While Informatics academics are the intellectual core of our program, college is not only about courses — it is also about people and community. In fact, we believe that the learning you’ll do outside of class with your peers at the university and in Informatics is just as important as your coursework, if not more.

In supporting student community, we center several values:

• Diversity. We celebrate and seek diversity in all its forms and view it as essential for creating learning opportunities.
• Equity. Every student should have the resources they need to learn, and we should discover those needs in partnership with you.
• Inclusion. We believe that everyone should feel like a full, welcome and valued member of our learning community.
• Accessibility. Everyone, independent of their abilities, should be able to participate fully in our community. We constantly strive for disability justice in all we do.
• Sovereignty. We respect, value and celebrate the sovereignty of the Native North American peoples whose lands we learn upon, and strive to incorporate Indigenous systems of knowledge in our teaching and learning.
• Justice. We believe that information technology should be used as a tool to dismantle racial, gender, and ability-based systems of oppression — not reinforce them.

We support our students in creating a vibrant social learning community around these values in several ways.

Welcoming

We take welcoming seriously. In addition to shorter orientations upon admissions, we also offer an entire 1-credit course, INFO 290 Informatics Orientation, which is intended to help you meet current students and faculty in the program, connect with affinity groups around shared interests and identity, chart your course through Informatics course offerings, learn about Informatics-affiliated student organizations, and begin thinking about your entry to Informatics careers or graduate school. We’re always looking for better ways to welcome newcomers, and give them the agency to shape Informatics student culture around their needs, values, and identities.

Teamwork and Collaboration

Most of the courses in our school center collaborative work with other students, connecting you with your peers in and out of class to understand what you’re learning and create together. These are not merely group projects, but also opportunities to make new friends, meet people from across the state, country and world, and catalyze new interests. We view in-class teamwork as a central part of catalyzing out-of-class peer learning and community. In fact, many of these in-class collaborations turn into side projects, activism, Capstones, entrepreneurship and jobs.

Student Organizations

We support and facilitate a vibrant community of Informatics-affiliated registered student organizations (RSOs), including:

• IUGA, which is the “big tent” Informatics organization, serves the entire community of Informatics majors with fun, community-building events as well as programming that focuses on professional development.
• WINFO, which seeks to empower women to thrive in technology fields, hosting hackathons, social gatherings, and company tours.
• DubsTech, which seeks to build the practical technical skills of students on campus.

We offer funding and other resources to these and other RSOs to help them enrich and support our learning community.

Watch: Examples of the extracurricular activities in which Informatics participate at the UW, including internships, jobs, student groups, study abroad, research and more.