iSchool Vision 2016

The 2016 spring term is ending, and the faculty meets to reflect on the progress made over the past five years of developing the University of Pittsburgh School of Information Sciences. Much has happened, and the years since first starting a major visioning project have seen significant change in a number of areas. The starting discussion about “iSchool integration” provided an opening for the faculty to surface collaborative interests, as well as make decisions with deliberation and insight into the directions of our institution. Realizing that in the larger consortium of iSchools, we have strong connections and similarities, but need to develop a distinct identity. We capitalized on learning from and augmenting the work done by our partner institutions. The result has been an environment of willing and open experimentation with programs, topics, and approaches to research, teaching, community formation, faculty development, and institutional growth. We are a faculty that is unafraid to try new approaches, capitalize on the benefits, cull and prune our approaches, and reward each other for inspired and thoughtful innovations regardless of the outcome (recognizing that failure is a valuable and instructive experience in an ongoing development process, focusing on rapid evaluation and retooling when necessary changes are apparent.)

Administration & GovernanceTo manage the administrative needs of the School of Information Sciences more efficiently and effectively, four Associate Dean positions have been created and are occupied by tenured faculty.

• Associate Dean for Student Affairs – oversees the administration of undergraduate and graduate programs for the school. Responsible for managing the school-wide scheduling of courses. Fulfills role as Academic Integrity Officer. Chairs the school-wide curriculum committee.
• Associate Dean for Research and Innovation – Coordinates faculty research programs, managing two dedicated staff grant-writing positions. Develops programs to integrate and further school vision of interdisciplinary research opportunities, and arranges for ongoing opportunities to develop faculty training and resources for research production (i.e., promoting faculty to the NSF as reviewers, coordinating grant-writing training workshops, working with faculty to develop new proposals for collaborative research streams.)
• Associate Dean for Faculty – coordinates annual reviews, P&T cases, faculty meetings, and committee assignments. Works with faculty to arrange sabbaticals, course releases, overload schedules, and new faculty recruiting.
• Associate Dean for Strategy and Development – works closely with the Dean and faculty to implement and augment the collectively developed Pitt iSchool vision. Connects with the leadership of other units within the University of Pittsburgh to foster research and teaching initiatives that continuously position the school to contribute to and benefit from the broader resource infrastructure of the university and the iSchool consortium. Works with the Alumni Relations staff member to develop capital campaigns that continuously increase alumni contributions and donations.

The four Associate Dean positions, then, see to much of the internal administration of the school, freeing the Dean to focus largely on external relations and initiatives, representing the school to the Provost and Chancellor, and promoting the iSchool perspective as a model for broader transformation in higher education.

Faculty governance has become more proactive and involved. Alternating meetings happen every two weeks during the fall and spring semesters. In closed faculty meetings, the full-time faculty attends a three-hour work session where decisions are made and action-based projects are advanced. Two weeks later, the SIS Council holds an open meeting that is well attended by faculty, staff, and students from all levels and specializations to communicate school initiatives, achievements, and hold discussions to make recommendations to the administration. The high impact of both meetings means that most faculty attend every meeting and find ample outlets to advance their own voices and projects, as well as those of the school at large.

Research
As it ever was, faculty actively pursue exciting research projects driven by their own interests and expertise. The visioning exercise conducted in 2011–2012, though, revealed a number of larger cross-cutting research themes representing interests of the faculty, and provided a number of opportunities for faculty to collaborate in previously unrealized combinations. As a result, the faculty decided to make personal commitments to always keep at least one research project active that involves collaboration with other SIS faculty outside of their immediate disciplinary traditions. Since the landscape of information science moves and changes quickly, and new and interesting questions are consistently arising, the faculty reviews the portfolio of cross-cutting research themes on a regular basis, culling those that have become less relevant or have reached a stage of completion, and adding emergent and potentially high-impact research strands. Under the guidance of the new Associate Dean for Research and Innovation, the iSchool has developed an impressive portfolio of productive research that has generated increased interest from funding agencies, foundations, and alumni donors.

