Welcome to the IS Department at UMBC
Dr. Andrew Sears, Professor and Chair, Department of Information Systems, UMBC
Once again, I am pleased to write a prefacing message for this newsletter that announces several new and encouraging advancements within the Department of Information Systems (IS). Since the last installment of this newsletter, we have added several new undergraduate programs. New academic offerings include certificates in Management Science, Auditing for Information Systems, a one semester study abroad option in Ireland at the Nation University of Ireland (NUI) in Galway, and an MBA Preparatory Studies program. On the graduate programs front, our recently added Master's and Ph.D. programs in Human-Centered Computing continue to grow in interest, research activity and new students. Our online Master's in IS also continues to see enrollment increases which are setting new enrollment benchmarks with every semester start.
Overall, we have nearly 1,100 undergraduate and graduate students enrolled in our programs who, along with our research faculty, examine, design, and evaluate information technologies to address the needs of a broad range of individuals and organizations. This makes our students true problem solvers and ideal employees for public and private sector organizations with significant IT requirements. On average, our undergraduates are currently finding noteworthy employment in three months or less with starting salaries that are comparable to or better than the national average for the IT field.
Recently, the department and its faculty received national recognition. A recent independent study conducted by Academic Analytics and reported by The Chronicle of Higher Education ranks our department 8th in the nation for scholarly productivity in IT/IS. Academic Analytics' Faculty Scholarly Productivity Index™ (FSP Index) is a method for evaluating doctoral programs at Research Universities (across all Carnegie research classifications), based on a set of statistical algorithms developed by Lawrence Martin, Ph.D. and Anthony Olejniczak, Ph.D. I am proud to say that we share our top 10 ranking with other prestigious universities including Harvard, Georgia Tech, and Carnegie Mellon. Our location in the Baltimore-Washington corridor affords access to many major federal and private R&D facilities, agencies, and businesses that provide excellent opportunities for internships, field work, and employment.
UMBC IS undergraduates continue to be in high demand for both full-time positions and internships with nearly 200 different organizations recruiting interns from our programs, and yet, many more openings remain vacant due to a critical need for more IS students, not just locally but on a national scale. Our Master's students are employed by public and private sector organizations across the country and overseas. Our Ph.D. programs find our doctoral students actively engaged in numerous research projects. Some of their recent accomplishments include presenting papers at numerous international conferences, being awarded the prestigious National Science Foundation's Research Fellowship, being awarded an IBM PhD Fellowship which is also a very competitive program, and being invited to participate in several highly selective doctoral consortiums held in conjunction with important international conferences.
Recent additions to our department include 4 research faculty, resulting in a total of 26 full-time faculty. Combined with our part-time instructors, we have a total of more than 60 faculty. The primary research interests of most IS faculty fit into five core areas: Artificial Intelligence/Knowledge Management, Database/Data Mining, Decision Making Support Systems, Human-Centered Computing (HCC), and Software Engineering. While the department has outstanding researchers in each of these areas, we are particularly strong in both Database/Data Mining and Human-Centered Computing. Research funding continues to increase with the National Science Foundation (NSF) being the single largest source of external funding for IS research at UMBC. Additional support comes from government agencies (e.g., the National Security Agency, the U.S. Department of Education, and the National Institutes of Health), corporations (e.g., Google, IBM, Motorola), and foundations (e.g., the IBM Foundation for the Business of Government, Verizon Foundation).
With the support of a dedicated staff, IS faculty and students strive to advance the application of information technologies to address the needs of both individuals and organizations.
Once again, welcome to the IS Department at UMBC. I hope you will visit our Web site periodically to read about departmental news updates and activities as well as the accomplishments of our faculty and students.
Andrew Sears