COLLEGE OF COMPUTING
Strategic Plan AY00-04
THE CONTEXT IN WHICH WE WORK
As an integral part of Georgia Tech, our basic missions of
research, education, and service are predetermined. The larger
goals of the campus, especially in the area of economic development,
help shape us. The resources made available by the campus in
any particular time-frame enable, or constrain, much of what
we can do. Yet, we also help shape these campus-wide goals.
Beyond this obvious context, however, we are full players
in the information technology revolution that is sweeping our
society. Our research is helping advance this revolution. Our
students are spreading out into a wide variety of organizations
and, in turn, helping create and apply a wide range of information
technology. Our interaction with industry is helping to create
new industries. In this part of our context, we are limited only
by our vision, resourcefulness, and energy.
The College was founded to focus on computing - the
integration of computer science and other disciplines to address
problems of wide interest. Our interest in end-results
leads immediately to our concentration on the human element of
computing in much of our research and to our aggressive interdisciplinary
orientation. This focus is even more relevant today than it was
ten years ago, as validated by the explosion of computing in
all aspects of life.
Information technology is at an inflection point where the
activity of computing is rapidly moving:
From
primarily explicit interactions with largely discrete, disconnected
computing boxes
To
primarily implicit interactions with a wide variety of highly
interconnected, integrated, computational resources distributed
throughout the environments in which we live, learn, work, and
play.
The new world that is rapidly unfolding can be characterized
as a set of overlapping and interacting environments that are
rich in information, computational power, and means of interacting
with people. Harking back to the original meaning of the term
"cybernetics," we believe these environments should
be called human-centered cyberenvironments to capture
their integration of information, computation, and human activity.
Our research has already explicitly helped to pioneer cyberenvironments
for education, psychological therapy, scientific visualization,
high-performance engineering computations, and on-line communities.
All of our work, even the most theoretical, will contribute to
the creation of these future cyberenvironments by us and by others.
The rapid changes in our underlying technology and the concomittant
changes in our society and economy provide an outstanding opportunity
for us. Our unique blend of basic research and advanced interdisciplinary
work, coupled with innovative, high-quality education, is the
future and will enable us to lead our research disciplines, Georgia
Tech, Georgia, and the nation.
OUR VISION
The College of Computing will be the leader in computing
research and education. Our work, while richly diverse, will
focus on human-centered cyberenvironments. We will:
- educate outstanding students knowledgeable about computing
and able to learn and lead throughout their careers,
- create innovative research products that have significant
impact, and
- engage in service that enriches our state, nation, and profession.
We will be a high-quality, internationally recognized community
of scholars with a strong intellectual core of computer science
that is recognized as among the best in the world.
The uniqueness of our focus on computing, as opposed to just
computer science, and our integration of many elements into human-centered
cyberenvironments set us apart from our peers.
ENDURING STRATEGIES
Since the College of Computing was founded in 1990, we have
followed a set of strategies that have brought us to the forefront
of American academic computer science and to a place of prominence
at Georgia Tech. These strategies are characterized by:
- Striving for the highest quality in all aspects of our work
at all times,
- Constantly seeking basic advances in computer science and
related disciplines,
- Collaborating with our colleagues in many other disciplines
and advanced application areas, both inside and outside Georgia
Tech,
- Providing superior educational opportunities to majors and
non-majors alike at all levels,
- Building programs of sufficient size to have significant
impact,
- Investing in emerging technical and educational areas.
Annual revisions that incorporate feedback and inputs from
all segments of the College and our external constituencies have
permitted us to refine these strategies in response to the continual
change in our field and in the context of Georgia Tech.
MISSION
Our mission is:
To lead the campus, region, and nation in the development
and prototypical application of the underlying computational
principles and technology for human-centered cyberenvironments.
We do this by:
- Providing high quality education in computing that produces
leaders prepared to create human-centered cyberenvironments,
- Conducting innovative computing research that produces significant
results, especially in the context of creating human-centered
cyberenvironments, and
- Engaging in effective service activities, especially focused
on economic development.
GOALS AND STRATEGIES
Advancement toward our vision comes from achieving specific
goals relevant to College of Computing faculty and students.
Our success is dependent on the skill and balance with which
we employ relevant strategies, conditioned by the College's values
and the resources we can acquire.
GLOBAL MISSION: Create an exciting,
self-reliant, diverse and scholarly community of excellence,
accomplishment, empowerment, and respect.
GLOBAL GOALS
- Improve our organizational structure and communications to
deal with our growth (AY00);
- Improve our faculty and staff professional development programs
(AY00-01);
- Develop a multi-year, capital equipment replacement plan
(AY01);
- Lead the campaign to raise $15M by AY02 for the new ACT Building;
- Achieve consistent top-10 ranking in computer science, recognition
as the leader in cyberenvironments, and top-3 ranking in three
or more sub-areas by AY04;
- Consolidate our faculty into appropriate space on the central
campus by AY04;
- Improve our faculty/student ratio to the campus average by
AY05;
- Increase our faculty diversity by AY05 to at least 25% women
from the current 20% and 6% minority from our present 2% to better
mirror our student body.
