A School of Information Science, Technology and Arts (SISTA)
Tue, 10/14/2008 - 1:45pm — memcinto
Name of proposed new unit, OR Title of submission:
A School of Information Science, Technology and Arts (SISTA)
125 School of Information Sciences, Technology & Arts.pdf
Name of contact person for this proposal: Paul Cohen
Contact person title: Professor and Head, Department of Computer Science
Contact Address:
Gould-Simpson Building
1040 E. 4th Street
Tuscon, AZ 85721
Contact Phone: 520 626 2818
Responses from President and Provost
Response #1> Back to List of White Papers
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Comments
The African American
The African American Advisory Council would want to insure that Transformations processes including consolidations and workforce reductions would not erode The University of Arizona's efforts to recruit and retain diverse faculty, students, and staff.
The UA President’s Hispanic
The UA President’s Hispanic Advisory Council (HAC) is pleased to provide its evaluation of this White Paper/Proposal, with the specific goal of relating it to the joint UA/HAC goals concerning diversity and inclusion, recruitment, retention and graduation of Hispanic students and faculty, and on meeting the UA goal of becoming a Hispanic Serving Institution by 2012. Additional criteria used when reviewing this proposal include the following: UA’s land grant institution status and thus its location in the southwest and the changing demographics of this area; innovative program design, including instruction methodologies; and whether the proposal realistically addresses the UA’s business needs. HAC’s mission it to strengthen relationships between the UA and the diverse communities within the State of Arizona by serving as a communications conduit and developing mutually beneficial partnerships.
HAC has reviewed this proposal and rates this as:
A Quality Proposal - this proposal should move forward and be further developed addressing the Hispanic Advisory Council criteria
I'm supportive of this
I'm supportive of this proposal. It identifies an area that will be an increasing need on campus, and in the larger job market. It also, I think, properly takes advantage of the distributed nature of what we already have as a base to build upon. One of the great strengths at UA is the ability and willingness of the faculty to work in interdisciplinary ways regardless of department or college boundaries. By targetting coordination of distributed resources, I think UA is in a position to build in this area, which would directly benefit multiple individual units through an increase in local expertise in a widely-utilized domain.
Thank you for clarifying your
Thank you for clarifying your plan. When I read White Paper 155, I read that proposal to offer SISTA as a unit solely managed by College of Science and Engineering. Your response seems to clarify that this is not the case.
With respect to Prof. Melde,
With respect to Prof. Melde, I think she is reading more into the proposal than is there. SISTA is intended to be a virtual school for information science, technology and arts, and it is NOT intended to absorb ANY departments, certainly not departments that have little to do with SISTA. I agree with Prof. Melde that Electrical Engineering is important and quite distinct from SISTA. I agree with my colleagues in Ecology and Evolutionary Biology who say, "Some of us would work with SISTA, some wouldn't." I agree with my colleagues in MIS who say, "We have obligations to the business school and its students, and our participation in SISTA mustn't interfere with these obligations." This is why SISTA was designed as a virtual school. Those who wish to participate will, those who don't, won't.
I think Prof. Melde is really addressing the proposal to incorporate Engineering into another school. It is a bit unfair, I think, for her concerns about this proposal to "trickle down" to the SISTA proposal, which is very clearly based on voluntary participation in a virtual school.
This proposal is a subset of
This proposal is a subset of the larger proposal proposed by Dean Joquin Ruiz. I strongly disagree with the merits and directions of both this and Dean Ruiz's proposal.
The overall idea being communicated is that anything pertaining to electrical engineering must be either Information Science and Technology. This will not attract engineering students to our program.
There are many examples of leading institutions who have attempted such a merger and after serious reconsideration, went back to having a college or school with engineering. One example is Johns Hopkins, and there are a few others.
There are fundamental differences between computer scientists and electrical engineers. Electrical engineers actually have more in common with mechanical engineers than they do with computer sciences. This is often because engineeing is based upon physical principles and not data structures and the like.
The ECE faculty and the Computer Science faculty met this Fall while this was being discussed. Many in ECE did not understand many of the courses and computer science terminology. There are fundamental differences.
We encourage any committee member who is reviewing proposals to look at the curriculum changes being proposed. Over half of the ECE curriculum is not software related (data structures, networks, etc...)
Finally, ECE is an important element of a world class university. This is evidenced by the large number of employers who attend the UAs career fairs. These employers are looking for our graduates. Raytheon is one of Southern Arizona's leading employers. Many of our graduates go to work there. Many Raytheon employees come to UA for graduate work. TREO and SFAz always recognize our strong engineering programs as a valuable resource for the future of Arizona.
Yes, we can improve. This proposal is not the way to do it. There are better white papers to consider.
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