Partnership with Carnegie Mellon
In January 2003, SMU and Carnegie Mellon University (CMU) forged a four-year strategic partnership intended to leverage the experience and expertise of CMU faculty to assist SMU in establishing an innovative School of Information Systems (SIS) that would offer undergraduates a business-oriented IT education. In the four years that followed, the partnership exceeded its initial objectives, extending beyond efforts related to the new SIS into activities that benefited both partners. In recognition of this success, and of the potential for even deeper collaboration, SMU and Carnegie Mellon agreed in May 2007 to extend their partnership for an additional four years.
In its first phase, the SMU-CMU partnership focused on the following:
- faculty recruitment, development and mentoring
- establishment and development of SIS's undergraduate programme, including curriculum and course design
- establishment of the flagship SMU - CMU Fast-Track programme supported by the Singapore IDA's National Infocomm Scholarship scheme, which enables SIS students to graduate within four-and-a-half years with both a bachelor's degree from SMU and a master's degree from Carnegie Mellon.
In its second phase, the relationship will focus on the following:
- faculty selection, mentoring and evaluation
- establishment and growth of SIS post-graduate education, including a research-focused PhD programme, a research-focused Masters programme and a professionally-oriented Masters programme
- establishment of collaborative research efforts leading to joint faculty research outputs, funded projects and PhD student interactions
- establishment of appropriate process and feedback for ensuring a systematic approach to redesign innovation and quality improvement for all major SIS educational programmes, research efforts and related administrative support
Going forward, both institutions will continue to develop new funded research projects, which will provide additional resources for our faculty and students to collaborate, and will also reinforce our shared mission to produce high-quality, globally relevant research that impacts both theory and practice.
In March 2011, Singapore Management University (SMU) and Carnegie Mellon University (CMU) in Pittsburgh Pennsylvania, USA, have teamed up to establish the Living Analytics Research Centre (LARC). The Centre will develop new techniques to acquire data on consumer and social behavior and pioneer new approaches to analyse such data to develop applications and methods that will benefit consumers, businesses and society. To find out more about this partnership, please visit the SMU-Carnegie Mellon Living Analytics Research Centre (LARC) website.