Dean's welcome

Welcome to the University of Michigan School of Information

The biggest challenges facing the world are information problems and the biggest opportunities lie in using information to support human growth and wellbeing. The University of Michigan School of Information is one of the first schools built specifically around this idea, and we remain a place where faculty and students bring together ideas from information sciences, engineering, computing, social sciences, humanities, design and the arts to innovate and solve the world’s most pressing problems. 

Our faculty's research reflects that range—from making everyday technologies more accessible for aging and disabled users, to preserving archives and cultural heritage, to speeding up disease diagnoses, improving healthcare, supporting job seekers and workers, and understanding how online platforms shape power and misinformation online. 

We believe this kind of thinking is best taught the way it's practiced: collaboratively. Our undergraduate and master’s programs in Information, Applied Data Science, and Health Informatics educate students to be human-centered practitioners. Whatever their desired career path, UMSI students graduate prepared to innovate and think with emergent technologies by leveraging both deep theoretical understanding and the practical skills of information professionals developed through client-based projects. Our PhD program in Information creates the space that advanced students need to grow into researchers who move fluidly between disciplinary boundaries to generate new knowledge about people and technologies. 

I’m proud of the generations of UMSI graduates who have gone on to build and design the systems that structure daily life as UX engineers and researchers, data scientists, librarians, policy analysts, archivists, and entrepreneurs, all carrying those same interdisciplinary habits of mind with them.

And I’m proud that our UMSI scholars don't always agree, but they always engage. As the field of information grows more central to every academic domain and industry sector, we think that rigor across disciplines and a willingness to engage in productive critique is exactly what's needed.

Andrea Forte
Dean and Professor of Information
School of Information