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CONTACT PERSON FOR THE FOLLOWING COURSE INFORMATION:
Dee Holisky, College of Arts and Sciences, 3-8721, dholisky@gmu.edu

New Courses for Approval

COMM 798. Communication Studies Project (3:0:0)
Prerequisites: Degree candidacy in the MA in Communication, completion of 24 semester hours of graduate course work, approval of a thesis proposal by the faculty advisor and committee members.
Research project related to student's area of study in Communication taken under supervision of the faculty advisor and committee members.

COMM 799. Masters Thesis (1-6:0:0)
Prerequisites: Degree candidacy in the MA in Communication, completion of 24 semester hours of graduate course work, approval of a thesis proposal by the faculty advisor and committee members.
An original research endeavor related to the student's concentration in Communication.

Modified Courses for Approval

CHEM 713. Modern Polymer Chemistry (3:3:0) |
Renumber to CHEM 613.

CHEM 725. Electroanalytical Chemistry (3:3:0)
Renumber to CHEM 625.

CHEM 790. Graduate Seminar (1:1:0)
Renumber to CHEM 690.

TELE 750. Telecommunications Coordinating Seminar (3:3:0)
Change prerequisites to: "Open only to students in the MA or MS in Telecommunications programs who have completed at least 18 hours of course work."

Renumber the following courses:

• COMM 501 to 601
• COMM 502 to 602
• COMM 505 to 605
• COMM 531 to 631
• COMM 534 to 634
• COMM 535 to 635
• COMM 536 to 636
• COMM 550 to 652 (there already is a COMM 650)
• COMM 553 to 653
• COMM 555 to 655
• COMM 556 to 656
• COMM 596 to 696
• COMM 597 to 697

Deleted Courses for Approval

BIOL 570. Laboratory Workshop (1-3:0:3-9)

GERM 799. Thesis. (1-6:0:0)

SOCI 620. Design of Social Research (3:3:0)

New Concentrations for Approval

The MS in Biology consists of a traditional Biological Sciences program and two interdisciplinary concentrations: Environmental Science and Public Policy, and Bioinformatics and Computational Biology. Students in the Biological Sciences program can specialize in any area in which there is expertise within the Biology faculty.

It is proposed to add concentrations within the Biological Sciences program. The proposed concentrations represent areas of significant strength within the department, based on the number of faculty involved, the number and frequency of course offerings, and student interest (enrollment). The adoption does not require new faculty or new courses. The proposed concentrations merely recognize a defacto condition.

Systems and Evolutionary Biology, Microbiology, and Molecular Biology are among the most important areas of research and development in science today. By highlighting then as official concentrations, the MS program will be much more attractive to prospective students.

MS in Biology, Concentration in Systematics and Evolutionary Biology

MS in Biology, Concentration in Microbiology

MS in Biology, Concentration in Molecular Biology

New Degree Program

MA in Communication

The MA in Communication is designed to offer students interested in working in a professional or not-for-profit environment a solid preparation for dynamic, organizational, social and economic climates where effective communication is key to success. The program allows students to examine relationships between organization, and communication as situated in specific social, political, and economic environments through studies of meanings, discourse, and information flow.

The Communication Department offers a 33-credit graduate degree in the study and practice of communication, taking courses and/or working with faculty in the following areas:

• Public Relations
• Health, Environment and Risk Communication
• International and Intercultural Communication
• Gender Communication and the Workplace
• Organizational Communication

Admission Requirements
Applicants should present the following minimum requirements:

• Baccalaureate degree from an accredited institution
• GPA of 3.00 or better in the last 60 credits
• Application with 3 letters of recommendation
• GRE or Miller Analogy scores
• A 500-word essay addressing the communication area in which the applicant is interested.

Students admitted provisionally must achieve a 3.25 GPA in the first 12 credits of graduate course work to advance to degree status. If they fail to do so, they will be terminated.

