Programs

Academic Program Offerings

Graduate Certificate in Knowledge Services and Enterprise Management (KSEM)

Knowledge Services and Enterprise Management (KSEM) is a new interdisciplinary graduate certificate program at the UCSC Silicon Valley Center. KSEM studies the application of information systems and knowledge services to the management of high tech enterprises and other complex systems, synthesizing ideas from fields such as computer science, economics, and business management, and extending these to address challenges faced in today’s global and knowledge-based economy. Key features of the program:

Core courses and selected electives taught by UCSC faculty
Emphasis on building the range of skills required to design and manage technology-based service enterprises, including relevant technologies and an understanding of the operational, financial and marketing dimensions of the high tech enterprise
All courses offered at UCSC Silicon Valley Center, located at the NASA Ames Research Center, Moffett Field, CA

This program is first offered in 2006-07.

M.S. and Ph.D. in Technology & Information Management

The Technology and Information Management (TIM) program in its teaching and research, addresses Management of Technology (MOT), and its dual, the development of decision technology to support or enable managers (which we call the Technology of Management or TOM), in the environment of dynamic and highly competitive commercial "high-tech" enterprises. These enterprises are characterized by an increasingly larger proportion of customers requiring knowledge services rather than traditional products. TIM is a new and distinct discipline within engineering, combining technology management, systems engineering, and information systems. The graduates of its academic programs will have a solid technology base from engineering and information technology, coupled with an understanding of the functions comprising business enterprises. Building on this foundation, TIM courses will teach analytical methods in the context of the management challenges faced by enterprises that create new products and services. These analytically-trained graduates will be prepared to take leadership roles in existing companies or to help create new enterprises. Its Ph.D. graduates will be exceptionally well-equipped for careers in academia or industrial research. In MOT, we emphasize development of theory, analytical results, methods and tools that more closely couple economic factors into engineering services and product decisions of firms. MOT includes studies of the role of information technology in the management of complex systems of both technology and people. Complex systems may involve relationships with partner companies (e.g. customers and suppliers) or among divisions of a large corporation, as well as interactions between organizations and their customers. These components often act with different economic interests, and involve people and information systems. The customer interface involves:

New aspects of marketing, including web-based and internet marketing
Resource management of teams with different skill sets and cultures
Integrating front-end and back-end enterprise services

MOT also includes supply chain management, management of new product development and product portfolios, allocation of financial resources, and also those related to management of industrial research, the engineering of new products, product manufacturing and customer support. Many of these new information and internet-centric elements require a major shift in approach. In TOM, the emphasis is on development of both theory and software to enable organizations to manage large collections of data in a way that preserves and enhances the information and knowledge that data represents, as well as enabling people in an organization to retrieve that information in a timely and comprehensible way. Thus with TOM a key objective is to provide corporate decision-makers with the means to exploit the large collections of data now gathered, in areas from manufacturing to sales to services. The end goal is to create enterprise-efficient solutions integrating people and software solutions. Both MOT and TOM interact closely with economics, psychology, digital media and fine arts and other aspects of the human, cognitive and customer interfaces which characterize the newly forming area of services science. This full program offering is in development, with limited admissions and a subset of class offerings currently available both at UCSC main campus and the Silicon Valley Center. Complete admissions and offerings are anticipated to begin in fall 2008.

B.S. in Information Systems and Technology Management

Information Systems and Technology Management (ISM) is the application of information technology to support the major functions and activities of either a private sector business or public sector institution. In the past, organizations recognized the importance of managing resources such as labor, capital, and raw materials. Today, it is widely accepted that managing the information resource is very often equally important. ISM supports the process of collection, manipulation, storage, distribution and utilization of an organization's information resources. The program combines the fundamental intellectual content of both Computer Science and Business Management Economics. It is a rigorous, challenging major for those students that want to pursue a career of solving business problems through the use of information technology. The ISM program is structured to enable students to accomplish this. To do so, they must gain the math and science fundamentals of computer science and an understanding of the environment in which information technology (IT) solutions will be applied through economics and business courses. This program has been offered since 1998.