USF Microcredentials

Christine Brown

As associate vice president for USF’s Innovative Education, Christine Brown leads a dynamic, creative, multi-campus powerhouse focused on creating innovative digital student experiences enriched with multimedia and pedagogical excellence. Working closely with colleges, faculty, and the Tampa Bay community, InEd creates innovative, student-centered digital content, courses, fully online programs and industry certificates that cater to the needs of today's learners while also addressing workforce demand. 

Evan Fruehauf

Evan Fruehauf is an assistant librarian at the University of South Florida, committed to enhancing academic success through innovative library services. With expertise in research support, collection development, and information literacy, he integrates emerging technologies like AI to aid researchers and explores game-based design for instructional innovation. Passionate about libraries' role in education, Fruehauf strives to inspire lifelong learning through technology-driven solutions.

John Licato, PhD

Dr. John Licato is an associate professor in the Computer Science and Engineering department of the University of South Florida, founder/director of the Advancing Machine and Human Reasoning Lab, and owner of the startup company Actualization.AI. He obtained his PhD in Computer Science from Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute in May 2015, working under Professor Selmer Bringsjord and specializing in the computational modeling of analogical reasoning.

Niriksha Patel

Niriksha Patel, Acting SES, MBA, has 20+ years of experience leading complex business transformation and process improvement for large-scale commercial healthcare and government organizations. As an innovative executive, she is adept at operations strategy and execution, improving return on investment, and delivering top-and bottom-line results. She is well-versed in motivating and engaging teams from 55 to 1,200 personnel and managing budgets of $120 million to $27 billion. Deep Water Point & Associates’ clients benefit greatly from Ms. Patel’s experience with strategy, transformation, data, artificial intelligence, information technology, healthcare, claims processing, operations, staffing, marketing, and cloud migration. 

Bo Pei, PhD

Dr. Bo Pei is a passionate educator with a focus on the intersections of technology, data, and pedagogy. He offers a diverse portfolio of courses, including Data Visualization in Education and Introduction to Big Data and Learning Analytics. Driven by a vision of interdisciplinary collaboration, he aspires to democratize computational and data analysis skills, especially for those in the social sciences. Through his innovative teaching methods and curriculum design, Dr. Pei ensures that students not only acquire technical prowess but also appreciate the broader implications and applications of their knowledge in real-world contexts.

Adam Phillips, PhD

Dr. Adam Phillips is an assistant professor of instruction and currently the assistant director of first-year writing at the Tampa campus. He earned his PhD in Rhetoric and Composition at the University of South Florida, Tampa, in 2022. His research focuses on writing program assessment, writing analytics, composition pedagogy, and digital rhetoric and writing. He teaches first-year composition, professional and technical communication, digital rhetoric, and new media courses.

Keith Sartain

Keith Sartain is the senior director of global IT at ConnectWise, where he leads advancements in web infrastructure management. With a specialization in infrastructure tooling, automation, and high-availability architectures, Sartain drives innovative solutions to ensure seamless IT operations on a global scale. His expertise and leadership have been instrumental in optimizing infrastructure performance and reliability for diverse business needs.

Douglas Smith

An accomplished business strategist, company advisor, and investor, Smith has worked with a broad portfolio of companies in education, insurance, real estate, healthcare, and B2B SaaS. He is currently the Director of AI Operations at Element451 – Leading AI strategy, development, and operations to enhance user adoption of AI to accelerate client engagement, drive innovation, and offload repetitive work. Responsibilities include overseeing AI enablement, LLMops, and integrating AI-driven insights within Element451.

Jenifer Jasinski Schneider, PhD

Dr. Jenifer Jasinski Schneider is a professor of literacy studies with the USF College of Education, and the college’s current interim dean. Focusing on community-engaged projects, and working within designed field experiments, Dr. Schneider’s research addresses the changing set of strategies that students use to compose and communicate through print-based and multimodal texts.