School of Informatics finds new home

Three years after its establishment, the School of Informatics finally found a new home Thursday in a dedication ceremony that took place in the school's new building, situated at 10th Street and Woodlawn Avenue.\n"Although we deal with cyberspace, it's nice to have a physical home," said School of Informatics Dean Michael Dunn.\nIU's School of Informatics was the first in the nation, which is split between the IU-Purdue University at Indianapolis and Bloomington campuses, along with a pilot program offered on the South Bend campus. \nCurrently IU has almost 1,200 Informatics students in total, with close to 500 of them on the Bloomington campus.\nIn his speech, Dunn described the mission of the school as training students to "see that advanced information technology is in fact indistinguishable from science and the arts."\n"We see ourselves as a 'bridge' between (information technology) and various other domain areas," he said. "I cannot begin to tell you how much this building means to me, our faculty, our staff and our students."\nDunn said the Informatics School, IU's first new school in 28 years, was IU's response to the information age.\nInformatics is still a fairly new field that emphasizes the application of IT in other fields of study such as biology, economics and journalism. The Bloomington campus offers a master of science degree in bioinformatics, human computer interaction and chemical informatics as well as a bachelor of science degree in informatics.\nPreviously, Informatics students had to go back and forth between various buildings on campus for classes, but the new building will host classes and also give faculty and students a chance to socialize. \n"It's important that faculty and students get to mingle," said IU trustee Sacha Willsey. "It gives them the opportunity to get to know each other."\nIU began renovating the building, which sits at the address of the old Alpha Omicron Pi house, in the spring of 2002, and faculty and staff moved into the building that fall while it was still under construction. Classes were first held there in January 2003. \n"This is a great adaptive use of the building," IU trustee Patrick Shoulders said.\nHe attributed the new building to the "explosive growth of the school." \nIn addition to administrative and faculty offices, the building also houses the Informatics Research Institute, instructional laboratories, collaboration studios and a presentation room. \nDunn closed his speech by quoting Winston Churchill saying, "'We shape our buildings and afterwards, our buildings shape us.' I am confident that this building will positively shape us and our future."\nThe IU board of trustees will meet at 3 p.m. today in the Frangipani Room of the Indiana Memorial Union. On their agenda is a vote for or against the construction of a new multidisciplinary science building.