Initiative for Information Impact

Dear prospective students,

This is a great time for you to be considering graduate school and I wanted to bring to attention a few programs that might be of interest to you that are part of the new “Initiative for Information Impact”:

The Global Information Engagement Program partners non-profit, research, and educational organizations in an international setting with carefully selected student teams. For 2014, six teams from UMSI will spend winter term studying an identified information challenge in Ann Arbor that has been proposed by a partner organization in India. In early summer, the student teams will then depart to India and spend six to 12 weeks implementing an information tool that has high societal impact. Projects include the development of an interactive forum for human rights lawyers in India, a comprehensive disability law portal site, and an interactive cultural arts digital exhibit. GIEP is a curricular program at UMSI; students receive six credits from the experience and fulfill the internship requirement.

Michigan Makers uses action research and service learning to explore teaching, learning, and evidence of skills in non-classroom settings. In the 2013-14 academic year, UMSI students are working with two local public schools in "maker-style" activities. Michigan Makers helps local youth engage with technology through tinkering and creating, while promoting group work and peer mentoring. This year, students initiated projects that included 3D printing, sewing, Arduino and much more!

Community Impact Projects are an opportunity for interested students who wish to fine-tune their professional skills through engagement with information-related projects proposed by local community partners. Students, either as an individual or with members of their student organization, can work on projects that range from a day to an entire academic year and that create significant impact to an organization that is lacking in information-related skills, resources, or technology. Projects include organization and processing of collections, website design and users analysis, database building, and general information consultation.

Citizen Interaction Design: Student teams, formed around challenges presented by the partner organization, the City of Jackson, Michigan, work to create new information tools and services that fundamentally reimagine how citizens interact with their local governments. The project offers many opportunities for engaged learning for UMSI students, starting with a one-credit reading seminar in the fall term, a three-credit project studio course in Winter term where students work with teams from Jackson to analyze information problems and implement solutions, and cumulating in summer internships in Jackson to round out the winter term projects.

Alternative Spring Break: Unique to the School of Information, our ASB program matches students with organizations in capacity-building information projects for the week of spring break. Annually, over 100 students donate their time to work with public sector organizations such as The Trevor Project, the Library of Congress, the Metropolitan Museum of Art, or Media Burn Film Archive to create access and organization information and enhance data and web services.

Beyond these opportunities, students can also engage with our local community through the annual UMSI Service Day or A2DataDive, a hack-a-thon-like event in which students and data scientists partner to analyze data sets from community partners. These are both events in which students can take on significant leadership roles, or join the event the day of.

The School of Information has had a long history of changing the world in a positive way through our mission, “connecting people, information, and technology in more valuable ways” and these programs/opportunities are an example of how we do this in both the curriculum and through student co-curricular engagement. If you interact with students, staff, and faculty from UMSI in the future, be sure to inquire about this unique opportunities to engage with the community and see which programs might be most interesting to you.

Sincerely,

Kelly A. Kowatch
Service Engagement Program Manager