INST335: Organizations, Management, and Teamwork is a required class for the Information Science degree at UMD-College Park. INST335 is a weak imitation of an introduction to business class, which lightly brushes on basic teamwork and business concepts and practices with very little elaboration on how to apply them or why they work. Its content is not at all related to Information Science. Even if the content of the class was significantly improved, we doubt a student who has taken this class would do any better in the workplace than a student who has not taken this class.

For these reasons, this petition calls for INST335 to be dropped from the Information Science degree requirements. Perhaps the degree as a whole could use some restructuring of its requirements and priorities, but that’s another discussion. The iSchool could simply drop INST335, it could replace it with another required class, or it could make larger-scope changes to the degree requirements which include removing INST335. In any scenario, this class is a waste of tuition money and should not be required.