Degree Requirements
Candidates for the degree must successfully complete 33 credits of graduate course work, including the following:

• COMM 650 Research Methods and COMM 635 Organizational Communication in the first 15 credits
• Two of the following:
  COMM 602 Theories of Mass Communication
  COMM 605 Intercultural Communication
  COMM 530 Theories of Small Group Communication
  COMM 634 Theories of Interpersonal Communication
• Select 12-15 credits from the following electives:
  COMM 601 Communication in Professional Relationships
  COMM 504 Communication and Interpersonal Conflict
  COMM 506 Communication in International Organizations
  COMM 631 Approaches to Group Facilitation
  COMM 636 Communication Consulting
  COMM 652 Communication in the Classroom
  COMM 551 Developing Students' Speaking and Listening Skills
  COMM 655 Theories of Visual Communication COMM 656 Global Communication
  COMM 590 Seminar in Communication
• Practicum (3 credits)
  COMM 653 Teaching the College Communication Course
  COMM 696 Directed Readings and Research
  COMM 697 Independent Production COMM 694 Internship
• Project or Thesis(3-6 credits)
  COMM 798 or 799

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CONTACT PERSON FOR THE FOLLOWING COURSE INFORMATION:

Jim Vail, College of Nursing and Health Science, 3-1678, jvail@gmu.edu

New Courses for Approval

NURS 630. Acute Care Nursing for Advanced Practice (3:3:0)
Prerequisites: Admission to graduate program or permission of instructor.
Focuses on acute care nursing for advanced practice with individuals and their families diagnosed with potentially life-threatening alterations in health. Emphasis is on risk factors, physical symptoms, evidence-based interventions, and functional capacity. Emphasis is also on patient and family dynamics, psychosocial, economic, and cultural factors and their impact on care.

HSCI 594. Special Topics in Health Care (3:0:0)
Prerequisites: Admission to graduate program or permission of instructor.
Presents special topics analyzing special areas in health care. Content varies. Lecture, seminar, laboratory/workshops.

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CONTACT PERSON FOR THE FOLLOWING COURSE INFORMATION:

Stephen Nash, School of Information Technology & Engineering, 3-1678, snash@gmu.edu

New Degree Programs for Approval

The School of Information Technology & Engineering is proposing a new post-MS degree, called an Engineer Degree. In essence, it would combine the course work of the Ph.D. degree with an applied project of shorter duration than a Ph.D. thesis. There are several motivations:

• Students and businesses have indicated that they want the advanced training, but do not see value in the Ph.D. thesis.
• If popular, it would increase enrollments in our advanced courses, making it possible to offer more such courses to a greater number of students.
• It would offer an "escape route" for Ph.D. students who are not able, or do not want, to complete the Ph.D. degree.For example, they may not pass the qualifying exams, or they may not choose to complete the thesis.

Some might be concerned that this degree might dilute the quality of our Ph.D. program, and that it might considerably increase our work load. Although it is not possible to guarantee how the program will evolve, we offer these views:

• We would expect that only the stronger students would elect to conduct Ph.D. thesis research. This might reduce the number of Ph.D. students in our program, but we think that it would tend to improve the average quality of the program.
• The applied project will in most cases be supervised by an individual from outside the university; supervising these projects will require some faculty effort, but not nearly as much effort as supervising a Ph.D. thesis.
• Currently, many of our doctoral-level courses are cancelled (or not offered) due to low enrollment. If successful, this new degree should make it possible to offer these courses more often. Many faculty members would like to teach research-level courses more often.
• The qualifying exams associated with this program are the same exams as for the IT (Information Technology) Ph.D. program, and thus do not require additional effort to create.

While an Engineer Degree is a relatively new program at U.S. universities, it has been adopted by a variety of schools, including some of the most prestigious engineering schools in the country. In summary, we recommend that a student who wishes to receive an Engineer Degree in Information Technology at GMU must:

• Satisfy the admission requirements for the IT Ph.D. degree (in particular, the student must already have an M.S. degree)
• Satisfy the course requirements for the IT Ph.D. degree (24 credit hours)
• Either:
  • Complete two additional courses (6 credit hours)
  • Pass two qualifying examinations
• Complete an applied project (12 credit hours) under the supervision of a committee:
• The committee would consist of two full-time tenured or tenure-track faculty members from IT&E, plus an external member from outside the university familiar with the application area. (A third faculty member may substitute for the external member, but this is not recommended.) The committee would have to be approved by the Associate Dean for Graduate Studies and Reseasrch.
• A project proposal would have to be approved by the committee and the Associate Dean.
• Present the results of the project in a written dissertation, as well as in a public presentation. The dissertation would have to satisfy the GMU format guidelines. The public defense would follow the same rules as for the IT Ph.D. degree. No pre-defense would be required, however.

