Eighteen students in the University of Arkansas at Little Rock (UALR) Information Quality (IQ) Graduate Program and three sponsoring organizations were recognized at the UALR Donaghey College of Engineering and Information Technology (EIT) Award Ceremony on May 4, 2015. The Arkansas Department of Education represented by Arijit Sarkar and Dr. Cody Decker, Black Oak Analytics, Inc. represented by Rick McGraw, and SpotRight, Inc. represented by Lanny Ripple received plaques in recognition of their generous support of the UALR IQ Graduate Program. Grants from these organizations funded assistantships, scholarships, and internships for 17 IQ students during the 2014-15 Academic Year.
Sixteen graduating IQ students were recognized for outstanding academic achievement by maintaining a 3.75 or higher GPA in the program. These included PhD students Cheng Chen and Fumiko Kobayashi, MSIQ students Syed Ameenuddin, Meraj Begum, Minhaj Begum, Utsav Chatterjee, Mary Gadde, Kevin Golden, Abhishek Kumar, Mohamed Messaoudi, Nicholas Pippenger, Sarath Kumar Posa, Yekaterina Sheremetyev, Khizer Syed, and Vishali Vennam, and Graduate Certificate student Daniel Richards.
In addition to academic achievement, several IQ students were given special awards. These included Debanjan Mahata, Outstanding Student in the Integrated Computing Program IQ Track Award, Abhishek Kumar, Outstanding Student in the MSIQ Program Award, Vijitha Mukkapati, Outstanding MSIQ Project Award, and Mary Gadde, Outstanding Service Award. The Integrated Computing PhD Program also recognized Pei Wang with its Outstanding First Year Student Award and Debanjan Mahata with its Outstanding Publication Award.
EIT is at the forefront of engineering and information technology education and research in the capital region of Little Rock, in the heart of the state of Arkansas. The college offers a diverse array of high-quality programs ranging from Associates degrees through PhD programs supported by an outstanding faculty.
Started 2006 in collaboration with the MIT Information Quality Program and Acxiom Corporation, the UALR Information Quality Program has an enrollment of 116 students, and has graduated 112 student with Master’s Degrees in IQ and 14 with PhD Degrees in IQ as of May 2015. As an important and growing discipline, and under the umbrella and support of the Information Science department, the UALR Information Quality Graduate Program has been dedicated to promoting state-of-the-art curriculum in information quality education, contributing new ideas to the information quality body of knowledge, and establishing partnerships with the community, government, and industry. With the support of its internationally recognized faculty, the Program continues to serve the growing Information Quality job market with well-prepared graduates, many of whom now hold key positions in nationally and internationally recognized companies and state and federal agencies.
