Changes in University of Michigan’s SI Specialization Choices

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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 Design

As 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!

University of Michigan Library Associate Phone Interview

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When I applied to the University of Michigan, I also sent an application for the Library Associates program. This program allows MS students to work in one of the university’s libraries and get real life work experience while also paying for school. The associates receive:

  • Full tuition waiver
  • Half-time, two-year appointment at University Library (1035 hours per year)
    with a salary of $21,657.80 per year (adjusted annually)
  • Eligibility to attend Library-sponsored workshops and training events
  • Eligibility to choose from several health plans
  • Enrollment in group life insurance
  • Wages are exempt from Social Security tax
  • Librarian borrowing privileges at the University Library, including free
    access to the 7-FAST Delivery Service
  • Sixty hours of sick time per year

Pretty much you get tuition waived and a nice salary. While I didn’t apply in the Library & Information Services specialization of the Information School, I still think the associate position would be really interesting and rewarding.

Specifically, I think that emerging technologies could really make libraries more efficient. Since I have an interest in the information technology side of things, I think I could really contribute to the way that the library works.

I got an email a few days ago to schedule a phone interview for the position. I guess they liked the essay that I wrote. While I think that being offered the associate position is a long shot (there’s only one position open), I’m pretty glad they liked me enough to even set up a phone interview. Hopefully they’ll see me as a good fit for the position with my background in social computing programming and problem solving. I’ll be interviewing with them tomorrow, though I probably won’t know about a potential offer for a week or so.

University of California, Berkeley iSchool: Rejection!

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I just got an email from the iSchool at Berkeley. It reads:

The admissions committee of the School of Information has reviewed all of the materials submitted with your application. I regret to inform you that you have not been accepted for admission to the Fall 2007 entering class.

Oh well! I’m pretty happy that I got accepted to Michigan already. Berkeley looked like a pretty good school, but it was my “probably too hard to get in” one, so I don’t feel too bad. I wonder if all of the schools will be sending these admission messages through email… Seems to be a new trend.

Michigan School of Information Scholarship Update!

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I got an email today from Michigan offering me a half tuition merit scholarship! This brings the cost of tuition down to the same amount that an in-state resident would pay. Scholarship students also get travel expenses refunded in order to visit the school on the SI: Visiting Days.

The visiting days include an optional tour of the campus, housing, or libraries, and then a few activities with some of the student groups. It seems like fun, and I’d really like to be able to visit a school before committing to going there.

Hopefully everything will work out and I’ll be able to visit on the scheduled day. I’m actually going to be out of town on the day before, so I’d have to fly directly to Michigan. I can probably make it work, though.