Greetings from Dean Hall

The fall semester provided significant challenges for Penn State and our thoughts go out to those affected by this tragedy. Penn State faculty, staff, and students have faced a period akin to mourning. We have all experienced emotions ranging from shock, disbelief, anger, and sadness. But ultimately we have felt pride at seeing the actions of our students and alumni as they have reached out to each other, raised funds for charity, and have begun a healing process that includes a new culture at Penn State of transparency, outreach, and focused research in child welfare.

Be reassured that our advisory board, donors, alumni, corporate sponsors, and organizations supporting hiring and internships have universally expressed their continued support for Penn State and IST.     During this coming year, we continue to move forward with significantly expanding our undergraduate and graduate online programs, searching for new tenure-track faculty and a chaired professor, and updating our curriculum.

In this issue of iConnect, you will read about the accomplishments of our alumni as they put the skills learned in IST to work. You’ll also learn about new research initiatives, such as the Center for Enterprise Architecture, which is quickly gaining momentum, and we continue to receive new research grants in areas such as homeland security, cyber situation analysis, energy management, and collaboration privacy and online safety.   We have a lot of exciting developments in the College to look forward to, including new programs such as a professional master’s degree in Enterprise Architecture and graduate certificate program in information intelligence and analysis.

While we have faced some dark days this semester, we look forward to the future of Penn State and IST with great optimism.

-David Hall, Dean of the College of IST