New Dal program dishes information on informatics

By: Caley Baker
Date: October 17, 2006

Through his open office door, Ernst Grundke listens to students laughing and talking as they decide what kind of computer system a non-profit organization needs.

"It's just so exciting to see it all come together," says Grundke, director of a new Dalhousie University undergraduate program that focuses on how people use technology. The three-year program, called informatics, is the only bachelor's degree of its kind in Canada. 

Just six months ago, Grundke wondered if he would hear any students working in the informatics classroom on the fourth floor of Dalhousie's computer science building. Though Dalhousie already offered some graduate-level programs in informatics, the undergraduate degree only received approval from the Maritime Provinces Higher Education Commission at the end of February, too late to be included in Dal's promotional materials.

Posters, newspaper ads, and interviews Grundke - then a professor in the Faculty of Computer Science - gave on radio and television were used to promote the program. There were 31 students registered as the school year started, but the number is growing.

"Several students have come in just in the past week, saying, 'I heard about it from so and so - they're so excited, I want to switch to this degree program,'" Grundke says.

Informatics is the study of how people, technology and information come together. The owners of an American software company coined the term in 1962.

Informatics students major in health informatics, bioinformatics or software systems. They learn how to develop technology that solves real problems, by taking into account how people actually use it. They take courses such as research methods to learn to assess the computer needs of organizations like non-profits, government agencies and hospitals.  

First-year informatics student Nick Green likes computers, but not enough to spend four years sitting in front of one. Green decided to enroll after hearing Grundke say that computer science was about "the box - the computer - but informatics was about the people."

The program is Dalhousie's response to the fact there are more information technology jobs than qualified graduates, Grundke says. Employers want graduates with technical abilities who can work in teams, negotiate and resolve conflicts, so the informatics program focuses on communication skills.

Students take integrated informatics courses taught by a team of professors from different faculties, including math, philosophy and the sciences. Grundke says this is one way the program prepares students to communicate with people from all backgrounds.

What Grundke calls "the deliberate development of a sense of community" also helps students relate to other people. They get to know each other in small classes, and call professors by their first names. Students and instructors eat lunch together once a week. 

Green likes what he has experienced so far, with one exception.

"When you say you're in the Bachelor of Informatics, people look at you and have no idea what you're talking about."

Judging from the first weeks of the program, Grundke does not think this problem will continue for much longer.

"I think this will grow in a very big way. I've already got a mailing list of people who are interested in coming next year."