We would consider the Engineer Degree to be a terminal degree. If a student with an Engineer's degree wanted to obtain a Ph.D. at a later date, the student would have to take additional course work as well as writing a doctoral dissertation. The specific course requirements for a student seeking both degrees would be consistent with GMU rules for other degrees.

Since the admission requirements for the IT Ph.D. degree and the Engineer degree are the same, we would allow students to transfer from one program to the other, if all degree requirements were met. This would require the approval of the Associate Dean.

Engineer Degree in Information Technology

Admission Requirements
Students in the Engineer program in information technology are selected on the basis of scholarship and potential from among applicants with appropriate degrees from institutions of high standing. Generally, a master's degree in an information technology-related area, such as engineering, computer science, operations research, statistics, mathematics, physical sciences, economics, and psychology, is required for admission to the program. Students without an appropriate master's degree who otherwise satisfy admission requirements usually are encouraged to first seek such a degree in one of the eight master's programs offered through this school. Application packets are available from the Office of Admissions and from the Office of the Dean of IT&E.

An undergraduate grade point average of B (3.000 on a 4.000 scale) and a graduate grade point average of 3.500 on a 4.000 scale are basic requirements for applicants to the program. The admission process includes submission of the application for admission, undergraduate and graduate transcripts from previous colleges and universities attended, GRE test results when available, three letters of reference, a resume and a short statement of career goals and aspirations, and a self-assessment of past background. All of an applicant's background is examined before an admission decision is made.

To ensure a common ground of fundamentals, students should have a background in topics such as calculus, differential equations, linear algebra, discrete structures, probability, and statistics. In addition, students entering the doctoral program in information technology must have a sound working knowledge in computing as demonstrated by examples of programs or applications developed and tested in at least one high-level programming language environment. Because much of the course work within this program requires computational proficiency, experience with a variety of languages and computer hardware is useful, as is an understanding of computer architecture. Highly qualified students who do not present evidence of appropriate course work for the program may be admitted and then required to take appropriate articulation courses.

Plan of Study
The Engineer Degree in Information Technology program is made up of specialized course work followed by completion of an applied project (summarized in a dissertation). Under the guidance of the supervisory committee, the student prepares a tentative plan of study. The plan lists the intended courses and their expected timing. The plan should also contain a tentative subject for the applied project.

Specialized Course Work
Students must include in the plan of study a well-defined advanced concentration area. Successful completion of this requirement should enable the student to do applied research in a significant contemporary area in information technology.

The supervisory committee and the Associate Dean of the School of IT & Engineering must approve a plan of study. These approvals must occur before a student completes the courses in the area of concentration. There is no guarantee that a course taken before this approval will be accepted. Students must take 30 credit hours of graduate-level course work. A GPA of 3.5 is required in these credit hours. Students may waive up to 6 credit hours of course work by passing two of the qualifying examinations from any of the Ph.D. programs offered by the School of Information Technology & Engineering (i.e., 3 credit hours per qualifying examination).

The plan of study may include at most 3 credit hours of directed reading course work. At least 12 of the credit hours must be in courses numbered 700 or higher, and these 12 credit hours cannot include directed-reading, project, or thesis courses. The courses listed below cannot be included in the plan of study. The Associate Dean must approve exceptions to any of these rules in advance.

Supervisory Committee
Upon admission to the program, a student is assigned a temporary advisor. The student is responsible for working with the temporary advisor until the student selects a dissertation director and an advisory committee. It is recommended that a student form an advisory committee as soon as is feasible.

The supervisory committee includes the dissertation director plus at least two additional members. The committee must contain at least two regular (teaching) full-time faculty members from the School of IT & Engineering. It is strongly recommended that the committee include at least one person from outside the university who is knowledgeable in the subject area of the dissertation. The supervisory committee supervises the dissertation proposal presentation and the dissertation defense.

Project Proposal Presentation
Near the end of the course work each student in the Engineer program prepares a written project proposal, which is presented to the supervisory committee. The student may enroll in INFT 996 Engineer Project Proposal to complete this effort. During the term the student expects to present the project proposal to the committee, the student should enroll in INFT 991 Engineer Project Presentations. After successfully completing this requirement, the student is formally admitted as a candidate for the Engineer degree. The application for candidacy is submitted to the Office of the Dean on a standard form.

