Carnegie Mellon to Offer Professional Master's Program at Its West Coast Campus Beginning in Fall 2002

Byron SpiceThursday, March 7, 2002

PITTSBURGH-Carnegie Mellon University will offer several courses of study leading to a Master of Science degree in information technology at its West Coast campus at Moffett Field, Calif., starting in the fall of 2002.

The program is designed to cater to Silicon Valley professionals, preparing them to provide skilled technical leadership and an informed strategic vision in the workplace.

Raj Reddy, university professor of computer science and robotics at Carnegie Mellon's School of Computer Science, is the director of Carnegie Mellon West. He served as founding director of the university's famed Robotics Institute from 1979-91 and as dean of the School of Computer Science from 1991-99. He received the A.M. Turing Award in 1994 for his work in artificial intelligence and human-computer interaction. He was a member of the President's Information Technology Advisory Committee (PITAC) and served as the co-chair of the committee from 1999-2001.

"We are very excited to offer this professional master's program at our Silicon Valley campus this fall," Reddy said. "We believe that Bay Area professionals will find great value in a high-quality educational program that stresses the real-world engineering and management issues and challenges students are likely to encounter in the workplace."

Carnegie Mellon's West Coast education program is designed to accommodate the needs of full- and part-time students and will offer several specialties, including software engineering, electronic commerce, and information management. In time, additional areas of study will be developed depending upon student interest and demand.

Unlike traditional master's degree programs, the program at Carnegie Mellon's West Coast campus will focus not only on what students know, but also on what they know how to do. The program will be built around project-oriented, apprenticeship-based, and individually mentored activities that emphasize teamwork and collaboration. At the end of the program, each student will complete a significant practicum or studio project.

The program will emphasize a learn-by-doing approach that consists of an integrated series of detailed and authentic projects that allow students to complete analyses, solve problems, create project deliverables, and put their new capabilities into practice immediately. The courses to be offered at Carnegie Mellon's West Coast campus have been developed based on the interdisciplinary strengths of the main campus in Pittsburgh, Pa.

The program will focus on student collaboration, in concert with one-on-one mentoring relationships. The faculty will include experts from Carnegie Mellon's main campus, along with world-class professionals from the Silicon Valley industrial community. They will be available to provide mentoring and feedback on a just-in-time basis to support students at the time of optimal learning.

Carnegie Mellon is accepting applications now for its West Coast program offerings for fall 2002. Full-time students can usually complete the master's degree in one calendar year or three semesters. If taken on a part-time basis, the program will require two to three years to complete. For further information, check the Carnegie Mellon West website http://west.cs.cmu.edu.Carnegie Mellon has been working to develop a presence in Silicon Valley since 1999 and has been working with officials at NASA Ames as they develop the NASA Research Park at Moffett Field. In December 2000, the university formed a High Dependability Computing Consortium with NASA and 15 major information technology companies to address dependability problems affecting computer systems.

Carnegie Mellon's West Coast campus is a branch of Carnegie Mellon University, which is located in Pittsburgh, Pa. and known as one of the world's premier institutions for information technology research and education with established strengths in engineering, fine arts, business, public policy and computer science.

For more information on Carnegie Mellon University and its School of Computer Science, visit the websites: www.cmu.edu and www.cs.cmu.edu.

For More Information

Byron Spice | 412-268-9068 | bspice@cs.cmu.edu