The University of Washington and
The Information School Overview

The University of Washington was founded in 1861 as the Territorial University of Washington. From a school serving fewer than forty students, it has grown to be the largest single-campus institution of higher learning in the West. Today, approximately 2,500 full-time faculty serve a student population of thirty-four thousand, one-fourth of them graduate and professional students. The University offers undergraduate, master's and doctoral degrees in eighty-eight departments and units.

Further information about the University and details concerning programs and course descriptions may be found in the University of Washington General Catalog, available for purchase from the University Bookstore, 4326 University Way Northeast, Seattle, Washington 98105 or on the University of Washington home page: www.washington.edu

The Information School (or iSchool), formerly the School of Library and Information Science, was established in 1911 and is the oldest information and library science school west of the Mississippi. The Law Librarianship Program was the first of its kind at the time it was established in 1939. View our 90th Anniversary Website

The Masters of Library and Information Science degree has been accredited continuously by the American Library Association since 1926 and is the only accredited library and information science program in the Pacific Northwest region of the United States.

In the Fall of 2000 the school initiated two new programs, a Bachelor of Science in Informatics and a Ph.D. in Information Science. Informatics students study information systems from a wide perspective including the people, the information, and the information technology.

Ph.D. students seek theoretical and empirical explanations for information phenomena from the perspective of an information scientist and with a human-centered approach - a focus on information and people.

In the Fall of 2000 the school moved into new quarters in Mary Gates Hall, one of the University of Washington's flagship high-technology buildings. In Mary Gates the school has excellent office, research, and technology facilities available for faculty, students, and staff.

On July 1, 2001 the "Information School" name became official and the iSchool became the University of Washington's 16th separately organized school and college. The school was previously located within the Graduate School.

In Fall 2001 the school launched a Master of Science in Information Management degree targeted at mid-career professionals and in Fall 2002 the school launched a distance education version of the Master of Science in Library Science degree program.

More than 500 students are enrolled in the school across our all our programs and students have a wide variety of backgrounds and life experiences. Over 75 percent come from the Pacific Northwest, although students are recruited from all over the country and from foreign countries as well.

A pioneering tradition has characterized the School since its early founding as "first in the West." The School continues to grow and change in response to the changing needs of society. The school's Dean, Mike Eisenberg, arrived in 1998. With the strong support of the University and the hard work of faculty, staff, and students, we are working hard to make the iSchool one of the top information schools in the world.