IPCRES will have a strong association with the new School of Informatics and with the many academic departments at IU that are involved more broadly in computing systems, network technologies, or information technology and information science. The School will be integral to the IPCRES Education Program. IPCRES Distinguished Scientists and senior researchers with faculty rank will usually be involved in instruction or supervision in some capacity. This may include normal University courses, seminars and colloquia. In some cases the instruction will take the form of tutorials and supervised internships associated with direct participation by students in the Laboratories' research. IPCRES will also provide graduate fellowships and research assistantships to promising students who are studying in areas related to IPCRES core research areas in pervasive computing.
IPCRES will be an integral part of the academic life of Indiana University, drawing on the strengths of its faculty and students in many disciplines and fields of study. The Initiative will also be a vehicle for bringing new researchers to the State of Indiana, and for building collaborations between research done in the State and research that is carried on in university, government, and corporate laboratories around the world.
The transformation of the American workplace into an information economy is among the most significant factors leading into the next century. The new capabilities of high bandwidth digital networks for worldwide, instantaneous, pervasive, and content-rich communications are revolutionizing commerce, industry, education, science, and society. In conjunction with ongoing developments in computing, this revolution is not only having unprecedented practical consequences, but is affecting our theoretical understanding as well, of mind, nature and social interactions. The effect on world society is so profound that universities must include not only the technical aspects of information technology, but also study of its social context and impact.
This revolution in higher education is comparable to the introduction of agriculture through the foundation of land-grant universities in the early part of the nineteenth century and the founding of engineering schools at the end of the nineteenth century. Now, as we enter a new century, and even a new millennium, there are comparable "real world" needs to which universities must respond.
Indiana University clearly sees this, and President Myles Brand has committed Indiana University to become a leader in absolute terms in the creative use and application of information technology. Indiana University is responding to this charge in each of the three traditional areas of higher education research, teaching, and service with the intention of changing the culture of the University and the State. IPCRES will be a vital part in this strategy in the research area. By its links with government and industry, and its emphasis on economic development and job creation, it will be an equally important part of the service area. And by links with Indiana University's new School of Informatics, it will contribute to the teaching area as well.
In the fall of 1997 an Indiana University taskforce was formed to study ways in which the University could respond to the educational and economic development needs of the State of Indiana by capitalizing upon the University's strengths in Informatics, and to make a recommendation for further development. This committee's report recommends that IU establish a School of Informatics that would exist in parallel with existing units without extracting faculty, students and programs from their present homes. The new School will be a "virtual" or "meta" school, building upon existing resources in a strategy of cooperation. It will also be a distributed school, starting off at both IUB and IUPUI.
A second planning committee outlined a workable framework of mission, structure, and operations, and recommended that leadership be appointed for the creation of the new School of Informatics. This was done in December of 1998 when an Office for Informatics was formed, with a Director charged to form the new school. That person, working with a large faculty advisory group, has now finished a concrete proposal, which has been approved by all relevant faculty and administrative committees and was approved by the Trustees of Indiana University at their meeting of June 25, 1999. Approval by the Indiana Commission for Higher Education is anticipated within six months. A few experimental courses are being offered during the academic year 1999-2000, and the plan is to admit the first students to the new School in the fall of 2000.
The name "Informatics" was selected because it was clear to the committee that educational requirements of both the public and private sector go well beyond the traditional horizons of computer science and information science. "Informatics" is a term having wide currency in Europe, and often denotes a subject broader than traditional computer science.
It is a truism that computing has become so pervasive as to affect almost all aspects of work and home life. This becomes even more true as "computing" has broadened beyond its original sense (having to do with numbers) to include the communication of information. This pervasiveness is not just because the number of chips in devices is multiplying, but more importantly because these chips bring information resources to help us manage our lives.
At the hardware and systems level, it becomes more and more arbitrary as to where a computer ends and the network begins. Analogously, at the application level it becomes increasingly difficult to separate the academic study of computers from their human uses with respect to particular subject matter. Informatics fundamentally blurs the distinction between theory and practice, thus recognizing the permanent and pervasive alliance that has taken place between computers and ourselves.
