iSchool’s New Informatics Program Awarded $50,000 California State University Innovation Grant

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The San José State University College of Professional and Global Education has awarded the School of Information a two-year California State University Innovation Grant in the amount of $50,000 for its Master of Science in Informatics program, launching this fall.

A dynamic interdisciplinary field, informatics emphasizes analyzing and managing data while making that data secure and actionable for users within the specific domains of health, cybersecurity and privacy, and sports.

Broadly speaking, informatics is the science, practice, or process of collecting, organizing, storing, analyzing, preserving, retrieving, and governing data and records that are relevant to an organization. Informatics, however, differs from its sister disciplines in that its focus is on the end user—the work of informatics professionals provides information that is critical to improving the user experience.

The MS in Informatics degree program from the SJSU iSchool is designed for students with technical and non-technical backgrounds who are interested in exploring connections between people and technology. Students “focus on design thinking skills to learn how to meet the needs of end users,” explains Linda Main, associate director.

Centered on human/computer interaction, the program consists of 18 units of course work that will build the foundation and skills needed to manage and secure electronic records and set up secure digital assets management (DAM) systems.

“Students will learn to manage and apply data solutions to interactive technology environments and gain a comprehensive data-focused skill set and portfolio of work,” said Jason Kaltenbacher, Informatics program coordinator.

In addition to course development, funds from the grant will be used for software license support and to provide access to virtual labs in the National Cyberwatch Center, a consortium of higher education institutions, businesses and government agencies at the forefront of cybersecurity, at no cost to students during the two-year grant period.

Since 1993, the Innovation Grant program has funded more than 160 proposals for new program development, distributing more than 7.1 million dollars to California State University campuses.