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In the world of technology, it’s essential to always be on the cutting edge of new developments and trends, said Bruce Kingma, the director of undergraduate programs at Syracuse University’s School of Information Studies. 

“I’ve always said that, ‘If we don’t teach the same classes now that we taught five years ago, thank God, because the world has moved,’” he said. “And we’d better not be teaching the same classes five years from now that we’re teaching today.”

This philosophy drove Kingma, along with other leaders in the iSchool, to develop two new majors that will be offered starting fall 2021: one in applied data analytics and another in innovation, society and technology. These new majors are designed to reflect skills and areas of knowledge that are currently in high demand in the tech world, he said. 

For the past 30 years, the iSchool has only offered one undergraduate major, information management and technology, while almost every other school at the university hosts multiple, Kingma said. 

Kingma and other iSchool professors have frequently discussed expanding its offerings, he said. They began to realize that the information management and technology major wasn’t “one size fits all,” and that its combined focus on business and technology wasn’t appealing to every student. 

“We were keen on the fact that there was additional student interest in other areas of ‘information,’” he said. “We knew it was well past the time to pull the trigger on it and to expand our undergraduate offerings.”

The school initiated the official development of new majors after appointing Raj Dewan as dean in January 2020, Kingma said. 

Almost immediately after becoming dean, Dewan began to challenge Kingma and other professors to consider how the iSchool could improve its academic offerings, he said. After Dewan asked Kingma to serve as the director of undergraduate programs, they got to work establishing the long-anticipated new majors.

The three majors at the iSchool will all feature the same set of core classes. After that point, the majors diverge, with the applied data analytics major focusing on the development of programming skills and the innovation, society and technology major centering on the impact technology has on society. 

The information management and technology major will remain largely the same, maintaining its emphasis on how technology and business overlap.

Students in any of the three majors will also have the option to pursue a concentration in one of seven areas, including one that will be introduced next semester. The “Innovation, Design and Startup” concentration will teach students how to launch a startup company. About 5% of iSchool students start their own businesses while still in college, Kingma said. 

Data analytics has attracted increased student interest in recent years, with roughly 20% of iSchool students currently pursuing a data analytics concentration.

“You see (data analytics) every day, but sometimes you don’t even think about it,” said Jeffrey Saltz, an associate professor at the iSchool and the director of the graduate data analytics program. “If you sit down and watch Netflix, there’s analytics helping Netflix make a prediction about what show you might like.” 

The“Applied Data Analytics” concentration will help students understand various types of data and how to analyze it, Saltz said. 

Along with the new majors, the iSchool will also launch a series of new courses, including one that teaches students how to analyze large data sets and another about applying information technology to social justice.  

The iSchool is currently searching for five new faculty members to support these new majors and courses. Kingma and other leaders in the iSchool are aiming to hire the new professors within the next two months, he said. 

The new majors were only recently approved by New York and currently have no enrolled students, but freshman and sophomore iSchool students can easily switch to one of the two majors, Kingma said. After years of discussing expanding the academic offerings at the iSchool, he hopes the two new majors will allow interested students to find their niche in the school.

“I really think it’ll better serve our students and better serve our graduates,” Kingma said. “We have a slice of students who are all about business and the impact of technology. But not all of our students are interested in the business side of it, and we have to do our students right.” 

Published on April 28, 2021 at 11:12 pm

Contact Gillian: gifollet@syr.edu