Simmons University, an educational institution where traditional undergraduate programs are restricted to women, has announced the launch of a new certificate program. The Inter-Professional Informationist (IPI) program will bridge the gap between traditional and emergent skills in health sciences and biomedical librarianship and aims also to increase the diversity in the informationist workforce. Informationists are librarians or information specialists qualified to engage in research and knowledge management services in clinical care or biomedical research.
“We are proud to offer this unique, practical program,” said Marie desJardins, dean of the Simmons University College of Organizational, Computational, and Information Sciences. “At Simmons, we continue to examine the needs of today’s marketplace and offer programs that prepare our graduates to thrive.”
The IPI certificate can be completed in one year and includes seven courses and an embedded capstone experience supervised by researchers and clinical leaders arranged by project partner institutions. The partner institutions include Harvard Medical School, the Massachusetts College of Pharmacy and Health Science, Tufts University, Boston University, Stanford University, the University of California at Los Angeles, and the University of California at San Francisco.