The University of Malta’s Faculty of Information and Communication Technology this year launched five new undergraduate programmes. They are designed to make it easier for secondary school students and industry to identify the skills sets, knowledge, and abilities that future graduates will have. They are also closely matched to the needs and requirements of local industry, while giving graduates great opportunity to continue studying at postgraduate level, both locally and abroad.
Since the first students graduated from the University of Malta with BSc IT (Hons) in 1998, we have produced more than 600 IT graduates. This programme was four years long and produced graduates in the fields of computer systems engineering, computer science and artificial intelligence, and computer information systems.
In 2007, coinciding with the launch of the Faculty of ICT, the University decided to offer a three-year BSc ICT (Hons) undergraduate programme and increased the range of possible degrees and degree combinations.
Although these were highly successful, a decision was taken last year to consolidate and clearly differentiate the programmes. We now have five undergraduate programmes (computer engineering, computing science, artificial intelligence, software development, and computing and business).
This set of programmes, which together cover a broad spectrum of ICT, is designed to enable secondary school students to identify the degree that matches their interests and competencies. Industry benefits by having access to graduates with clearly defined and separable learning outcomes.
Under the previous ICT programmes, students reading most of the degrees could choose to also follow a significant subset of another programme to acquire overlapping skills and knowledge.
In the new degree format, the overlap is built into each degree programme, so that the computer engineering, computing science, and artificial intelligence programmes, on the one hand, and the software development and computing and business degree programmes, on the other, share fundamental content.
This ensures that all graduates, rather than a sub-set of them, will know enough about each others’ disciplines and have sufficient common knowledge to complement each other productively.
Indeed, we envisage that forward-thinking industries in Malta will generally employ graduates from each of the degree programmes.
Next year, the Faculty will make its long anticipated move to its new purpose-built building. There will be more room for increasing numbers of undergraduate and postgraduate students. The new building will house several state-of-the-art labs and common areas designed to support creativity and innovation through increased interaction.
The Faculty will launch several more taught Master’s degree programmes (three, in microelectonics, telecommunications, and computer information systems, are already available).
Research output, funded locally and by the EU, will continue to increase.
The Faculty is rapidly producing more PhD graduates, many of whom have been reading for their degrees part-time for the past few years. Many academic members of the Faculty who are pursuing their PhD studies will soon be completing their research.
The Faculty has recently recruited several academics from universities overseas, who have many years of academic and research experience between them, and bring valuable new ideas, research foci, and different outlooks with them.
And we won’t be resting on our laurels. We actively seek to engage in collaborative research and development with industry, make greater contributions to society, and provide a rock-solid basis for our students to pursue further studies locally and abroad. We constantly create new horizons to reach for and extend.
For further information about the Faculty, its departments, members of staff, programmes of study, and research directions visit www.um.edu.mt/ict.
Dr Staff is head of the Department of Intelligent Computer Systems in the Faculty of ICT at the University of Malta.