iSchool forum focuses on enrollment
Brett Haymaker
Issue date: 6/2/06 Section: News
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This initiative was intended to allow the student body to have their questions answered by the IST administration. Prior to the forum, Fenske said that its purpose was to discuss problematic issues that students and student organizations face at CoIST. He was asked to hold the forum by student leaders, faculty and student organizations, and was happy to oblige.
iSchool is the new name for the College of Information Systems and Technology. They are not changing the actual name of the college, but rather integrating themselves with the iSchool brand that students across the nation can identify themselves with. According to Fenske, the University was one of the original five universities that began labeling their IST colleges iSchools.
Patrick Cummins, a senior majoring in information systems, called attention to the public perception that the business and engineering schools were continuing to expand, and that the iSchool, on the other hand, was getting smaller. His concerns were shared by other students.
Fenske agreed that this was a common perception, and that the college undergraduate admittance levels did slightly decrease since years previous. There are currently around 500 undergraduate students enrolled in the iSchool.
"We have the capacity for 800 students easy, without doing anything differently," Fenske said. "But the decrease in undergrads is matched in the increase of graduate students at the college. Currently, there are 750-800 graduates or masters program students enrolled in the college."
Fenske and his staff expressed concern over a lack of ideas to attract more students to IST.
"We have the highest paid co-op students of any college," said Fenske. "We supply 782 co-op jobs, only 300 of which are filled. We just don't know what else to do to show students that there is indeed a demand for IST in the job market."
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