Individuals in all areas of private and public enterprise rely on information systems for communication, planning, control and decision support. The advanced knowledge provided by graduate-level information systems programs is needed across a wide range of commercial, non-profit and government settings. While the market-place demand for students with graduate course work in information systems is already high, the demand for such skills is predicted to steeply increase in the years ahead.
The Master of Science in Information Systems program focuses on technical, managerial and policy issues associated with constructing and managing computer-based information systems for modern organizations. The objectives of this program are to meet the growing demand in society for graduates with high-level information system skills and provide a path for women and men from diverse fields to rapidly transition to information system career paths by providing them with foundation graduate level courses in information systems.
Similar to an MBA or Law degree, this program is explicitly designed to accommodate students from wide ranging undergraduate degree backgrounds.
Students will develop knowledge and technical skills in such areas as information system design, human-computer interaction, database systems design and management, systems development, computer networks, and information law and ethics. They will gain working familiarity with one or more programming languages, the concepts of managing resources across local and wide area networks including technical and managerial concepts of distributed systems, client-server systems, world-wide web, digital libraries, and further evolving network-based systems. Relational and object-oriented databases and systems for group decision support will also be addressed in the context of designing and managing databases. In addition, students will take courses that provide an understanding of business and engineering applications and thus provide further foundations for effective communication with end users.
Also offered is the Graduate Certificate in Information Systems that may be completed entirely through distance education courses and requires half the course credits of the full MS degree.
The University of Maine is located in the small New England town of Orono, Maine just north of Bangor on the Penobscot River. Offices and classrooms are in the Edwards Wing of Boardman Hall on the tree-lined campus mall.