This time, I would like to talk about the College of IST, Information Sciences and Technology, at Penn State, which was created in 1997. With its first class taught in 1999, Penn State IST is now a leading member of iSchool caucus, which hosted its first ever iConference in 2006.
IST boasts a state-of-the-art building, which can be a bridge and a building at the same time, and was inspired by the Ponte Vecchio in Florence. Spanning a major PA highway, the IST building reflects the philosophy of the program. As Dr. James B. Thomas, the first IST Dean, said: "it represents an intellectual bridge linking education and research to the new needs of society."
The Ponte Vecchio from Wikipedia
Penn State IST Building from Soumya's Album on Picasa
IST has a commitment to interdisciplinary research. Surprisingly, Penn State IST doesn't have any department associated with it, which is its most distinguishable characteristic from other colleges. One of the intentions behind this very flexible structure is to allow people to belong to many areas of research simultaneously. Because of the flexibility resulting from having no department, IST people can belong to many research labs, many projects and many tracks all at the same time. This underlying structure means that IST affiliates cannot help developing their research projects into real interdisciplinary ventures.
There are 50 faculty members and 8 affiliated faculty members in Penn State IST. Their research areas include: Artificial Intelligence and Informatics; Community Informatics; Crisis Management and Emergency Response; Cyber Security and Privacy; Enterprise Knowledge and Process; Geographic Information Systems; Globalization; Health and Bio Informatics; Human Capital in Knowledge Society; Human-Computer Interaction; Information and Image Fusion; Information Policy; Learning and Innovation; Psychology of Terrorism; Information Retrieval; Digital Library; Social Impact and Social Inclusion; and Social Network Analysis. Wow, there are really many interesting topics!
Though there's no department, there are five tracks for graduate students in IST: 1) Computational Informatics Track, 2) Artificial Intelligence and Cognitive Science Track, 3) Human-Computer Interaction Track, 4) Social and Enterprise Informatics Track, and 5) Security Informatics Track. These tracks are just for guiding IST graduate students to their academic goals; there's no restriction of being involved in other tracks. Some students are being advised by more than one faculty member having different backgrounds. In my case, I am working in the Laboratory for Intelligent Agents, to which eight faculty members and ten students belong. The lab's members' research interests are diverse: AI, security and risk analysis, human-centered computing, information retrieval, psychology, and so on. I am currently working with only one advisor, Dr. John Yen, however, it is very likely that I will be co-advised by another faculty member, because my research interest lies in at least two areas: Artificial Intelligence, and Social Network Analysis.
On a broader note, there's been an interesting alteration in undergraduate education. Across all American universities, technical fields, especially computer science-related fields, have significantly dropped off their enrollments over the last ten years. At present, they are still restricting themselves and cutting off their resources. On the other hand, it's also interesting that this trend hasn't affected iSchools. For just one example, Penn State IST is still steadily growing. To the best of my knowledge, all graduate students of Penn State IST who seek funding get funded, except those who desire to be unfunded. For this reason, I can focus solely on being a brilliant graduate student, and I don't need to divide my loyalties. Thank God and IST!
How can't I fall in love with IST?
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