Jump To:  Graduate Search  >  Institution  >  College/School      

My Saved Schools  |  Print

School Web Site

Detailed Information

Programs of Study

The University of Michigan (U-M) School of Information (SI) is a graduate-level teaching and research environment connecting people, information, and technology in more valuable ways. Students from all academic backgrounds are encouraged to challenge the status quo of the information professions and meet the needs of today’s employers.

The School of Information offers a 48-credit-hour Master of Science in Information (M.S.I.). Students may elect to take the M.S.I. with one or more of the following specializations: archives and records management, community informatics, human-computer interaction (HCI), incentive-centered design, information analysis and retrieval, information policy, library and information services, preservation of information, and social computing. Students may also elect to self-tailor the M.S.I. to meet their individual career goals. A full-time student can complete the M.S.I. in four semesters. All master’s students take three core curriculum foundations courses and must demonstrate competency in research methods and management. Students choose advanced courses related to their specialization(s), electives, and cognates that are available elsewhere at the University of Michigan. Each specialization has its own additional requirements. Students also participate in a Practical Engagement Program that provides invaluable experience in applying knowledge before graduation.

The School’s innovative doctoral program prepares students for a research career in this growing field. Researchers investigate the role of information technology in a variety of human activities. Projects include work on collaboratories, community systems, cultural preservation, electronic archives, digital libraries, global teams, information economics, and visualization.

Upon graduation, alumni become Webmasters, chief information officers, information economists, information architects, librarians, digital preservationists, entrepreneurs, consultants, software engineers, records managers, usability specialists, and more.

Research Facilities

The University of Michigan provides access to technologically advanced, thriving research and computing environments. School of Information students have access to a robust networking environment, including computers, telecommunications, and video; to the Duderstadt Center, a 24-hour facility that houses multidisciplinary projects that explore uses of leading-edge information technology; and to libraries that contain more than 7 million volumes and 70,000 serial titles, accessible through online catalogs and digital libraries. The School of Information maintains an advanced computing infrastructure with equipment, software, and services related to media integration (digitization, multimedia authoring, and video editing) and advanced graphics work. The School’s Digital Information Access and Dissemination classroom/laboratory provides a general computing and teaching facility with both PC and Macintosh workstations.

Financial Aid

The School of Information offers a limited number of merit-based full- and partial-tuition scholarships to incoming students. The U-M also offers several competitive scholarship and grant opportunities for all students. Numerous opportunities for on-campus and off-campus employment exist.

Cost of Study

In 2008–09, tuition per semester (four months) for a full-time Michigan resident School of Information student is $8176 ($16,533 for a full-time nonresident).

Living and Housing Costs

Off-campus living costs for a single student may average $1400 per month. The U-M also offers several on-campus housing options for both single and married students. The University Housing Office can assist students in locating both on- and off-campus housing.

Student Group

The approximately 350 students in the master’s program represent more than seventy different undergraduate majors. The current class of admitted master’s students had an average undergraduate GPA of 3.5 and an average GRE combined score of 1275 on the quantitative and verbal sections. Approximately 56 percent of the students are women. About 15 percent attend the program on a part-time basis.

Student Outcomes

Upon graduation, approximately 95 percent of graduates accept professional employment within three to six months. Graduates find challenging work throughout the world in libraries (the M.S.I. program is ALA accredited), corporations, consulting firms, Internet commerce companies, K–12 schools, nonprofit agencies, colleges, universities, and government agencies. Recent graduates are employed as project managers, librarians, usability engineers, digital curators, online community managers, IT consultants, information architects, electronic records archivists, information economists, and more.

Location

Ann Arbor is approximately 40 miles west of Detroit, with easy access to airports, railroads, and all major east-west and north-south highways. The city of approximately 114,000 residents is convenient to major automotive manufacturers, research firms, banking centers, and Internet ventures. Ann Arbor is a cultural center showcasing musical concerts, theatrical performances, film series, and much more.

The University and The School

The University of Michigan is known internationally for its fine higher education and its base of nearly 400,000 living alumni. The U-M is committed to diversity among students, faculty members, and staff members. Approximately 41,000 students attend the Ann Arbor campus, of whom 15,000 are graduate students. Independent rankings place U-M schools and colleges at the top among their peers. The School of Information consistently ranks among the top-rated master’s programs in the information fields.

Applying

Applicants for the master’s degree program must hold a bachelor’s degree and must submit the General Test scores from the GRE, taken within the past five years. The School prefers an overall undergraduate grade point average of at least 3.0 on a 4.0 scale. Three letters of recommendation, an essay, and a resume must be submitted. Deadlines for regular admission with financial assistance are February 1 for fall term or October 1 for winter term. Deadlines for regular admission without financial assistance are May 1 for fall term or November 1 for winter term (October 1 for winter-term international applicants).

