Michael Dunn, IU School of Informatics

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Michael Dunn, IU School of Informatics

J. Michael Dunn
Dean, IU School of Informatics

A leader will only remain in front as long as it can adapt to change. The switch from a manufacturing-based culture to one that is information-based has had a profound economic and social impact, as well as affecting the ways we educate our students. By creating the School of Informatics, Indiana University is at the forefront of responding to this transformation. In addition, the structure of the school allows us to take advantage of our superb existing resources, while creating a new and innovative academic program that will better prepare students to meet the challenges of our changing s ociety. —IU President Myles Brand

Dunn, who is the Oscar Ewing Professor of philosophy and a professor of computer science at IU Bloomington, heads the university’s first entirely new school in more than 25 years, the School of Informatics. The Indiana Commission for Higher Education vote d last November to approve the school’s creation.

With programs at IU’s Bloomington and Indianapolis campuses, the school’s mission is to educate students broadly in the technical, psychological and social aspects of information technology, and help them to apply this knowledge to another chosen discipli ne. The School of Informatics includes the New Media Program, located at IUPUI.

IU is one of only a handful of universities in the United States that offer such a program at both the undergraduate and graduate levels. Similar programs have been established overseas at schools such as the University of Edinburgh in Scotland; the Unive rsity of Manchester in England and Nagoya University in Japan.

The school does not replace any existing undergraduate programs. It will allow students who have interests in a wide variety of academic disciplines—including those not traditionally affiliated with information technology—to pursue an emerging program of study that is attractive to many employers. The creation of an Informatics Research Institute will support collaborative research projects with both internal and external partners.

Dunn was an early advocate of the role of personal computers on the IUB campus. He wrote a computer plan for the Department of Philosophy which was approved among the first four such plans for the Bloomington campus. He also created an interdisciplinary m ajor between philosophy and computer science.

His own research has centered on information-based logics; he has chaired the University Information Technology Committee and overseen the creation of a five-year plan for information technology at IU; he has served as a department chairman and as execut ive associate dean in the College of Arts and Sciences and in various faculty governance roles, including the Bloomington and University faculty councils.

http://informatics.indiana.edu/

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Publication date: 15 September 2000
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