In order to increase the financial autonomy of the iSchool, as well as provide more opportunity for funding doctoral students, the faculty of the iSchool has ramped up the production and submission of research grants. To foster this environment of active grant seeking, the iSchool has hired two full-time, dedicated grant writers with backgrounds in interdisciplinary science. These professionals work actively with faculty to rapidly develop and submit grants to a wide array of funding agencies, and as a result, the iSchool procured over $5 million in grants during the 2015–2016 academic year, with an optimistic eye and goal toward increasing the total amount of secured grants by 10% each year.

Curriculum & TeachingIn fall 2012, the iSchool convened a working group to review the full curriculum with the goal of developing a consistent set of foundations courses for the graduate program. While masters students are required to choose a portfolio of specialization areas, they are provided with a base of theoretical and practical tools applicable to the information science professions broadly. The working group, with input from the full faculty, has implemented four core courses on:

• Information & Society
• Technological Foundations of Information Systems & Services
• Information Organizations & Institutions: Ethics, Policy, & Management
• Choice & Decision: Information Economics & Incentive-Centered Design

In addition to the core courses (typically taken in sequence of two courses each semester for the first year of the masters program) students choose specializations from an array of topics in which the faculty are well positioned to train them. The school has defined eight specialization areas, and masters students are required to combine two or three of these areas to complete the degree. The current list of specializations (which undergoes review by the faculty every four years) includes:

• Human-centered design
• Telecommunications and networks
• Information retrieval and metadata services
• Archival preservation and records management
• Library systems and services
• Information economics, policy, and law
• Social computing and community informatics
• Cyberscholarship and cyberinfrastructure

Since all masters programs are now two years in duration and require 48 credits, students are also expected to earn a minimum of six credits through professional engagement and field experience. Most students earn these credits through high-profile internships pursued during the summer between the first and second year. Students also have the option of pursuing a capstone project or thesis in their final semester.

To provide a unique opportunity for professional skills development, the iSchool has worked in collaboration with the Katz School of Business and Deloitte Consulting to develop a certificate of advanced studies as an optional fifth/third year to the undergraduate and masters programs. In the interest of producing graduates of the highest professional competence in the information fields, this additional year focuses on developing advanced skills in management, consulting, information economics, forecasting, modeling, and budgeting - all through curriculum developed with a specific focus on the application of these topics and techniques to information–intensive environments.

The doctoral programs have also changed and converged to require first-year doctoral students to complete a two-semester Foundations sequence that introduces them to the broad scope of topics in the information science field. This initial experience imparts unto the students a vocabulary and set of theoretical constructs for them to continue collaboration as they specialize in their own research interests. Doctoral students are also required to take a new course, “Theories and Models in the Information Sciences” in addition to a course on “Research Methods in the Information Sciences”. Beyond these specific courses, all doctoral students must fulfill requirements of at least one specialized methods course in their area, as well as statistics through a graduate level of multivariate analysis. In order to fulfill pedagogical requirements, doctoral students are required to spend two semesters as a teaching assistant for one of the core courses at the masters level. While students may be asked to teach beyond minimum requirements based upon need, the faculty actively works to ensure that the majority of doctoral student time and funding is fueled by research money, and that doctoral students typically carry a .5 appointment (20 hours per week) as a Graduate Research Assistant.

In addition to campus–based programs, the iSchool has advanced its online programs and offerings. To take advantage of the larger university infrastructure and resources, iSchoolOnline@Pitt is delivered through the existing Pitt Online program (http://www.online.pitt.edu/), and iSchool faculty and students have become known as leaders across campus and in the larger field of online education by bringing information science expertise to bear on developing the university’s role in Open Educational Resources. The Pitt iSchool has joined the ranks of MIT, Stanford, Princeton, Yale, Michigan, and UC-Berkeley as an exemplar of providing high quality, research–based, and innovative instruction online. The iSchool has also worked with government institutions to make a specific and targeted effort to provide online education to deployed military service members, which has grown the online program to over 3000 students, and provides a significant source of additional income for the school.