It is recommended, but not required, that applicants for the doctoral program hold a master’s degree (ideally in an information-related field relevant to the student’s proposed area of research). Students without a master’s degree may need to adjust their required course work. Other Ph.D. program requirements include a superior academic record, scores from the GRE taken within the past five years, and TOEFL or IELTS scores from within the past three years (international applicants only).

The Faculty and Their Research

• Steven P. Abney, Associate Professor; Ph.D., MIT. Computational linguistics, learning, syntax.
• Mark S. Ackerman, Associate Professor; Ph.D., MIT. Computer-supported cooperative work, sociology of information, multimedia information systems, social analysis of computing systems.
• Lada A. Adamic, Assistant Professor; Ph.D., Stanford. Information dynamics in networks, navigating social networks, information’s effect on network evolution.
• Charles Antonelli, Assistant Research Scientist; Ph.D., Michigan. Distributed file systems, operating systems, network security.
• Daniel E. Atkins, Professor (on leave); Director, Office of Cyberinfrastructure, NSF; Ph.D., Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. Advanced information and collaborative systems and services, digital library architecture, community technology.
• Francis X. Blouin, Professor and Director of the Bentley Historical Library; Ph.D., Minnesota. Archival administration, international archival affairs.
• Yan Chen, Professor; Ph.D., Caltech. Experimental economics, mechanism design, theory of committees and voting.
• Michael D. Cohen, Professor; Ph.D., California, Irvine. Organizational decision making, processes of learning and adaptation within organizations, organizational effects of information technology, complex systems.
• Paul Conway, Associate Professor; Ph.D., Michigan. Representing and interpreting visual and textual resources in digital form, extracting knowledge from large-scale image databases, modeling incentive systems for digital preservation.
• Paul N. Courant, Professor; Ph.D., Princeton. Economics of universities, economics of libraries and archives, IT-driven changes in the system of scholarly communication.
• Edmund Durfee, Professor; Ph.D., Massachusetts Amherst. Distributed artificial intelligence, planning, cooperative robotics, real-time problem solving.
• Joan C. Durrance, Professor; Ph.D., Michigan. Public libraries, community information systems and services, information behavior, community roles of public libraries, professional practice and the reference interview.
• Paul N. Edwards, Associate Professor; Ph.D., California, Santa Cruz. History, culture, and politics of computers; networks; artificial intelligence; global environmental change; computer models of climate and other Earth systems.
• Ixchel M. Faniel, Assistant Professor; Ph.D., USC. Knowledge sharing and reuse across organizational boundaries, creativity and innovation, socially shared and distributed cognition environments, knowledge-intensive organizations.
• J. Bruce Fields, Assistant Research Scientist; Ph.D., Michigan. Networking, cryptography.
• Thomas Finholt, Research Professor and Associate Dean for Research and Innovation; Ph.D., Carnegie Mellon. Impact of collaboratories, impact of computer communication technology on information processing in organizations.
• Barry Fishman, Associate Professor; Ph.D., Northwestern. Teacher learning, learning technologies, human-computer interaction, learner-centered design, school reform, leadership.
• C. Olivia Frost, Professor; Ph.D., Chicago. Intellectual access to information, information searching behavior in a networked environment, organization and retrieval of networked and digital information.
• Robert L. Frost, Associate Professor; Ph.D., Wisconsin–Madison. Industrial rationalization, domestic consumerism, industrial informatics, gender and IT, digital divide, history of IT.
• George Furnas, Professor; Ph.D., Stanford. Information access and visualization, multivariate statistics, statistical semantics, filtering, multitrees, space-scale diagrams.
• Joseph Hardin, Clinical Assistant Professor; B.A., Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. Online collaboration and learning environments, Semantic Web.
• Margaret Hedstrom, Associate Professor; Ph.D., Wisconsin–Madison. Management and preservation of electronic records, digital preservation strategies, impact of electronic communications on organizational memory, remote access to archival materials, cultural preservation in developing countries.
• Peter Honeyman, Research Professor; Ph.D., Princeton. Middleware for file systems, security, and mobile computing.
• Steven J. Jackson, Assistant Professor; Ph.D., California, San Diego. Information and communication policy; IT and democratic governance; simulation, expertise, and public policy; sociohistorical studies of information infrastructure.
• John L. King, Professor and Vice Provost for Academic Information, U-M; Ph.D., California, Irvine. Design and development of sociotechnical information infrastructures in complex organizational settings, technical and institutional coevolution of standards and technical infrastructure in telephony, technical and institutional foundations of global electronic commerce.
