, slots for the course have already been filled up, even though registration has only been open for a few days.
UCLA is joining a long list of universities to offer full-fledged blockchain-related courses. Earlier last month, the University of Tokyo also announced that it would be offering a DLT course at its graduate engineering department. The course, which has been dubbed the Blockchain Innovation Donation Course, was rolled out on Nov. 1, and the program is expected to run through October 2021. The course was made possible thanks to donations totaling about $800,000 from organizations such as the Ethereum Foundation and banking giant Sumimoto Mitsui.