Dissertation and Final Defense
With concurrence of the advisory committee, the student proceeds with the project research, during which time the student must continuously enroll in INFT 997 Engineer Project. The student must complete a minimum of 12 credits from among INFT 991, 996, and 997, with a minimum of 6 credits of INFT 997. When the central portions of the project work have been completed to the point that the student is able to describe the contributions of the dissertation effort, a candidate submits the written dissertation to the supervisory committee. Once the committee believes the student is ready, a final public oral defense may be scheduled; the application for the defense must be submitted to the Associate Dean at least one month in advance of the defense in order to have an announcement posted for at least two weeks. Following a satisfactory evaluation of the oral defense of dissertation by the supervisory committee, the student must submit, with supervision from the dissertation director, a final dissertation that represents a definitive contribution to applied knowledge in information technology. This document must meet format guidelines specified by the Guide for Preparing Graduate Theses, Dissertations, and Projects.

If the candidate successfully defends the dissertation, the dissertation defense committee recommends that the final form of the dissertation be completed, and that the faculty of IT&E and the graduate faculty of George Mason University accept the candidate for the Engineer degree.

Courses that May Not be Part of the Advanced Concentration Area

• INFS 5xx
• INFT 500
• INFT 599 OR 540
• STAT 510
• STAT 512
• STAT 530
• SYST 500

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CONTACT PERSON FOR THE FOLLOWING COURSE INFORMATION:
Stephen Nash, School of Information Technology & Engineering, 3-1678, snash@gmu.edu
Don Lavoie, School of Public Policy, 3-3994, dlavoie@gmu.edu

New Courses for Approval

SYST 692/PUBP 772. Decision Support for Enterprise Integration (3:3:0)
Prerequisites: SYST 542 and SYST 691.
These lectures focus on the use of "Business Intelligence" to enhance competitive advantage. The focus is on developing an information-driven set of controls to improve profitability. The lectures emphasize the creation of a balanced business with aligned corporate direction and strategic intent. The course examines solutions that are provided within ERP systems.

OR 751. Advanced Topics in Operations Research for Planning, Scheduling and Network Design (3:3:0)
Prerequisites: OR 642 or 643 or OR 690.
An introduction to network and combinatorial optimization problems in logistics, computer science, electrical engineering and systems engineering. Solution techniques for various classes of such problems are developed. Topics include scheduling algorithms, capital budgeting, minimal cost network flow, optimal routings, and generalized networks. Scheduling algorithms, network reliability, stochastic networks and combinatorially based network problems are discussed.

New Degree Program for Approval

MS in Enterprise Engineering and Policy

The Enterprise Engineering and Policy degree program provides a technology degree for those interested in designing, integrating, and managing technology-enabled private and public organizations. The program prepares students for designing and managing the extended enterprise, which includes customers, suppliers, and other claimants. It emphasizes the impact that Enterprise Integration is having on the way organizations manage their business processes. This includes the implementation and tuning of Enterprise Resource Planning systems, Business-to-Business extensions, and other standard software solutions.

George Mason University's School of Information Technology and Engineering (IT&E) and The School of Public Policy (SPP) will manage the program. Faculty from both organizations will contribute and teach courses. In addition, adjunct faculty members who are recruited from the private and public sectors in the Washington Metropolitan Area will support specialized knowledge areas.

Courses will be offered at the Fairfax, Arlington, and Prince William Campuses. Some of the courses may be offered in the increasingly popular technology-enabled learning mode.