• Jessica D. Litman, Professor; J.D., Columbia. Digital copyright, cyberspace law, trademark, intellectual property law.
• Jeffrey K. MacKie-Mason, Professor and Associate Dean for Academic Affairs; Ph.D., MIT. Economics of information technology and content, telecommunications, industrial organization, public finance, finance.
• Karen M. Markey, Professor; Ph.D., Syracuse. Subject searching in online catalogs, subject access to visual resources collections, subject authority control, enhancing bibliographic databases using a library classification.
• Shawn P. McKee, Assistant Research Scientist; Ph.D., Michigan. Collaborative tools, grids, and networks.
• Michael J. McQuaid, Assistant Professor; Ph.D., Arizona. Systems analysis, information management, visualization tools, information navigation.
• Mark Newman, Assistant Professor; Ph.D., Berkeley. End-user programming; design, prototyping, and evaluation of interactive systems.
• Martha E. Pollack, Professor and Dean; Ph.D., Pennsylvania. Artificial intelligence, especially automated planning and reasoning; adaptive interfaces; assistive technology for people with cognitive impairment.
• Dragomir Radev, Associate Professor; Ph.D., Columbia. Natural-language processing, digital libraries, computational linguistics, information retrieval, artificial intelligence.
• Paul Resnick, Professor; Ph.D., MIT. Reputation systems, sociotechnical capital.
• Soo Young Rieh, Associate Professor; Ph.D., Rutgers. Web search behavior, information quality and cognitive authority, human-computer interaction in information systems, evaluation of interactive information retrieval systems, role of intermediaries in digital library environments.
• Victor Rosenberg, Associate Professor; Ph.D., Chicago. Information retrieval, information policy, technology in the humanities, software development, entrepreneurship.
• Rahul Sami, Assistant Professor; Ph.D., Yale. Incentives in computation, algorithmic mechanism design, distributed mechanisms, incentives in Internet protocols and applications, information markets.
• Charles Severance, Clinical Assistant Professor; Ph.D., Michigan State. Multimedia Web-based tools.
• Elliot Soloway, Professor; Ph.D., Massachusetts Amherst. Use of technology in education, developing software that takes into consideration the unique needs of learners.
• Stephanie Teasley, Research Associate Professor; Ph.D., Pittsburgh. Social and cognitive processes in collaboration, user needs.
• Douglas E. Van Houweling, Professor (on leave); President and CEO, Internet2; Ph.D., Indiana. Information systems planning and management, strategic planning, simulation models of political and public policy processes, economic models of politics, technology assessment.
• Tiffany C. E. Veinot, Assistant Professor; Ph.D., Western Ontario. Understanding health-related information behavior within communities, service models for marginalized populations, socio-cultural production of information and information practices.
• David A. Wallace, Lecturer; Ph.D., Pittsburgh. Computerization of government records, strategies for preserving electronic records of collaborative processes, U.S. government information secrecy and classification/declassification policies.
• Terry Weymouth, Associate Research Scientist; Ph.D., Massachusetts Amherst. Development of collaboration technology for the support of medical diagnosis, technology development, large-scale collaboration test beds for remote distributed science.
• Elizabeth Yakel, Associate Professor; Ph.D., Michigan. Recordkeeping practices, representation and categorization of archival records, access to archival information on the World Wide Web, use and user needs.
• Kai Zheng, Assistant Professor; Ph.D., Carnegie Mellon. Health informatics, information systems in health care.
• Ann Zimmerman, Assistant Research Professor; Ph.D., Michigan. Design, use, and impact of cyberinfrastructure; sharing and reuse of scientific data; effects of large-scale collaborations on science policy and research management.
• Part-Time and Adjunct Faculty
• Nancy Bartlett, Adjunct Lecturer; M.A., Michigan.
• Don Blumenthal, Adjunct Lecturer; J.D., Pennsylvania.
• Mark Burde, Adjunct Lecturer; Ph.D., Washington (St. Louis).
• Kristin Fontichiaro, Adjunct Lecturer; M.S.I., Michigan.
• Elena Godina, Adjunct Lecturer; K.D., Ushinski (Ukraine).
• Brian Kahin, Adjunct Professor and Research Investigator; J.D., Harvard.
• Marilyn Kiefer, Adjunct Lecturer; A.M.L.S., Michigan.
• Daniel Klyn, Adjunct Lecturer; M.L.I.S., Wayne State.
• Marcia Mardis, Adjunct Lecturer; M.I.L.S., Michigan.
• S. Alan McCord, Adjunct Lecturer; Ph.D., Wayne State.
• Catherine Morse, Adjunct Lecturer; M.L.I.S., Dominican.
• Darlene Nichols, Adjunct Lecturer; A.M.L.S., Michigan.
• Bryce Pilz, Adjunct Professor; J.D., Michigan.
• Virginia Rezmierski, Adjunct Associate Professor; Ph.D., Michigan.
• Colleen Seifert, Adjunct Professor; Ph.D., Yale.
• Margaret T. Taylor, Adjunct Lecturer; Ph.D., Michigan.
• Marshall Van Alstyne, Adjunct Assistant Professor; Ph.D., MIT.
• Colleen van Lent, Lecturer; Ph.D., Pittsburgh.
• Shannon Zachary, Adjunct Lecturer; M.I.L.S., Michigan.

Correspondence and Information

University of Michigan
School of Information
304 West Hall
1085 South University Avenue
Ann Arbor, Michigan 48109-1107
Telephone: 734-763-2285
Fax: 734-615-3587
Email: si.admissions@umich.edu