Informatics, then, may be defined as the art, science, and human dimensions of information. The proposed School of Informatics has the intellectual purposes of developing and applying theoretical frameworks that bring unity to the study of information, and also of providing a human perspective. The practical purpose is to provide a broad education in the management of information and the design of information systems.
The teaching focus of the School of Informatics will be on undergraduates, with a Bachelor of Science degree, a minor, and a certificate. In addition there will be four specialized Master of Science Degrees: Bioinformatics, Chemical Informatics, Health Informatics, and Human Computer Interaction. Additional specialized master's degrees will likely be added over time, and there is substantial faculty interest in soon adding a Ph.D., particularly in areas such as medical, bio, and chemical informatics. There will also be graduate minors and certificates.
The bachelors degree will be multidisciplinary, with a substantial number of courses required outside of the major, so as to give training in an application or subject area, as well as in the core of Informatics. Degrees, particularly at first, will heavily depend on faculty and courses in other schools, even for the core. It is planned to ask for a legislative appropriation for the biennium beginning 2001. This request will include funding for a number of core faculty, whose appointments will likely be joint with other schools. Many of these faculty will also be associated with the IPCRES Laboratories and resources will be leveraged between the School of Informatics and IPCRES so as to attract outstanding faculty in areas related to pervasive computing who might not otherwise come to Indiana University.
It is intended that the School will involve and serve programs in the School of Library and Information Science, Cognitive and Information Science, the Information Systems and the Operations and Decision Technologies programs in the Kelley School of Business, the Instructional Systems Technology Department in the School of Education, the Program in Pure and Applied Logic, the Informatics emphases in Medicine, Nursing, and other Health Sciences, and of course the Departments of Computer Science and Technology, as well as the (tele)Communication departments. It should help build bridges between programs, e.g., between the geographical systems study done within the context of geography and related work in the School of Public and Environmental Affairs. Because of the ubiquitous nature of information technology, there are opportunities to involve the arts as well as the natural and social sciences and the professional schools. Also creative interactions with University Information Technology Services and Distributed Education are envisaged.
Such a School will support a number of promising new initiatives presently under consideration or development. These include the initiatives in health science, in distributed education, and in measurement and information science. The School will be a catalyst for multi-disciplinary and inter-disciplinary ventures, prompting cooperation across campus, school, and departmental boundaries. Such a School also builds on many traditional IU strengths, helping bring students to take courses in these areas of strength, and proving students in these areas to gain marketable skills.
Because of the virtual character of the School, it needs an intellectual center. The School's plan calls for the establishment of an Informatics Research Institute, serving as a magnet to bring faculty together from both campuses for intellectual and funding purposes. Research and academic training in Informatics will thus draw together and help focus existing and planned related programs at IU. IPCRES will be academically aligned and associated with the School, probably through the Institute, in a way that will gradually emerge as the Initiative develops. Certainly many of the researchers from the IPCRES Laboratories will have faculty status in the School. Funding for IPCRES will help "jump start" the establishment of the Informatics Research Institute and the School of Informatics.
One of the most important interconnections between IPCRES and the new School will be the involvement of Informatics students directly in the research and development projects in the IPCRES Laboratories. For example, all of the Informatics degrees, both undergraduate and graduate, require a project, written up as a report or thesis, and IPCRES would be the logical venue for many of these projects. Often students will work on projects with partner companies. The students will receive credits towards graduation and some will also be financially supported as interns by partner organizations. These students will develop both skills and relationships that will increase their employability and make it more likely that they will choose to work and live in the State.
