Academic Mission

The School of Information creates knowledge and advances practice wherever people interact with information and technology.

Our research explores the implications for individuals and society as information and digital technologies are increasingly embedded in all aspects of human experience. Our professional master’s degrees prepare students to design and build the systems that will shape the way humans live and interact in the future. Our research and teaching are interconnected; both are urgent, because our understanding of the consequences for individuals and society of their interactions with information and machines remains critical, contentious, and inadequate.

Achieving our research and educational mission requires the interdisciplinary collaboration of scholars with expertise in information and computer science, social sciences, the humanities, law, policy, and design. We depend on close ties to practitioners from the public, private, and philanthropic sectors. We provide rigorous multi-disciplinary education for our master’s and doctoral students, as well as introductory courses for undergraduates interested in this field.

The I School’s intellectual commitments continue to evolve. We are currently building strength in three areas: (1) human-computer/ human-machine interaction; (2) information/data security, privacy and policy; and (3) applied data science, especially in the social sciences, humanities, and professions. In each of these areas, we are committed to expanding the applications of information and technology to improve the human condition, and to meeting the needs of the State of California.