Illinois Tech is launching a new College of Computing to help prepare students for tech jobs of the future and provide Chicago with the talent it needs to boost its tech ecosystem.
The Illinois Institute of Technology, otherwise known as Illinois Tech, announced this week that it has launched the College of Computing, which will house the school's computer science, data science, artificial intelligence, applied mathematics, cybersecurity, and information technology and management programs. The college will start on June 1 in advance of the fall 2020 semester.
Chicago serial entrepreneur Chris Gladwin helped spearhead the initiative and, along with Illinois Tech's computer science department and advisory board, examined how other universities like Carnegie Mellon and Georgia Tech developed similar colleges of computing to help prepare students for tech careers.
Gladwin, who is currently the CEO of Chicago startup Ocient and previously sold his startup Cleversafe to IBM for $1.3 billion, said in an interview that having a college of computing is an "essential ingredient" to bolstering Chicago's status as a tech hub.
"Unless you have at least one leading computer science or computing university in your city, you will not be a tech leader," Gladwin said.
Gladwin is also leading an effort called P33, which looks to make Chicago a top-tier city for technology, and P33 worked with Illinois Tech to create the new college.
"This is directly relevant to what P33 is doing, and it was very much coordinated," he said.
The result for Chicago is that the city will hopefully have more graduates prepared to fill high-tech roles at local companies. And for Illinois Tech, the new college will help ensure students across the university---from design to law to business---are fluent in data and computing. The College of Computing will allow for joint research and program collaboration across multiple disciplines, providing a foundation of computation and data science across the university.
Last year Illinois Tech launched its first Bachelor of Science in Artificial Intelligence. The school was the first university in the Midwest to offer an undergraduate degree in AI.
