UC-Irvine establishes school of computer science - tech briefs - Brief Article

Black Issues in Higher Education, Jan 30, 2003 by Ronald Roach

IRVINE, CALIF.

University of California regents have approved the UC system's first computer science school at the UC-Irvine campus, boosting the profile of a department that has long enjoyed a national reputation.

The move, which is expected to enhance research and recruiting, creates the UC-Irvine School of Information and Computer Science. Founded in 1968, the computer science department at UC-Irvine has ranked as one of the best in the nation.

"Computing is so pervasive in the instruction of all scientific disciplines now," says Dr. Debra Richardson, the school's interim dean. "It's clearly not a passing fad."

Independent computer science schools are relatively new nationwide, with the first ones having broken off from university mathematics or engineering departments in the late 1980s, according to Richardson.

Researchers at UCI's school are known for work ranging from artificial intelligence and software technology to the cultural impact of computing on society. Computer science is the fastest-growing major at UCI, where enrollment increased 125 percent in the last four years, to 2,200 students.

This year, UCI was ranked by U.S. News & Worm Report in the top 15 public computer science graduate programs.