MISSION

VISION

DEPARTMENT GOALS

Curriculum - Continue to maintain an undergraduate curriculum that stresses engineering and information system fundamentals, assures mathematical rigor, provides breadth and depth in upper-level courses, and focuses on design skills consistent with the needs of business and industry. Continually extend and evolve graduate courses and programs to assure their responsiveness to the ever-changing societal needs for information.

Areas of Specialization - Continue to extend from current strengths. Over the next five years emphasis in research is likely to expand in the areas of intelligent spatial technologies, spatial uncertainty, GIS user interface design, spatial reasoning, GIS interoperability, spatial genomics, visualization of spatial data quality, video analysis, location-based services, image processing, remote sensing, and digital photogrammetry as well as legal and ethical issues involved in the design of information systems.

Teaching - Continue to strengthen classroom teaching at both the undergraduate and graduate levels by (1) encouraging professors to participate in education based professional activities and workshops, (2) recognizing outstanding teaching contributions through award nominations, and (3) encouraging professors to use midterm teaching evaluations and similar devices to gain reactions to teaching as courses progress.

Research - Promote a high level of research involvement by (1) encouraging faculty to continue the expansion in numbers of research proposals submitted to funding agencies, (2) recognizing outstanding research contributions through award nominations, (3) encouraging professors and graduate students to continue to publish at a high level in peer-reviewed outlets, and (4) encouraging faculty and graduate students to disseminate the findings from their work at conferences, seminars and in the classroom.

Professional Service - Encourage continued participation nationally and internationally on editorial boards, research proposal review committees, professional organization committees and in article peer-review processes.

Student Recruitment and Retention - Continue to attract top level students to the undergraduate program from throughout the state and nation and graduate students from across the globe. Be responsive to the diverse needs of all students in the department through care and diligence in advising and through an emphasis on one-on-one advising by faculty.

Relations with Professions and Industry - Develop active relationships with private industry through sponsored research, collaborative efforts, exchanges at professional meetings, and through student design projects.

Relations with Other Academic Units - Develop active relationships with other academic units supporting information science and system objectives, such as through the University of Maine Information Science Collaborative.