A key element to the success of IPCRES as a force for economic development in the State of Indiana will be an increase in the number of IU graduates who are trained in information technology. The School of Informatics will help accomplish this goal through the development of new courses and new curricula that emphasize the practical application of information technology across a variety of disciplines and professional settings. Many of these will provide training in areas directly related to pervasive computing. Support from the Lilly Endowment for the IPCRES Initiative will provide resources to design new courses in information technology areas and to offer them on a trial basis as part of the overall curriculum development process. These courses will serve undergraduate and graduate students in the Informatics program, as well as part-time and adult learners in the State who may incorporate these courses into programs of career development or enhancement. IPCRES will also build on opportunities for collaboration with Indiana business and industry who may co-sponsor course development or seek to have courses in Informatics made available as part of their own workforce training and development programs.
The goal of building the State of Indiana workforce for the new economy will require proactive recruitment and support of Hoosier students to the field of information technology. Despite the vital importance of this field of study to the health of the information economy, the number of graduates in computer science and information technology is on the decline nationally. IPCRES and the School of Informatics will encourage student learning through programs of undergraduate student scholarships and graduate assistantships, in particular to support students who are working as interns in IPCRES Laboratories or with IPCRES business partners.
Over the five-year period covered by this proposal, approximately $2 million is requested to support the development and delivery of an information technology curriculum that will help support economic development and workforce enhancement as part of the broad IPCRES agenda. Approximately $1 million is requested for student recruitment and support, which will further prepare the State of Indiana workforce for participation in the Internet economy.
The new IU School of Informatics is the primary source of education and training affiliated with IPCRES. However, an additional avenue for education can come through outreach programs that can provide specialized training as part of continuing education. For example, Indiana University is also a host for the new Cisco Systems Internetworking Engineering Certification course in Indianapolis. This laboratory facility is an excellent example of how IU has been able to collaborate with the major computer networking systems manufacturer to provide a world-class training facility that is accessible to residents of central Indiana.
IPCRES will form partnerships with other computer industry leaders and possibilities for joint sponsorship of training programs are expected to emerge. However, a more significant opportunity for training may come by way of research done in IPCRES Laboratories relevant to distance education technology. More specifically, it is expected that research at IPCRES will yield spin-off applications that can be used in Web-based education and training at all levels. This technology will enable teachers and students to share Web-based educational sessions through specially designed instructional information portals.
A portal is a type of Web site that has a persistent memory of its individual users and their interests. It pulls together many different sources of information on the Web and allows users to customize it to their interests, lay out the page as desired, and add in services (email, chat, stock quotes, news, weather) as desired. Portals will be one of the building blocks of pervasive computing and one of the proposed IPCRES Laboratories, described in Section 6, would carry out research in the technologies that enable them. In the extension of the portal concept that we have envisioned, this persistent, adaptive Web environment can be combined with collaboration technologies that allow teachers and students to share a Web session. The portal would adapt to the experience level of the individual. The student would have a simple environment with easy-to-use tools and access to basic educational resources. As a user becomes more advanced, the portal would expose more advanced materials and access to the appropriate resources.
The effects of applying this next-generation pervasive computing Web technology to education and training will be profound. Beyond its obvious role in distance-based continuing education, it will have an enormous impact as a tool for training within private enterprises. For example, a large company can use this technology as the core communication and training tool for all of its employees. New em-ployees introduced to the system will be able to use their portal as a gateway to learning about all aspects of the corporate infrastructure. As an employee learns more about the corporate procedures, the portal system can observe the employee's progress and provide more advanced training. As is now widely recognized, the importance of a tool like email within a business environment is that it reduces the chain-of-command communication hierarchy to the point that new ideas can emerge from any source and have a greater impact more quickly. A pervasive portal-based system will enable groups of employees in remote locations that are all working on the same problem to "discover" each other faster and work together very efficiently. The "discovery" mechanism is based on the use of software agent technology again a technology that an IPCRES Laboratory might be created to research. Each user has an "agent" that is a program that watches the user and discovers his or her interests. While the user is away, the agent can explore the network looking for other related concepts and groups of people interested in the same topics. Because it is network based, the portal network is both dynamic and has, virtually, an infinite storage capacity. In many ways, the portal network will become the home for the collective corporate knowledge base.
7. IPCRES and Economic Development in Indiana | Table of contents | 9. Where IPCRES Will Be Located
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