The College of Information Sciences and technology (IST) is defined on the IST website as "Penn State's visionary response to the rapidly growing need in almost every field for leadership in information sciences and related technologies." It is a community made up of of faculty, undergraduate students, graduate students and industry partners that value collaboration between different disciplines and interdisciplinary work. IST like other I-schools is an interdisciplinary program. The undergraduate program offers two B.S. degrees in Information Sciences and Technology and in Security and Risk Analysis. Referring back to my previous post and the discussion of the different flavors of I-schools, IST is one of the I-schools that was founded as a new college as opposed to coming from a previously existent school. This means that IST does not have the focus on library science that some I-schools that came from library science schools have. In fact IST seems more diverse in terms of the research occurring at it than some of the other I-schools, which developed from programs that had already been in existence.
As discussed in classes on Monday IST does not have any departments. Instead IST has centers and labs for different types of research. IST also has many different research areas, which are listed on the IST website. This structure of not having departments has worked in the past. It allows graduate students to explore interests in many different parts of IST if they want to. Thus not having actual departments allows IST to be more flexible. At the same time if a student wants to concentrate on one area of IST they can but they are still exposed to many other areas. Despite having no departmental structure IST is starting to become more structured as it is branching out and introducing tracks for graduate students. It is to early to tell exactly how well the tracks will work as they are a new addition. This highlights the fact that IST is a new school and that it is still developing and discovering exactly what it's focus will be. Where do I fit into the IST structure? I work with Dr. Jim Jansen and as stated in a previous post am interested in personalization and information retrieval and search. Of the research areas listed on the IST website I fit into the Search, Information Retrieval, and Digital Library research area. In addition, some of my research interests also fit into the Human Computer Interaction research area. Some of the other research areas sound like topics that I wouldn't mind knowing more about, but that I don't necessarily want to do research in.
As discussed in classes on Monday IST does not have any departments. Instead IST has centers and labs for different types of research. IST also has many different research areas, which are listed on the IST website. This structure of not having departments has worked in the past. It allows graduate students to explore interests in many different parts of IST if they want to. Thus not having actual departments allows IST to be more flexible. At the same time if a student wants to concentrate on one area of IST they can but they are still exposed to many other areas. Despite having no departmental structure IST is starting to become more structured as it is branching out and introducing tracks for graduate students. It is to early to tell exactly how well the tracks will work as they are a new addition. This highlights the fact that IST is a new school and that it is still developing and discovering exactly what it's focus will be. Where do I fit into the IST structure? I work with Dr. Jim Jansen and as stated in a previous post am interested in personalization and information retrieval and search. Of the research areas listed on the IST website I fit into the Search, Information Retrieval, and Digital Library research area. In addition, some of my research interests also fit into the Human Computer Interaction research area. Some of the other research areas sound like topics that I wouldn't mind knowing more about, but that I don't necessarily want to do research in.
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