Students develop knowledge and technical skills in foundation areas of formal methods, programming, information system design, human computer interaction and information law and ethics. Students gain working familiarity with one or more programming languages if not already acquired. Based on this foundation, students have leeway to craft a remaining selection of courses in consultation with and approval by their academic adviser and the MSIS steering committee.

 Flexibility is provided to accommodate the particular backgrounds, interests and information system professional career aspirations of each student as well as to be responsive to the ever-changing technological and business environments. Thus students might choose to focus additional coursework within a specific information systems domain or pursue course interests among several applications and theory domains including business, engineering, computer science, psychology, education and additional germane science areas. The goal is to prepare graduates to succeed as information system professionals in a variety of roles and settings.