Wait, What College are you From? The Innovative, Interdisciplinary Approach to LIS Education through the Lens of Emergency Preparedness, Homeland Security, and Cybersecurity

Williams-Hart, Tiffany; Goodall, Jennifer; Rorissa, Abebe

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Description

Title

Wait, What College are you From? The Innovative, Interdisciplinary Approach to LIS Education through the Lens of Emergency Preparedness, Homeland Security, and Cybersecurity

Author(s)

• Williams-Hart, Tiffany
• Goodall, Jennifer
• Rorissa, Abebe

Issue Date

2020-10-13

Keyword(s)

• Universities
• Instructor
• Faculty
• Administration
• Strategic planning

Abstract

UAlbany’s ALA-accredited MS in Information Science (MSIS) program relocated to the newly created College of Emergency Preparedness, Homeland Security and Cybersecurity (CEHC) in 2018 after a significant restructuring of its home college into an engineering school. Before the relocation, enrollments in the program had been steadily declining to the point where potential dissolution of the department was seemingly inevitable. The light at the end of the tunnel came when the CEHC dean integrated the MSIS program into a first-of-its-kind college created to educate, train, and prepare the next generation of emergency responders, intelligence and data analysts, and cybersecurity specialists. The story of our transformation is representative of broad-spectrum changes that current LIS programs can strategically embrace to remain relevant and sustainable for the future. “CEHC’s IS program is [at] the hub of an innovative ecosystem that embraces a new model of living classrooms created to foster the creation and testing of theory and practice within operational and instructional spaces” allowing our students and faculty to endeavor into new realms of possibility unimagined by a department previously on the verge of extinction (UAlbany Self-Study, 2019). CEHC has embarked on a series of creative, and sometimes challenging, ventures that have established itself as the destination and growth college at UAlbany. Initiatives such as the creation of two new MSIS concentrations - Intelligence Analysis and Data Analytics – and a new, accelerated path to the master’s degree - known as the ‘4+1’ program - reflect our mission to redefine the role of information professionals in growing, state-of-the-art disciplines where data and information are at the core of decision-making processes and actionable knowledge methodologies could profoundly affect the safety and security of our nation.

Series/Report Name or Number

• Curriculum
• Instruction
• Education
• Universities
• Strategic Planning
• Informatics
• Technology

Type of Resource

text

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