The UW Board of Regents will vote Thursday on whether to move the UW-Madison School of Computer, Data, and Information Sciences (CDIS) out of the College of Letters and Science into a new College of Computing and Artificial Intelligence.
UW-Madison leaders say establishing the college is necessary because CDIS’s enrollment is outpacing its current status as a school. The move would also help make existing campus AI-related initiatives, such as efforts to hire more faculty in the field, more visible.
There are currently 13 schools and colleges at UW-Madison, including the College of Agricultural and Life Sciences, the College of Engineering and the College of Letters and Science.
The new college would house the Departments of Computer Science and Statistics and the Information School that make up CDIS.
The university created CDIS in 2019 under former Chancellor Rebecca Blank, who noted the computer science program was rapidly outgrowing its facilities, leading to the construction of a new building to house the school.
This fall, Morgridge Hall, located in the middle of campus on University Avenue, opened as the hub for the school. The $267 million, 343,000-square-foot facility is UW-Madison’s largest privately funded building.
Badger alumni John and Tashia Morgridge, longtime philanthropists behind other major campus projects, donated $140 million to the project.
BUILDING THE NEW COLLEGE
Under the proposal, about $36 million from the College of Letters and Science’s $500 million budget would go toward the new College of Computing and AI.
The total budget for the College of Computing and Artificial Intelligence is expected to be about $85 million. UW-Madison says it is seeking additional funding from donors to support faculty hiring, research and student programs in the new college.
In materials submitted ahead of Thursday’s meeting, UW-Madison said the realignment won’t affect programs offered or the accreditation status of programs currently under the College of the Letters and Science.
The reorganization of the school into a college, if approved, is expected to begin July 1, the start of the university’s 2027 fiscal year.
ENROLLMENT DOUBLES
CDIS student enrollment has doubled since 2019, and the program houses the university’s fastest-growing major. In recent years, students sometimes face waiting lists while enrolling in introductory courses.
COMPUTER AND DATA SCIENCES SCHOOL STUDENT INTEREST BOOMS
This fall, the school had about 6,300 students, up from the 3,600 enrolled in 2021 when UW-Madison announced it was constructing Morgridge Hall. As of this fall, there were 106 tenure-track faculty who work in CDIS.
Computer science came out as the top area of study based on the number of degrees awarded to those who graduated in the last three semesters, followed by economics, psychology, data science and biology.
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