I wrote about my visit to the University of Michigan School of Information Visiting Days on my personal blog yesterday and forgot to put a link to it.
You can read about my experience here.
Cliff Notes edition: I thought the program was nice, the people were incredible, and I feel very good about the program with only a few reservations that I can live with.
I just got an email from Judith Olson about some changes in the specialization choices at The University of Michigan’s School of Information MSI program. Originally I had applied under the HCI (Human Computer Interaction) specialization because it was the closest thing to what I really wanted to study, Social Computing. I’m happy to see that Social Computing has its own specialization in the MSI program now!
This is really cool! When I was shopping around for grad schools, I found none that really specialized in Social Computing. Now that I’ve been accepted into Michigan, they added a Social Computing specialization. Nice!
I’m still waiting to see if I can get a job offer at Google, but this announcement adds a few weights on the scale of Michigan. I’m also waiting on the offer for that University Library Associates thing at Michigan. I have a feeling that deciding is going to be much tougher than waiting…
I’ll be sure to ask a ton of questions when I’m at the visiting days at Michigan on March 24-26.
Here’s the email; it also lists a few other specializations that are kinda cool:
We at the School of Information are excited to announce the addition of several new specializations to our Master of Science in Information program:
Social Computing
Information Policy
Community Informatics
Information Analysis and Retrieval
Preservation of Information
Incentive-Centered DesignAs the information field matures as a professional discipline, areas of focus and career paths within the field are becoming more established. Our new specializations recognize some of these paths and are designed to help you more closely match your MSI experience to your career goals and the expanding job market for information professionals.
These six new tracks join our current specializations in archives and records management, human-computer interaction, and library and information services.
We’ve grown our specialization in information economics, management and policy (IEMP) into several distinct areas. Information policy will be its own specialization, and information economics will be a primary focus of the incentive-centered design specialization. Information management is an area so central to the skill set of an information professional that we have incorporated it as a core component of the entire MSI program.
Students who enter the MSI program in the fall of 2007 wishing to specialize in IEMP may still do so, or they may focus on one or two of the newer specializations.
Though these six are newly identified as specializations at SI, they are all areas in which we have been building expertise and curriculum for a number of years.
Two of the new specializations — information analysis and retrieval (IAR) and incentive-centered design — have matured from earlier academic clusters within the School. IAR focuses on how information is stored, searched, and analyzed in computer systems (the current darling in this realm is of course Google). Incentive-centered design develops systems that align users’ motivations with the organizations overall goals. It draws deeply from economics, psychology, and sociology, with computer science as a unifying thread.
The community informatics specialization recognizes the foresight of the School’s Community Information Corps, or CIC. Established in 2001, the CIC has led nationally in the development and professionalization of what’s now a widely recognized career track — the professional who deploys information and communication technologies in service of the public good.
Our specialization in social computing, the force driving Web 2.0, also develops from this focus on communities and information. It brings together our work and curriculum in the areas of social networking and user-contributed content systems. Social computing is a force so pervasive it led Time magazine to name “you” person of the year in 2006.
The preservation of information specialization grows from our unique strengths in archives and records management and responds to the urgent need for expertise in preservation, digital curation, and Web archiving within all information-rich organizations.
With the new specializations comes added flexibility. It’s now possible to complete your MSI with *two* specializations, and a number of courses can be counted for more than one specialization.
The evolution of these new specializations at SI marks the evolution of the information field as a whole and validates the trail SI has blazed over more than a decade of innovation as the School of Information.
Learn more about these expanded offerings at http://si.umich.edu/go.
The information field is our future, and our future is here. Join us!
Reader demaws commented on my Application List with a few other schools. I figured I should take a quick look at them to see if they’re application worthy:
Degree: Master’s in HCI
Deadline: January 31st, 2007
Notes: Carnegie Mellon is one of the more highly ranked and prestigious schools out there. Their HCI program is different from many others because it only takes a year to finish. The program runs from Fall of a given year to the Summer of the next. The website states that the program does not financially support its students, but occasionally a teaching assistantship will come up for students with a CS background.
It looks like there would really be no time to do research while taking so many courses in one semester, on top of doing a teaching assistantship! There is a part time option, so I could probably apply with that in mind.
Degree: Master’s in Human Computer Interaction
Deadline: January 1st, 2007
Notes: Apparently, the HCI program at Iowa State is very highly ranked. I took a look at their website. It looks like they have some interesting courses. For example, “Interaction Methods for Emerging Technologies” and “Organizational and Social Implications of Human Computer Interaction.” Also noteworthy is that that “All students accepted into the HCI program will receive a half-time graduate assistantship.” I’m not really sure what that means. I guess that all students can go part time fully paid. I’ll have to email and ask though.
Also, it seems that they have a pre-application before the actual application. Luckily, the pre application is free, so I’ll probably be taking advantage of that fact.
Degree: Master’s in Computer Science, HCI Group
Deadline: December 15th, 2006
Notes: Maryland has a Human Computer Interaction research group, but no actual department. Therefore, I’d have to apply to CS and then do research within the HCI group. Their group certainly looks like a lively bunch of people. Unfortunately, the deadline is in… 5 days. So I don’t think I’ll be applying due to time constraints.
Degree: MS in Computer Science, HCI Group
Deadline: December 12th, 2006
Notes: Stanford has a pretty rockin’ HCI group too, it seems. Unfortunately, it’s Stanford, and I’m not a perfect robot. Also, the deadline is in two days, which is kind of cutting it close… I’d apply if I thought I had a chance, and if I could turn back time (which would probably look good in my resume).
As a follow up from the last post, I got a reply regarding a few questions I had about Berkeley’s iSchool. Mainly, I just reiterated my concerns about the perceived legitimacy of “Information Schools” opposed to pure Computer Science. I also asked about the availability of funding for Master’s students.
The reply was that the reputation of the program over at Berkeley is rising. Of course, I’ll take that info with a grain of salt, but the person who replied to me said that many companies like to recruit at the iSchool, and had some other facts to back up the claim. My question about funding was answered more indirectly. I was just told that there exist many research opportunities with companies. They also mentioned that Yahoo has a research lab at Berkeley, which is kinda cool.
Overall, I’m glad that someone at Berkeley spent the time to answer my questions. Now I’m just waiting on UC Irvine and Georgia Tech.