Our lives today float embedded in a sea of computing and data. The ability to assemble and search ever larger and denser datasets while sensing and interacting with the physical world have given computing a prominent role not only in the social, physical and natural sciences, but in entertainment, health and wellbeing, the visual arts, and the humanities.

The Computer Science Department recognizes its responsibility to interact, educate, and lead the community as it seeks to understand the impact of technology on the welfare of its citizens. Examples of this commitment include our Speaker’s Bureau, Robot Theater, and ExploreU.

If you would like us to engage with your community in other ways, please contact us.

Public Engagement in the College of Liberal Arts and Sciences

The University of Iowa’s core mission extends beyond the classrooms, laboratories, studios, and libraries where we educate students, conduct our research, and create new artistic work. Equally important is our engagement with communities throughout Iowa, across the nation, and around the world. 

Our faculty, students, and staff work to solve problems, imagine new approaches to challenges, and improve quality of life, often through service-learning courses in which students earn academic credit. 

It’s a virtuous circle: When UI expertise is harnessed to help a community or region improve the lives of its residents, the experience adds unique educational value to students’ academic journeys, and advances the research and creative production of our faculty. In turn, that new knowledge empowers us to help more communities, solve more problems, and improve more lives. 

The UI is not just the University of Iowa, we're the University for Iowa—and throughout the College of Liberal Arts and Sciences, we are proud to serve.