First batch of Informatics diplomas to be distributed

The turning of 22 copper tassels during the 3:30 p.m. Saturday graduation ceremony will mark the first group of IU Bloomington students to earn diplomas in Informatics. \nAll of the graduates changed their major after the fall of 2000, when admissions for the program were first approved. Informatics offered flexibility that was missing in the business school, said to-be informatics graduate Michael Railing. \n"It's taking whatever information you're dealing with and mixing it with technology to get a better solution," he said, "a better way of doing things." \nThe degree combines a technical core, liberal arts skills and an outside concentration form a list of 17 approved areas. \n"It deals with computers, but gives you the ability to be anything else," said to-be informatics graduate Megan Lewis, who transferred from Kentucky Wesleyan University when she heard about the informatics program.\nExisting areas of outside study include art, biology, economics and education. Music may soon be part of that list, said Susan Emmerson Quinn, assistant dean of the School of Informatics. The informatics degree prepares students to approach problems as a whole, rather than a piece of a puzzle, she said. \n"They may get jobs that sound like the typical (information technology) job, but we expect them to have a bit more breadth," Quinn said. "In many ways they're making their own path."\nOne path informatics researchers are exploring leads to endangered archeological sites. The project brings archaeologists, historians and new media scholars together to create virtual images of the site. The program, Cultural Digital Library Indexing Our Heritage (CLIOH), is based at the IUPUI campus. In Bloomington, informatics researchers have teamed up with chemistry and computer science faculty to create a database of molecular images. \nAs for the class that will graduate Saturday, Lewis plans to stay at IU for graduate school in informatics and Railing plans to take the summer off before hitting the job search. Matt LaMaster, another informatics major slated to graduate, will take off for Australia at the end of May to start the field aspect of his job. He interviewed with 15 companies before he was hired as a user services consultant at Pioneer Hi-Bred, Inc. Few employers were familiar with informatics, he said, and response to the new program varied. For his job, which includes travel to Asia, Africa and South America, the degree set him apart. \n"It was my experience and the fact that I was willing to be innovative and learn new things, new technologies," he said. \nCurrently 152 students have declared informatics majors at the Bloomington campus, and 195 students in the University Division have indicated the intention to major in informatics. There are 519 declared majors at the IUPUI campus. Informatics programs exist at the University of Washington and the University of Edinburgh in Scotland, and Quinn said the field is growing. While a Google.com search for informatics produces many results in the field of medical informatics, the future of the field rests, in part, in the hands of its first degree holders. \n"Every graduate is an ambassador for the School of Informatics," Quinn said. "Everyone wants to look at them to see how successful they are, what kind of jobs they find. I think there will be many opportunities for our graduates"