Frequently Asked Questions

TechTransfer is the California transportation community's source for training, continuing education, and professional development. We provide training in classrooms and online, including open enrollment and contracted training, host workshops and conferences, and can customize training to meet your needs.  Our programs span the transportation-related areas of planning and policy, traffic engineering, project development, infrastructure design and maintenance, safety, environmental issues, complete streets, active and multimodal transportation, rail, and aviation. We serve more than 25,000 public and private transportation agency personnel working for our state's 476 cities, 58 counties, over 50 regional transportation planning agencies (MPOs, RTPAs, CTCs and CMAs). We hold over 80 events every year, attended by over 3,000 people. 

No, to reach the University of California, Berkeley's Office of Intellectual Property and Industry Research Alliances click here.

For information on how to enroll, methods of payment, and more, visit this page.

Much of our training is delivered in partnership with the California Department of Transportation, Division of Local Assistance under the Cooperative Training Assistance Program. Pavement classes are now offered in partnership with the City and County Pavement Improvement Center, hosted by the University of California Pavement Research Center, and funded by California Senate Bill 1, the Road Repair and Accountability Act of 2017 Through these partnerships, employees of eligible public agencies may a reduced registration fee for many of Tech Transfer's courses. Private industry, out-of-state professionals public and private, as well as Federal employees and California public employees not working for a transportation agency are welcome in our training classes, but are asked to pay the full fee for training.

TechTransfer offers agencies a convenient way to purchase training for employees without the hassle of purchasing each class for each employee separately.

Agencies can now purchase prepaid training packages then designate the training funds for a specific individual, multiple individuals, or for all employees at the agency. Prepaid training packages can be purchased in any amount over $1,000. TechTransfer will send one invoice for the training package, then work with your agency to apply it toward the training your employees need. Individual employees and training classes do not need to be determined at the time of purchase. Funds can be applied year-round to any course offered by TechTransfer until the funds are fully expended. Funds never expire and are fully transferable within the agency.

• Efficient: Streamline the purchasing process by making only one training purchase for multiple classes and employees

• Secure: Utilize remaining use-it-or-lose-it training funds before the end of the fiscal year and use them any time in the future

• Flexible: There’s no need to identify upfront which employees or which courses your employees will take. 

• Risk-free: Funds are fully transferable within the agency, so even though they are non-refundable, there’s no risk that training funds will be lost if an employee is reassigned or leaves the agency, or if training needs change

For more information, contact us at registrar@techtransfer.berkeley.edu

The instructional faculty of TechTransfer includes more than 60 leading transportation engineers, planners, and academicians working in California and elsewhere. You can view the entire list of instructors with their bios here. To learn more about teaching for our program, please review the information here.

Our goal is to provide California's transportation professionals with the information and training needed to plan, design, build, maintain, and operate a state-of-the-art, multimodal transportation system that is safe, efficient, and sustainable.  We develop new courses every year and are always looking for new topics. If you have suggestions for us, please contact us at courses@techtransfer.berkeley.edu. We want to hear from you!

To find out whether a particular class is currently scheduled in or near your city, browse our Training Calendar by Location. If our pre-scheduled training courses don’t work for you, nearly all the training courses from TechTransfer are also available on request, provided that an agency contract for the entire course or that we can meet a minimum number of students through open enrollment. You can view the complete list of classes available on request here.  For more information regarding training on request, or to suggest that we offer a particular class in a location near you next year, please call 510-643-4393 or email courses@techtransfer.berkeley.edu. We want to hear from you!

Our online classes are taught by the same expert instructors, have the same quality content, and the same number of instructional hours as our classroom classes. However, our online classes are more affordable and can be attended from any location. Online training is ideal for individuals and agencies with limited funds for training or travel and those that need to minimize staff time out of the office. 

Online, scheduled classes are broken up into class sessions that last just a few hours each day, spread over a few days in the same week or spread out over consecutive weeks.  These classes have fixed dates and times and provide the opporutnity to interact in real-time with instructors and classmates. These classes are priced per location, not per person, so you can have a room full of people attend for one low price. 

Online, self-paced classes are ready to start whenever you are. You complete the course as your schedule permits. If you have content-related questions along the way, you can post a question to the instructor and receive a response by email.

TechTransfer is in a unique position to customize existing or develop new training courses that meet the unique and emerging needs of transportation professionals. We can draw from the immense intellectual wealth of our world-class Berkeley faculty and the top minds and experience from industry. For more information on specialized training options, please call 510-643-4393 or email courses@techtransfer.berkeley.edu. 

Continuing Education Units (or CEUs) are the nationally recognized standard for quantifying time spent in the classroom during professional development or training activities. Ten hours of face to face instruction equals 1 CEU. Thus, a class valued at 0.8 CEUs will have 8 hours of contact time (lunch breaks are not counted).

Any organization offering professional development activities may attach CEUs to their activity based on the above standard. At Tech Transfer we offer CEUs only for classes with curriculum that has been reviewed and approved by University academic faculty or staff. This ensures that your professional development is of the highest quality.

The CEU standard allows students to create a record of their non-credit professional development experiences from different sources. Some employers or licensing boards or other professional groups may ask members to submit transcripts of their CEU credited activities as proof of continuing commitment to staying up to date with changes in their profession.

TechTransfer offers CEUs to individuals who participate in courses distinctly marked as offering CEU credits. A transcript of your record of CEUs is available upon request.

The American Planning Association (APA) grants Certification Maintenance (CM) credits for several of TechTransfer's planning courses. All professional planners who are members of APA's professional institute, the American Institute of Certified Planners (AICP), are required to engage in mandatory continuing education. Continuing education is measured by CM credits. AICP members must earn a total of 32 CM credits (1 hour = 1 CM credit) within each two-year reporting period. TechTransfer classes can help AICP certified planners meet that goal. Upcoming courses offering AICP-CM credit can be found here.

To request a transcript of CEUs or CM credits earned after July 1, 2003, please contact the TechTransfer registrar at registrar@techtransfer.berkeley.edu. For CEUs earned before July 1, 2003, please call University of California Berkeley Extension at 510-642-4172.

No. TechTransfer is not a degree granting academic department at the University, nor is the Institute of Transportation Studies. ITS is a research unit, involving faculty, researchers, and students from across the University. For academic degrees, transportation concentrations are offered through the University of California, Berkeley, Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering and the Department of Urban and Regional Planning

If you require an accommodation for effective communication (ASL interpreting/CART captioning, alternative media formats, etc.) or information about venue mobility access features in order to fully participate in this event, please contact TechTransfer at registrar@techtransfer.berkeley.edu with as much advance notice as possible and at least 7-10 days in advance of the event.