CONTINUING EDUCATION
Smartria and Kitces.com | August 09, 2022
Smartria®, a powerful, easy-to-use cloud-based software solution designed to meet the specialized compliance management needs of investment advisors, compliance teams, operations teams, consultants, and attorneys, has announced a partnership with Kitces.com to provide online education content for CE credits through the Smartria platform to address the North American Securities Administrators Association’s (NASAA) Investment Adviser Representative Continuing Education (IAR CE) Model Rule. Kitces.com is home to the Nerd’s Eye View financial planning industry blog published by Michael Kitces, and a leading provider of advanced education for financial advisors.
“Smartria is proud to partner with Michael Kitces and Kitces.com, the preeminent industry thought leader in advisor education, We were very deliberate in our selection—we wanted to work with a partner who shared our vision of software as a partnership and was committed to helping us deliver a solution that meets our clients’ needs at scale. Smartria’s partnership with Kitces.com is a natural fit as we continue to innovate our compliance platform with new and distinctive offerings.”
-Mac Bartine, CEO of Smartria
Under the partnership, investment advisers who activate Smartria’s new IAR CE feature will gain instant access directly from the Smartria dashboard to all of the Continuing Education content provided by the Kitces.com Members Section, including not only the Nerd’s Eye View blog content, but Kitces white papers and webinars as well, which can fulfill both their new IAR CE obligation, as well as crossover CE credit for CFP certification, CPA licensees, Enrolled Agents, and advisors with advanced designations from the Investments and Wealth Institute and the American College. Future integrations under the partnership will facilitate automated firm-wide tracking and reporting in Smartria of all an investment adviser’s Kitces-earned IAR CE credits for all of their team members, to ensure annual compliance as additional states pass the NASAA Model Rule and implement their own IAR CE obligations in the coming years.
As financial advisors, we’re already subject to a myriad of overlapping rules and regulations, and overlapping Continuing Education obligations, and so as soon as the NASAA Model Rule was finalized last year, we began the process to qualify our Kitces.com educational content for IAR CE in addition to all of the other financial advisor licenses and designations we already covered, With CE demands continuing to rise, we’ve been developing our own systems to be able to better integrate with existing advisor platforms to facilitate multi-designation CE, and we’re thrilled to have the opportunity to work with Mac and the rapidly growing Smartria team to power their IAR CE solution, as our first CE integration partner,said Michael Kitces, Chief Financial Planning Nerd at Kitces.com.
NASAA’s Model Rule was announced on November 30, 2020. Under the rule, an investment adviser representative is required to complete 12 CE credits annually to maintain their IAR registration. The rule applies to all registered IARs of both state-registered and federal covered investment advisers. Compliance begins with existing IARs and newly registered IARs in states that have adopted the model rule as of Jan. 1, 2022, which currently include Maryland, Mississippi, and Vermont.
About Smartria
Smartria is a leading compliance software platform for RIAs, hybrid RIAs and RIA networks. The firm’s software excels at making the complex and often frustrating world of regulatory compliance simple to manage and easy to understand. Smartria’s unique roles for compliance consultants and distributed management of large corporations make its solution able to handle any compliance problem for any sized company. For more information, please visit www.Smartria.com.
About Kitces.com
Kitces.com publishes the #1 financial planning industry blog, Nerd’s Eye View, and provides a wide range of advanced educational content for financial advisors through both nerdy long-from educational articles, research white papers, in-person and virtual live events, on-demand and livestream webinars, and online courses. The Kitces.com Members Section provides continuing education credits for a wide range of financial advisor licenses and advanced professional designations, including CFP certification designations from the Investments & Wealth Institute and American College, CPE for CPAs and Enrolled Agents, investment adviser representative (IAR) CE obligations, and more.
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CORPORATE LEARNING SYSTEMS
metis | August 30, 2022
Metis, a leading data science and analytics training provider and part of global educational services provider Kaplan, has partnered with Florida International University, Miami’s public research university, to launch FIU Data Science Bootcamp, a 24-week online immersive program beginning in October.Created and engineered by industry-leading data scientists at Metis, the FIU Data Science Bootcamp features a project-based curriculum to help learners build a portfolio of real-world work that can make them uniquely job-ready in the fast growing data science field.
The following six, 4-week courses constitute the duration of the bootcamp:
Python and Math Fundamentals: In this introductory course, learn basic Python programming skills and mathematical essentials critical for data science. In addition to coding fundamentals, the course covers linear algebra, calculus, probability, and statistics.
Exploratory Data Analysis: Learn how to leverage tools like SQL and advanced Python libraries, studying the fundamentals of exploratory data analysis.
Business Fundamentals for Data Practitioners: Learn the skills needed to make meaningful data insights, which in turn can help learners make better business decisions.
Linear Regression and Data Acquisition: Learn how to acquire data, plus the basics of linear regressions, cross-validation, feature engineering, and more.
Machine Learning Classification: Explore several classification methods, from common algorithms to advanced models used by many companies today, and learn how to apply them in a practical use case.
Natural Language Processing (NLP) and Unsupervised Learning: Study dimensionality reduction, clustering, and recommendation systems to build a knowledge base in NLP and unsupervised learning.
