Informatics Program Home > Cognate Descriptions
Cognate Descriptions
- Biology Informatics
- Business Informatics
- Computer Networking Informatics
- Criminal Justice Informatics
- Digital Media Informatics
- Geosciences Informatics
- Health Science Informatics
- Journalism Informatics
- Pre-MBA Informatics
- Psychology Informatics
- Sociology Informatics
Biology Informatics
"Most biologists talk about "doing bioinformatics" when they use computers to store , compare , retrieve , analyze or predict the composition or the structure of biomolecules." (bioinformatics.org). With the completion of a growing number of major genome sequencing projects, bioinformatics has expanded to include comparative, applied medical, functional and structural approaches. The Biology cognate within the Informatics B.S. degree gives the informatic literate student a sufficient pool of biological knowledge to work in laboratories using these approaches. The Biology cognate requires a minimum number of lab courses, to better prepare the graduate to interact with laboratory research scientists.
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Business Informatics
An informatics degree with a Business cognate prepares students to work with business professionals using information technology to solve business problems. The cognate exposes students to fundamental topics in business such as accounting, economics, and statistics. It also gives students the flexibility to choose among core areas such as finance, marketing, operations management, organizational behavior, and management information systems. If students carefully choose their business courses and are willing to complete some additional credit hours, the MBA Business Foundation cognate can satisfy the prerequisite courses for admission to the Indiana University Southeast Masters in Business Administration program.
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Computer Networking Informatics
The Computer Networking Cognate compliments the courses taken in the Informatics Core by reinforcing important computing areas such as database and networking technology. Students who pursue this cognate will have deeper technical knowledge of how to use databases, and how networks actually transmit data. Graduates will be able to better support networks, and dynamic web sites that are built on the fly by pulling the required information from a database.
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Criminal Justice Informatics
An informatics degree with a Criminal Justice cognate prepares students to work with criminal justice agencies in areas related to the use of information technology. The criminal justice system uses information technology in areas of administration, criminal investigation, research, and computer forensics. Computer forensics is the discipline that combines elements of law and computer science to collect and analyze data from computer systems, networks, wireless communications, and storage devices in a way that is admissible as evidence in a court of law.
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Digital Media Informatics
The Digital Media cognate is the place for those interested in creating, producing, and researching present and emerging digital media. The visually creative person will learn to use the computer as his or her primary tool for developing both print and interactive design. There is much to learn about how to manipulate the software but also to understand typography, page layout, digital photography, and how to optimize graphics for use on the Web. Right now, the demand for creative talent is immense, largely because of the Internet. Because every web related project involves teamwork with people from various technical backgrounds, communication is as important as artistic skills. While creativity and imagination are the most important attributes, understanding what makes things work and an analytical ability to think like a programmer is often very helpful. The core computer classes required for the informatics degree will furnish the logic and analytical skills as a balance to the creative skills developed in the Digital Media cognate.
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Geosciences Informatics
An informatics degree with a Geography cognate prepares students to combine geographic information and information technology. According to ESRI, a leader in GIS software, "geography is a framework for organizing our global knowledge and GIS is a technology for being able to create, manage, publish and disseminate this knowledge for all of society" (gis.com). The power of a geographic information system (GIS) is the ability to combine a set of information (database) with a location (geography). With this link, a GIS professional can layer information on geographic planes in order to analyze the distribution, investigate problems, and answer questions associated with the data and location. The geography cognate will prepare students for a wide range of positions using geographic information science including state and local governments, engineering, environmental consulting, business, and areas of social science.
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Health Science Informatics
An informatics degree with a Health Information cognate prepares students to become professionals who play a critical role in maintaining, collecting, interpreting, analyzing and protecting data that health care providers rely on for research and to deliver quality care. They are experts in coding and classification systems, management of patient health information and administration of computer information systems. These professionals interact with clinical, financial, administrative, information technology and legal staff to interpret data for patient care, research, statistical reporting, planning, and database content development.
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Journalism Informatics
An informatics degree with a Journalism cognate prepares students for rewarding career as a Digital Librarian, Interface Designer, Technical Writer, Web Content Manager, Web Designer, Webmaster, or Web Programmer.
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Pre-MBA Informatics
If students carefully choose their business courses and are willing to complete some additional credit hours, the MBA Business Foundation cognate can satisfy the prerequisite courses for admission to the Indiana University Southeast Masters in Business Administration program.
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Psychology Informatics
An informatics degree with a Psychology cognate develops skills to apply information technology in psychology by working with psychologists on individual projects in specific areas in psychology. Possible areas of interest might include developing virtual reality environments for therapists to use with phobic patients; designing computer programs for psychological research; working on visualization in human-computer interactions.
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Sociology Informatics
An informatics degree with a Sociology cognate prepares students to apply information technologies to all aspects of social life. Scientists recognize that our unique communicative skills separate humans from other species. The written word dramatically transformed our social and political landscapes. The telegraph, telephone, radio, and television shrunk the world community. We now live in an all encompassing and interconnected world driven by the digital technologies of computers, cell phones, blackberries, PDAs, and the Internet.
The Sociology cognate will help students understand how information technologies impact our social fabric - a fabric that includes family, religion, health care, science, careers, politics, personal privacy, crime, war and peace. Additionally, students will learn to use computer related technologies that help social scientists to study and better understand the social environment.
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