Penn State College of Information Sciences and Technology

College of Information Sciences and Technology
Established 1999
Dean Andrew Sears
Location University Park, Pennsylvania, USA
Campus University Park
Website ist.psu.edu

The College of Information Sciences and Technology, also known as IST, was opened in 1999.

Faculty and Research

The College of Information Sciences and Technology (IST) is an interdisciplinary college that integrates a variety of perspectives from computer and information sciences, psychology, social science, economics and public policy, to study the interactions between information, technology, and people, to inform the design of innovative information technologies, and their societal impact. Faulty research focuses on artificial intelligence (including knowledge representation, machine learning, computer vision), informatics (including social informatics, health informatics, security informatics, community informatics), big data (search, analytics, predictive modeling), human-computer interaction, security and privacy, cognitive science, and socio-technical systems.

The college has about 30 tenured and tenure track faculty and almost the same number of fixed term (non-tenured) teaching and research faculty. Some faculty of note include:

History

The College of Information Sciences and Technology was created in 1997. The Dean of the Graduate School at that time, Rodney Erickson, was appointed by then Penn State President Graham Spanier to lead a strategic planning group that produced plans for the school of information sciences and technology which admitted the first students into the IST program for the fall 1999 semester. The first Dean was James Thomas.

In January 2006, Penn State Board of Trustee decided to rename the School of Information to College of Information Sciences and Technology – a designation that signified IST’s importance within both the Penn State system and the Commonwealth.

College of IST Building

The Information Sciences and Technology Building is located on the west campus of the Pennsylvania State University’s University Park campus. The IST building was formally opened in 2004 and became the home to the College of Information Sciences and Technology and the Computer Science and Engineering department.

The 199,000-square-foot (18,500 m2) building was designed by Rafael Vinoly Architects in New York, New York and Perfido Weiskopf Architects in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. The architecture was inspired by the Ponte Vecchio in Florence, Italy. The construction of the building is 199,000-square-foot (18,500 m2) and cost $58.8 million to complete. The building serves as a pedestrian bridge which permits pedestrian and bicycle traffic over Atherton Road.

The building houses several classrooms and research laboratories, and collaborative spaces. The largest classroom in the building is the Cybertorium. The Cybertorium seats up to 150 people with stadium seating which faces a large projection screen and a sound system for use by presenters.

Graduate Program

The The PhD program in Information Sciences and Technology is designed to provide multidisciplinary training to address complex challenges at the intersection of information, technology, and people —from responding to natural disasters to improving human health and well-being, from protecting national security to designing machine learning algorithms that help make sense of big data, from building intelligent systems and the next generation search engines to understanding information diffusion in social networks, from developing human-centered information technology to informing policies that govern socio-technical systems, from exploring the connections between gender and technology to utilizing information technology for humanitarian efforts — that require approaches that transcend traditional disciplinary boundaries. The program attracts graduate students come from a variety of backgrounds, including computer science, engineering, psychology, sociology, economics, philosophy, visual arts, and mathematics.

Undergraduate Majors

IST majors are offered at 19 campuses with nearly 60 faculty at the University Park campus and 94 faculty at the other commonwealth campuses.

Currently, IST offers three interdisciplinary baccalaureate degree programs with 5 associate degree options:

Undergraduate Minors

As spring 2010, College of IST had 2309 undergraduate enrollments (statewide) and 99 graduate enrollments.

IST World Campus Offerings

The College of Information Sciences and Technology and the Penn State World Campus recognizes that not all students are able to take part in traditional on-campus classroom learning. Through online learning technology, the College of IST and World Campus are able to offer a well-respected Penn State degree without having to travel to a campus, which is ideal for adult learners who do not want to leave the work force or may be raising a family full-time.

The World Campus offers the following IST degrees 100 percent online:

Three Masters of Professional Studies (MPS)

Bachelor of Science and Associate of Science

Certificate Programs

[1] [2]

Student organization

There are 20 student organizations in College of Information Sciences and Technology.

The list of College of IST student organizations:

Career Solutions Service

The services include:

Rankings

Coordinates: 40°47′37″N 77°52′05″W / 40.79368°N 77.86812°W / 40.79368; -77.86812

References

  1. ↑ Penn State College of IST
  2. ↑ Penn State World Campus
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