“This partnership demonstrates FIU’s ongoing commitment to equipping our learners with the skills and knowledge necessary to take full advantage of lucrative, in-demand career opportunities in any industry,” said Dr. Elizabeth M. Béjar, interim provost, executive vice president, and chief operating officer, Florida International University.
“We couldn't be more excited to partner with Florida International University to create this data science bootcamp that will help learners get, and stay, a step ahead in a competitive workforce,.“From personalized career support that extends beyond the completion of the data science bootcamp to one-on-one career guidance to job search tutorials that teach learners how to build an impressive resume, the program provides them all the resources they need to help achieve their career goals.”
Roberto Reif, executive director and head of Metis
About Florida International University
Florida International University is a top public university that drives real talent and innovation in Miami and globally. High research (R1) activity and high social mobility come together at FIU to uplift and accelerate learner success in a global city by focusing in the areas of environment, health, innovation, and justice. Today, FIU has two campuses and multiple centers. FIU serves a diverse student body of more than 58,000 and 270,000 Panther alumni. U.S. News and World Report places dozens of FIU programs among the best in the nation, including international business at No. 2. Washington Monthly Magazine ranks FIU among the top 20 public universities contributing to the public good.
About Metis
The mission of Kaplan's Metis business is to educate people to find value in data. Metis accelerates data science and analytics learning for individuals, companies, and institutions through online education, corporate training and immersive bootcamps. This includes upskilling and reskilling the employees of global organizations, enabling them to find value in data. Kaplan, Inc. is a leading global provider of educational and career services for individuals, schools, and businesses.
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EDUCATION TECHNOLOGY
PowerSchool | August 01, 2022
PowerSchool , the leading provider of cloud-based software for K-12 education in North America, today announced the Stanislaus County Office of Education (STANCOE) in Modesto, California, selected PowerSchool Unified Insights™ Student Essentials for enhanced data warehousing and analytics capabilities within STANCOE’s 25 school districts. The organization’s addition of Unified Insights Student Essentials will support STANCOE’s ongoing Global Data Project by providing an integrated data system capable of housing student data and information. Further, STANCOE’s use of Unified Insights Student Essentials will enable the organization to gain a greater perspective regarding learning trends in order to make more data-informed decisions.
“Our Instructional Support Services Data Team spent two years researching, reviewing, and discussing potential solutions that would fulfill both the warehousing and analytics needs of our county office and the districts we support aligned with the vision of their Cradle to Career Partnership program. “We desired a data warehouse that updated nightly via a direct connection with the student information system, paired with a dynamic analytics system to visually display data in a meaningful way. We are confident that by implementing PowerSchool’s Unified Insights solution with its excellent warehousing capability and the detailed dashboards that we have found our ideal solution.”
Rex Tschetter, Director II, School and District Support, Stanislaus County Office of Education
STANCOE’s goal in selecting Unified Insights Student Essentials was to gain the capacity to provide data analytics services that can empower school district leaders to monitor the impact of program decisions toward improving outcomes for students. With Unified Insights Student Essentials, STANCOE can pull role-specific dashboards for STANCOE’s partner districts and site leaders, grade-level teams, classroom teachers, and Differentiated Assistance support teams to inform decisions and support the ongoing monitoring of their impact.
By utilizing Unified Insights Student Essentials across multiple school districts, STANCOE is creating a framework that marries data from various sources into a unified system, allowing the data to be disaggregated at appropriate levels (e.g. by district, school, grade level, and student group). These capabilities increase the district’s capacity to base decisions on real-time data as they grapple with questions related to decisions such as course offerings, daily schedules, class sizes, curriculum implementation, student support services, and professional development offerings.
“The implementation of PowerSchool’s Unified Insights Student Essentials will be a unifying force leading to mutually beneficial partnerships between Stanislaus County school districts,” said Craig Greenseid, Chief Revenue Officer, PowerSchool. “Ensuring schools have the proper resources to make better data-informed decisions is one of our top priorities, and we look forward to seeing Stanislaus County utilize our Student Essentials platform to do just that.”
STANCOE is located in Stanislaus County, California where it serves over 110,000 students spread across 25 school districts, 16 charter schools, and seven schools operated by the county office itself. Its Global Data Project is a collaborative effort between multiple divisions within the county office, including Stanislaus Cradle to Career Partnerships, Child & Family Services, Educational Options, Special Education, and Instructional Support Services. The Stanislaus STATS (Strategic Targeted Assistance to Students) branch of the county-wide project focuses its work on supporting TK-12 education programs. Using a gradual phased approach, the Stanislaus STATS Project seeks to establish productive partnerships with districts across the county.
About PowerSchool
PowerSchool is the leading provider of cloud-based software for K-12 education in North America. Its mission is to power the education ecosystem with unified technology that helps educators and students realize their full potential, in their way. PowerSchool connects students, teachers, administrators, and parents, with the shared goal of improving student outcomes. From the office to the classroom to the home, it helps schools and districts efficiently manage state reporting and related compliance, special education, finance, human resources, talent, registration, attendance, funding, learning, instruction, grading, assessments and analytics in one unified platform. PowerSchool supports over 45 million students globally and more than 14,000 customers, including more than 90 of the top 100 districts by student enrollment in the United States, and sells solutions in more than 90 countries.
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