GLOBAL STRATEGIES
- Organize around areas of technical expertise, emphasizing
the connections rather than the distinctions between areas and
the ties to other disciplines;
- Build on areas of strength, opportunity, or competitive advantage;
- Hire the very best people - staff and faculty - and
work hard to help them succeed;
- Aggressively pursue resources from all sources in advance
of their being needed, by utilizing planning to achieve focus
and efficient use of resources;
- Practice continuous quality improvement in all aspects of
our operations.
EDUCATIONAL MISSION: Provide high
quality education in computing that produces leaders prepared
to create human-centered cyberenvironments.
EDUCATIONAL GOALS
- Develop new options for Ph.D. students to prepare them for
non-academic careers (AY00);
- Improve our assessment and evaluation instruments to provide
better feedback, including for tenure & promotion evaluations
(AY00);
- Offer at least three courses by remote or non-campus means
in AY01;
- Determine the need (if any) for new advanced courses for
non-majors by AY01 and develop them by AY03;
- Refine our introductory sequence (1301/1302) to better meet
campus needs by AY02;
- Insure that our programs contribute to campus student retention
rates by AY02;
- Develop a new CS-based major such as software engineering
or information systems to be offered by AY02;
- Create one or more computing certificates or minors such
as networking or simulation by AY02;
- Increase the percentage of incoming freshmen women to at
least 20% and under-represented minorities to at least 12% by
AY02 from the current levels of 14% and 7%;
- Develop at least one new specialized Master's program, such
as information security, by AY02;
- Increase our international programs so that by AY02 at least
30% of our students have direct overseas experience before graduation
and all of our students have some in-class exposure to international
issues;
- Develop a more comprehensive approach to life-long learning
that begins during a student's time on campus by AY04.
EDUCATIONAL STRATEGIES
- Understand the markets that our graduates enter and prepare
students accordingly, always aiming for the high-end of each
market;
- Balance market demand for specific content in our programs
with wisely chosen fundamental material;
- Innovatively integrate computer science, other disciplines
and real-world knowledge in our educational programs, both in
content and process;
- Mentor our students by involving them in all of our activities,
including undergraduate research;
- Increase the potential of our students by providing a broad
range of experiences that prepare them for leadership;
- Provide superior computing education for all areas of campus,
directly and via collaboration;
RESEARCH MISSION: Conduct innovative computing
research that produces significant results, especially in the
context of creating human-centered cyberenvironments
RESEARCH GOALS
- Develop the concept of human-centered cyberenvironments and
the research strategies needed to build them (AY00), then hire
faculty accordingly;
- Hire new faculty to strengthen core CS areas and new educational
program thrusts;
- Hire faculty as needed to strengthen our support of the Yamacraw
Mission, especially in the areas of embedded systems and software
engineering;
- Establish new centers in simulation and in systems research
(AY00);
- Grow GTISC into one of the leading centers in information
security research by AY02;
- Increase the number of large grants and the average per-faculty
external funding to at least $200,000 by AY02 and $250,000 by
AY04 from the current $150,000 percentages, and insure that no
faculty are under-performing;
- Continue to improve the quality of our graduate students
and increase the number of Ph.D. students to a ratio of 5 per
tenure to track faculty by AY03;
- Develop new strength in biocomputing based on existing areas
in the College such as theory, databases and visualization;
- Provide leadership to help the campus develop an outstanding
and coherent program in the socio-economic study of computing
by AY05.
RESEARCH STRATEGIES
- Value collaborative and interdisciplinary research;
- Emphasize experimental/constructive work wherever possible;
- Develop specific expertise areas as needed to strengthen
our overall capacity in human-centered cyberenvironments;
- Aggressively pursue group and block grants;
- Develop new funding sources such as NIH.
SERVICE MISSION: Engage in
effective service activities, especially focused on economic
development.
SERVICE GOALS
- Develop courses as needed to support the Yamacraw Economic
Development Mission
(AY00-01);
- Develop at least two programs for senior IT executives by
AY02;
- Develop a strong service program in information security
by AY02;
- Grow CoC Continuing Education by 30%/year over the next five
years (AY00-04).
SERVICE STRATEGIES
- Produce as many graduates as possible, consistent with the
market, available resources, and our research mission;
- Expand non-traditional educational programs, such as distance-learning
to enable the growth of computing professionals through life-long
learning and Master's programs;
- Address the professional needs of computing and business
leaders;
- Participate fully in state economic-development activities
such as the Yamacraw Mission.
|