Collaboration between SIS and the City of Pittsburgh results in impactful student projects
Professors of practice from the University of Pittsburgh School of Information Sciences (SIS), Leona Mitchell and Dmitriy Babichenko, have fostered an exciting collaboration between SIS and the City of Pittsburgh’s Department of Innovation and Performance in order to work on special projects that will benefit both the City and SIS’ students in impactful ways.
The collaboration was prompted by the City of Pittsburgh’s Chief Innovation and Performance Officer Debra Lam, who reached out to SIS for a fresh outsider perspective on projects in the spring of 2015. Mitchell saw the opportunity to not only build a relationship with the City but to offer undergraduate students at SIS valuable real-world experience that would challenge their perception of what an information scientist does.
Mitchell, Babichenko, and four undergraduate students moved forward with a project that focused on an evaluation of the City’s help desk. The project incorporated elements of business analysis, problem solving, and research along side the more obvious technical requirements a student at SIS would be familiar with. “I felt it was a good undergraduate project, and took into account all the things that an information professional would need to know” said Mitchell. Read more >