Actually, I came to know IST since my junior year because one of my schoolmates was admitted by IST. At that time, I had a superficial understanding of IST. I thought it i was like those MIS programs which focus more on management and business.
When I began to apply for graduate school, my point of view was completely changed, I started to think IST is equal to computer science departement since there are many professors that are doing technical research. However, these are all superficial understands untill I arrived at IST.
Fortunately, I did not have a advisor before I came to IST. So I have the chance to talk with several professors in IST who are in different areas including HCI, Information Retrival and security. And I met some other professors during orientation and classes. I felt that IST is very diverse, although there is no deparment here, the research areas really went into different directions. I believe this is the result of not having departments because a flat structure can help people have more interaction and cooperation. I start to love IST. I have mentioned that I am interested in many many areas. I know, as a Ph.D. student, depth of study is more important than broadth. But I am really happy to taste different areas. My advisor and me are working in the area of security, I am taking the course in HCI, and in other courses, I learned about social network, information retrieval, and so forth. Now nobody can say I am a technical guy anymore since I am learning so much things.
Back to the theme. If IST continure to keeping this structure without department, how it should be structured? I think the research tracks for graduate study are very good and flexible. However, for undergrad students, since they do not know what they want, we should have a advisor or tutor program for them. Say, a student can talk with the advisor or tutor once a week about their study. The advisor and the tutor can tell the student the related topics of any track. Gradully, the student will have feeling in one or more tracks and he/she can become more focus on these areas. During my undergrad study, my college also have a lot of tracks, like enterprise computing, mainfram, embeded system and so forth. However, there was no such advisor or tutor program and I have no idea about these areas. The result is that I took many courses which I was not interested and wasted much time that I could have spent on my interesting areas.
Where do I fit into IST?
Well, I have mentioned that the broadth of research in IST really attracts me. However, among all of these areas, I am interested in security in most. Now I am working with Prof. Mcgill within the area of risk analysis and damage assessment. This is a quite new area and there are not many papers now, which is a great chance for us. What's more, I believe this study is also very useful and highly demanded in China.
In addition to study, in IST there are a lot of Chinese students and we seem to form a network that help each others. This also can help me cure my homesick. =)
All in all, we are Penn State, we are IST!!
When I began to apply for graduate school, my point of view was completely changed, I started to think IST is equal to computer science departement since there are many professors that are doing technical research. However, these are all superficial understands untill I arrived at IST.
Fortunately, I did not have a advisor before I came to IST. So I have the chance to talk with several professors in IST who are in different areas including HCI, Information Retrival and security. And I met some other professors during orientation and classes. I felt that IST is very diverse, although there is no deparment here, the research areas really went into different directions. I believe this is the result of not having departments because a flat structure can help people have more interaction and cooperation. I start to love IST. I have mentioned that I am interested in many many areas. I know, as a Ph.D. student, depth of study is more important than broadth. But I am really happy to taste different areas. My advisor and me are working in the area of security, I am taking the course in HCI, and in other courses, I learned about social network, information retrieval, and so forth. Now nobody can say I am a technical guy anymore since I am learning so much things.
Back to the theme. If IST continure to keeping this structure without department, how it should be structured? I think the research tracks for graduate study are very good and flexible. However, for undergrad students, since they do not know what they want, we should have a advisor or tutor program for them. Say, a student can talk with the advisor or tutor once a week about their study. The advisor and the tutor can tell the student the related topics of any track. Gradully, the student will have feeling in one or more tracks and he/she can become more focus on these areas. During my undergrad study, my college also have a lot of tracks, like enterprise computing, mainfram, embeded system and so forth. However, there was no such advisor or tutor program and I have no idea about these areas. The result is that I took many courses which I was not interested and wasted much time that I could have spent on my interesting areas.
Where do I fit into IST?
Well, I have mentioned that the broadth of research in IST really attracts me. However, among all of these areas, I am interested in security in most. Now I am working with Prof. Mcgill within the area of risk analysis and damage assessment. This is a quite new area and there are not many papers now, which is a great chance for us. What's more, I believe this study is also very useful and highly demanded in China.
In addition to study, in IST there are a lot of Chinese students and we seem to form a network that help each others. This also can help me cure my homesick. =)
All in all, we are Penn State, we are IST!!
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