Celebrating a Decade of Growth and Impact
Between sips of boba tea and slices of birthday cake, more than 500 students, faculty, and staff gathered on April 8 to mark the 10th anniversary of the Manning College of Information and Computer Sciences (CICS). The CICS Birthday Bash was a chance to reflect on the college’s remarkable growth since the University of Massachusetts Amherst School of Computer Science was elevated to a college, while looking ahead to an exciting future. Attendees lined up to grab CICS merchandise—a commemorative T-shirt designed by informatics major Selena Luo. They enjoyed refreshments and participated in a video greeting card station, recording messages celebrating the college’s achievements and offering well wishes for the future. Guests were also treated to mini-tours of the college’s brand-new, state-of-the-art Computer Science Laboratories building, a 90,000-square-foot learning and collaboration space that opened in October 2025.
The past decade has been a time of tremendous growth for the university’s youngest college. Student enrollment has almost tripled, and the number of faculty has more than doubled. Among other milestones, a $15 million gift from the MassMutual Foundation established the college’s Center for Data Science and Artificial Intelligence and the UMass Amherst Cybersecurity Institute in 2016, while a $18 million endowment from Robert and Donna Manning formally named the college in 2021.
The college also built on its history of innovative teaching during this time, launching an undergraduate degree in informatics in 2019, an online master’s program in computer science in 2021, and an undergraduate certificate in public interest technology in 2023.
"CICS has come a long way in a relatively short time," said former Donna M. and Robert J. Manning Dean Laura Haas, who led the college for eight years, serving as dean until 2025. "We’re proud of the strides we’ve made in computing education and research, and we’re incredibly grateful to everyone—every member of the CICS community—who has been part of this journey."
As the event ended, organizers tallied the submissions to a word cloud generated with partygoers’ answers to the question, "What is one word you’d use to describe CICS?" ’Inclusive,’ ‘collaborative,’ and ’innovation’ appeared as the top picks—fitting words for a college defined by its mission of "Computing for the Common Good."
View photos from the event
Download the infographic "10 Years of Impact & Growth"
This story originally appeared in the Winter 2025–2026 issue of Significant Bits magazine.