Indiana University Gets Approval for High-Tech School

Black Issues in Higher Education, Dec 9, 1999

INDIANAPOLIS -- Indiana University's newest school is designed to create graduates who can apply information technology to human problems.

The Indiana Commission for Higher Education last month gave the School of Informatics the go-ahead to begin teaching classes in the fall 2000 semester. It's the university's first new school in more than 25 years.

"The switch from a manufacturing-based culture to one that is information-based has had a profound economic and social impact, as well as affecting the ways we educate our students. By creating the School of Informatics, Indiana University is at the forefront of responding to this transformation," Dr. Myles Brand, the university's president, says.

The school will provide graduates with skills corporate recruiters say they need -- people with expertise in a chosen field and a mastery of information technology.

Officials say the new school will gather related information technology courses offered from academic areas under one umbrella. Start-up costs will be covered by a one-time grant of $1 million from the institution's strategic directions initiatives fund.

"This is an idea at just the right time," says J. Michael Dunn, a professor of philosophy and computer science who will serve as dean of informatics.

Bachelor's and master's degrees will be offered on the Bloomington campus and at Indiana University-Purdue University at Indianapolis. Officials estimate the new school will result in a full-time equivalent enrollment increase of more than 1,300 at the Bloomington campus and nearly 900 in Indianapolis.

"If we look back to the early part of the century, the issues of schools of engineering were being formed in response to the industrial revolution," says Darrell Bailey, director of Purdue's new media program.

"It's appropriate," he adds, "as we move into the 21st century that the advent of computing technology, the convergence of that in telecommunications, it's very appropriate that the university academy comes very purposely to the front in creating the School of Informatics, which really represents this new human endeavor."