Admissions, Student Services, & Career Placement
To cultivate student support at the Pitt iSchool, the student services program has been expanded and repositioned. The school’s unification efforts made the logic clear for streamlining the admissions process at the undergraduate, masters, and doctoral levels. Now, well-articulated and consistent criteria govern the admissions process, setting a high bar for all prospective students. Admissions statements and designation of intended specialization(s) from graduate program applicants allow the faculty to compose incoming student cohorts that represent a good distribution of interests and expertise. An added requirement that applicants have at least one year of post-undergraduate work experience has shifted the class profiles to a more prepared professional orientation. As the 2015-2016 school year ends, the upcoming cohort of students, reviewed and selected by a large committee of faculty members, embodies strong mathematical, verbal, and technical skills and experience before arriving to graduate school, and the admitted class looks promising to engage the interdisciplinary education the school is positioned to provide.

The faculty and administration, upon reviewing the financial profile of the school, also made a decision to grow the undergraduate and masters programs with the goal of 500 undergraduate majors and 300 master students in the 2016 campus-based programs. At the same time, the iSchool decided to become more elite and focused in doctoral education, and scaled-back admissions to bring the size of the overall doctoral program to 50 students. Attrition and graduation in the large cohorts starting in 2011 proceeded as normal, but the admission of incoming students became far more selective, only admitting truly exceptional students with a high level of preparation, clear focus on doctoral studies, and the ability to master the broad range of information science topics while developing deep expertise in an area of topical interest. The general increase in research grants procured by the department, in combination with a smaller number of doctoral students, has allowed the iSchool to offer all doctoral admits five years of guaranteed funding - a distinct advantage in recruiting top candidates for our program.

Student Services & Career Placement has undergone changes as well. The staff has expanded to provide exceptional services to students at each phase of their experience in the program. Three staff positions focus on admissions and administration for the masters and doctoral programs, respectively (two for masters, one for doctoral), working closely with faculty who provide academic advising to students and making sure that all students are kept on track. Another staff position is dedicated to helping students with internships, professional portfolio development, job searching and application, and developing skills for placement on the job market. This staff member is also responsible for a school-wide workshop series on developing students’ identities as information professionals. Each year, the Student Services & Career Placement staff produces a publication-quality report on internship and professional placement, representing a minimum of 80% of the graduating class (and aiming consistently for 100%). Like the faculty who pursue excellence and innovation in their teaching and research, the Student Services & Career Placement staff is expected to develop and implement new and innovative programs that enhance the student and faculty experience within the school.

Facilities & Resources
Due to the clearer articulation of who we are, what we do, and where we are going as a School of Information Sciences, the faculty and administration easily agreed that the building at 135 N. Bellefield was not ideally suited for the direction of our scholarship and teaching. Realizing that we need to move into a more updated building, but also aware of the constraints in garnering resources from the university at large, the Dean began conversations with selected departments to propose a new building that would house scholars with work complementary to our own. Through these discussions, the School of Information Sciences, Department of Communications, Department of Computer Science, the Intelligent Systems Program, the University Library, and CIDDE developed a joint proposal for the new facility and presented in 2014 to the Chancellor and Board of Regents. In 2016, the proposal has undergone several rounds of refinement, and the university has placed the construction of the new building on a list of high priorities. Expectations are high that a new building will be ready for occupation in 2020.

Outreach & Campus Connections
The iSchool community has begun to engage outreach programs to provide leadership to a wider audience in promoting information science as a field. The faculty and graduate students serve as active commentators, public intellectuals, and advisors on information-related issues to various campus office and groups. The Pitt IRB, Office of General Counsel, CIDDE, and CSSD routinely approach faculty, iSchool graduates, and graduate students for guidance on the formation of new information policy and sociotechnical implementation.

Thinking forward to the sustainability and succession of the field, the iSchool has also moved the successful i3 program, now beyond its initial funding from the Mellon Foundation, to an ongoing activity within the undergraduate major, encouraging underrepresented students to enroll in courses and identifying promising candidates for further graduate study. The iSchool has also developed an outreach program to local high schools, piloting a program at the Pittsburgh Academy of Science & Technology, located three blocks away from the iSchool building. The high school program engages faculty and students providing occasional lectures and workshops, involving of high school students in summer research, and educating teens about contemporary social and technological issues. By 2016, the iSchool has begun to see the impact of these outreach efforts with an enrollment of 150 undergraduate majors in informatics who state that their decision to major was sparked by exposure to the field while still in high school.

Cory Knobel