The Enterprise Engineering & Policy degree has three concentration areas:

Extended Enterprise Integration.
This track is concerned with how to design tools and systems to enable electronic commerce across enterprises. It is concerned with working with suppliers and distributors to maximize the efficiency of service to the ultimate consumer. While we require expertise in business-to-consumer e-Commerce, our primary focus is on the business-to-business link. We have major corporate sponsors for this concentration: Great Plains, Inc., the Oracle Corporation, and PROMATIS, Inc. Oracle presents a solution, based on a modern Internet-based architecture for larger corporations. Great Plains does the same for midrange companies. While the lectures are focused on the basic concepts of any ERP system, the laboratory requirements are quite focused. In the first year, students are required to implement a midrange ERP system; i.e., operating system, database, and system

Supply Chain Integration and Management.
This concentration is focused on the business-to-business e-Commerce link as well as the direct shipment link. The emphasis is on Advanced Planning Systems and the integration aspects of modern supply chain management. Students concentrating in this track must be capable of designing, testing and modifying optimization and simulation procedures that link to a major ERP vendor's software. We expect students to be able to link the data collected in the overall ERP system to specific modeling tools and to display the results of such modeling efforts within user-friendly strategic decision support tools. SAP America will sponsor this part of our program, with a focus on R/3 and the Advanced Planning and Optimization extension. This concentration will be bolstered by our on-going joint research in this area with IDS Scheer, Inc. and ILOG, Inc.

Business Intelligence.
This concentration is focused on translating the data stored in ERP and legacy database systems into "business intelligence". This concentration is also focused on the business-to-business and business-to-consumer links in Figure 1.The details of this concentration are primarily focused on data warehousing, data mining and decision support. Sponsors of this concentration are Oracle, SAP, and Great Plains. As this field matures, we expect to have a number of other systems available in the laboratory. Since this degree track is focused on Enterprise Integration, a laboratory requirement is mandated. This requirement provides a structured lab environment every two weeks for formal "hands-on" instruction. During the "off-week" the lab time is used to work on a term project of the student's choosing - either individually or in teams.

To earn a Master of Science degree, students must complete 36 credit hours of course work through a combination of core and concentration specific courses.

A Graduate Certificate will be awarded upon completion of at least 19 credit hours of core courses, at least one 12 credit hours concentration module. Each student will have a major project (5 credits) that completes the program and proves that the student can apply the tools and methods learned in the program.

The public policy, engineering and technology core courses constitute the required foundations knowledge of Enterprise Engineering & Policy. The concentration modules contain courses that build upon this foundation knowledge, to provide an in-depth coverage of specialty areas without requiring advanced systems or computer programming concepts. The interdisciplinary courses augment this program in several dimensions, to provide the students with a well-rounded body of knowledge about contemporary telecommunication systems

Courses are open to students who hold a B.S. or B.A. degree, from an accredited college or university, in any engineering, math, science, computer science, business (with a quantitative background), economics or other analytic-related discipline. In general, a background in managerial accounting, proficiency in a procedural or object oriented programming language, database familiarity (at least Access), college-level mathematics through linear algebra, multivariate calculus, and statistics is required. Depending on their prior background, some applicants may be required to complete three to six credit hours of preliminary course work before enrolling in any of the core courses or specialty courses in the program. A minimum of undergraduate grade point average 3.0 is required.

Students may be admitted for a non-degree study, which allows them to take individual courses and receive a Certificate, or to degree study leading to the MS degree in Enterprise Engineering & Policy.

Each student must complete a minimum of 36 graduate credits, with GPA 3.0 or better. The plan of study includes the following:

Required Core Courses (19:0 Credit Hours)

Base courses required by all students

• SYST 691/PUBP 771 (4:3:1)) prerequisite: INFS 614 (or equivalent) Introduction to Enterprise Engineering and Policy. (Includes 1:0 credit hour for ARIS Modeling and ERP Implementation Laboratory)
• INFS 614 (3:3:0) Database Management.
• One of the following two courses:
  • ITRN 772 (3:3:0) International Telecommunications
  • ECE 540 (3:3:0) Modern Telecommunications
• SYST 530(3:3:0) Systems Management and Evaluation OR
  SYST 512(3:3:0) Systems Engineering for Design and Development
• SYST 692/PUB P772 (3:3:0) Decision Support for Enterprise Integration.

