For the Prospective Students
Here's our pitch: major in what you are passionate about, and add a minor in information technology. IT already plays an important role in all fields today, and the need for graduates from all disciplines with a deep understanding of IT is increasing. In some ways, it is like having your cake and eating it too. In whatever field you choose, the IT Minor can help you stand out when looking for a job and give you an educational foundation to be more effective in your job.
The IT Minor at UMass Amherst is designed specifically to allow you to shape the program to your individual interests and needs. You will choose a total of six course out of a set of more than 55 options to develop both IT fluency—the skills, conceptual understanding, and capabilities required to keep pace with IT— and some IT depth in your area of interest. You will choose courses that help you learn technical principles in areas such as multimedia, the internet, databases, or programming. You will take at least one course on the human dimensions of IT that will help you develop perpective (such as historical, legal and ethical, economic) about how IT fits or might fit into our world. Finally you will choose courses where you will learn applications of IT in fields that interest you, such as interactive multimedia production, geographical information systems, bioinformatics, online journalism, or e-commerce, to name a few.
The IT Minor at UMass Amherst is nationally recognized for its "IT Across the Curriculum" approach to IT education. This means you learn about IT from the points of view of faculty from all over campus. If you are interested in learning more, visit with the chair of the IT Program to discuss how the IT Minor can work for you.
