Then & now: A look at the first 20 years of the College of IST

UNIVERSITY PARK, Pa. — It had been only 14 months from when Information Sciences and Technology's (IST) conceptual plan was approved to when the School of IST opened its doors in the fall of 1999. In the latest issue of the College of IST's iConnect magazine, Jim Thomas, IST’s first dean, and Andrew Sears, IST’s current dean, talk about what has changed — and what hasn’t — for the college in the 20 years since.

iConnect: Tell us how the College of IST started.

Jim Thomas: The University was strongly encouraged by a lot of companies in the late 1990s to help fill the need for more students with backgrounds in information technology-related fields. Former President (Graham) Spanier saw the emerging success of information schools as part of the response to that need, so he put a committee together (chaired by then-Provost Rodney Erickson) to create the conceptual and functional foundations for an endeavor. The ideas that emerged from that committee became the School of Information Sciences and Technology.

As part of the approval of the school by the Faculty Senate, I was asked to chair a committee to develop a new bachelor’s degree curriculum, and (then-associate professor of computer science and engineering) Joe Lambert chaired a committee that was developing the associate degree curriculum. George McMurtry, who was an associate dean in the College of Engineering at the time, served as IST’s acting head administrator to help establish the school.

When a national search for a dean was launched, I was invited to give my view of what the school should look like, and soon after I had an offer to become dean. Joe, who became our senior associate dean until 2008, and George played vital roles in getting the school started. Without them, IST would not have happened.

iConnect: What did that initial concept look like?

Thomas: It was all about how information, people, and technology intersect. We needed to be multidisciplinary, so we drew on a variety of different subjects. We wanted students to understand technology — the hardware and programming side — but also understand how technology is used and how information is managed in any setting to make a difference. At a certain point, computer science or engineering takes over, or business or sociology takes over, and although we intended some overlap, we wanted a program that positioned students at the center of the information, people and technology intersection.

iConnect: How have those foundational ideas evolved over the last 20 years?

Sears: That founding mission is really what continues to differentiate our college and our graduates from those in other programs. Our students understand not just the technology; they also understand people and organizations, and they’re able to think about how solutions will fit within an organization. We’ve added some additional technical depth in certain areas, but there’s a recognition of the importance of the people involved, and there’s always the focus on understanding the context in which that problem lives.

iConnect: Finding the right name to fit those concepts was part of the challenge. How was the name chosen?

Thomas: Well, we were building a program that allowed for an understanding of how technology is used by any organization in any setting, and “information science” without the “s” at the end had the connotation of a singular topic. We wanted to be a multidisciplinary school, which meant we had to go to “information sciences” to capture the wider range of disciplines.

Sears: Now, technology is so pervasive it’s almost redundant in our name. One of the challenges information schools face is that there is no universal language for what we do. There is no single name you can pick that will result in everyone immediately recognizing what it means.

iConnect: What were the other challenges in getting the college off the ground?

Thomas: One of the big hurdles was figuring out where the students would come from. Nobody knew who we were or what we were trying to do. There was no hiring record for our graduates.

Sears: And few understood what the degree actually was.

Thomas: Right. So why would they come here? We had to develop the message to answer that question. And then we had to attract faculty much the same way. Students, faculty, and staff — they had to take a chance on us because nobody really knew if it would succeed. And then trying to get donors without any alums was equally fascinating. Most of that early success came from our original advisory board members, who worked hard to get people engaged and to be part of the adventure. Thankfully, I think we got the right people at the beginning who were willing to make something happen here that wasn’t happening anywhere else in the country.

iConnect: Have those challenges changed in the last 20 years?

Sears: We still have a challenge in that “information sciences and technology” is not a label that immediately resonates with high school students, but the advantage now is we have two decades of successful graduates, nearly 80 companies showing up each semester to recruit our students, tremendous faculty research, and so on. We can point to these things, and it helps overcome some of the barriers. And we have a great story — IST didn’t come with the preconceived expectations that come with other, well-established programs that would have shaped how the college developed, because IST was essentially created from nothing.

Thomas: It’s not that we were baggage free, but it was just a different discussion. We had a clean slate, so we could build the college without the entanglements of existing programs.

iConnect: How did the opening of the building at University Park in 2004 impact those challenges?

Thomas: The building’s impact was critical because once it was completed we could point to it and show people what we had in mind to bring the concepts to life. That was exciting because we gained legitimacy, not just because of the building, but because we had something physical that represented us.

Sears: We still have that impact today. You bring visitors and prospective students to campus, and they see the building. It is a very striking building, and it really makes an impression.

iConnect: What was the impact when the School of IST became the College of IST in 2006?

Thomas: That was huge for us. When IST had only about 250 students, I’d be at a meeting for the Council of Academic Deans, sitting across from the dean of the Smeal College of Business, which at the time might have had 5,500 students. It was, for lack of better words, awkward. The day that we became a college — although the numbers didn’t change that day — it created a sense of legitimacy, especially internally. It created a different sense of self for the school and who we were in the marketplace.

Read the full Q&A online in the College of IST's magazine, iConnect.