A minimum of 9 credit hours of courses by completing one (1) of the following three Concentration Modules

Concentration Module 1 - Extended Enterprise Integration
(Primary Responsibility - Professor Gulledge)

• INFS 640 (3:3:0) Introduction to Electronic Commerce (mandatory for this track)
• INFS 641 (3:3:0) Group Projects in E-commerce
• INFS 740 (3:3:0) Individual Project in E-commerce
• SYST 693/PUBP 773 (3:3:0) Supply Chain Integration and Management
• SYST 694/PUBP 774 (3:3:0) E-Commerce Architectures
• INFS 767 (3:3:0) Secure Electronic Commerce.
• SYST 695/PUBP 775 (3:3:0) Economics of Electronic Commerce
• ITRN 772 (3:3:0) International Telecommunications.
• ITRN 773 (3:3:0) International Strategic Management.
• OR 690 (3:3:0) Optimization of Supply Chains.
• SYST 696/PUBP 776 (3:3:0) Customer Relationship Management
• SYST 563 (3:3:0) Research and Evaluation Methods
• INFT 810 Scaling for E-Business
• CS 656 Computer Communications and Networking
• CS 672 Computer System Performance and Evaluation
• CS 681 Designing Expert Systems

Concentration Module 2 - Supply Chain Integration and Management
(Primary Responsibility - Professor Hoffman)

• OR 690 (3:3:0) Optimization of Supply Chains.
• SYST 781/STAT 781/INFS 781 (3:3:0). Data Mining and Knowledge Discovery
• SYST 693/PUBP 773 (3:3:0) Supply Chain Integration and Management (Business-to Business Electronic Commerce)
• SYST 542 (3:3:0) Decision Support Systems Engineering
• SYST 697/PUBP 777 (3:3:0) Critical Information Technology Infrastructures
• CS 681 (3:3:0) Designing Expert Systems.
• OR 751 (3:3:0) Advanced Topics in Operations Research for Planning, Scheduling, and Network Design
• OR 648 (3:3:0) Production and Inventory Systems
• SYST 563 (3:3:0)Research and Evaluation Methods

Concentration Module 3 - Business Intelligence
(Primary Responsibility - Professor Jajodia)

• SYST 781/STAT 781/INFS 781 (3:3:0 (3:3:0) Data Mining
• INFS 755 (3:3:0) Decision Support Database Systems
• INFS 760 (3:3:0) Advanced Database Management.
• SYST 621 (3:3:0) Systems Architecture for Large-scale Systems
• INFS 762 (3:3:0) Information Security Principles
• INFS 623 (3:3:0) Information Retrieval
• INFS 612 (3:3:0) Data Communications and Distributed Processing
• INFS 675 (3:3:0)Database Security
• SYST 696/PUBP 776 (3:3:0) Customer Relationship Management
• SYST 563 (3:3:0)Research and Evaluation Methods

Other possible substitutions for existing concentration module courses (with approval of advisor)

• INFS762 (3:3:0) Information Security Principles
• INFS766 (3:3:0) Internet Security Protocols
• ECE 542 (3:3:0) Computer Network Architectures and Protocols OR
  CS 656 (3:3:0) Computer Communications and Networking OR
  INFS 612 (3:3:0) Data Communications and Distributed Processing
• ECE 543 (3:3:0) Cryptography and Computer Network Security
• INFS 803/PUBP 770 (3:3:0) Organizational Informatics
• SYST 621 (3:3:0) Systems Architecture for Large-scale Systems
• OR 635 (3:3:0) Discrete-event Simulation Modeling
• OR 642 (3:3:0) Integer Programming
• OR 643 (3:3:0) Network Modeling
• OR 647 (3:3:0) Queueing Theory

ALL STUDENTS ARE REQUIRED TO COMPLETE A 5-CREDIT PROJECT COURSE. THIS COURSE WILL REQUIRE THAT A STUDENT WORK WITH A CORPORATION ON DESIGNING, EVALUATING or IMPROVING A MAJOR ERP SYSTEM.

Two Certificate Programs already offered by the School of Information Technology and Engineering can be obtained either in place of the MS Degree or can be pursued concurrently with the MS in Enterprise Engineering. They are:

Certificate in Information Systems Security: Must posses knowledge equivalent to that provided in the following courses: INFS 501, INFS 505, and INFS 590. INFS 762 is a compulsory course and one must complete three additional courses from the following: INFS 765, INFS 767, INFT 862, and INFT 962.

Certificate in Electronic Commerce: Applicants must possess knowledge equivalent to that provided in the following courses: INFS 501, INFS 505, and INFS 590. All students are required to take: INFS 640 and INFS 641 and INFS 740. They must take one additional course from: INFS 612, INFS 614 or INFS 767.

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