Other early labs will study innovative uses of technology. The institute will offer a testing grounds for novel technologies and give companies access to faculty knowledge and student creativity. The idea for the institute grew out of conversations between university leaders and Jim Vanderslice, Dell vice chairman. Soon after UNC Charlotte established the College of Information Technology and made the Department of Computer Science a unit of the college in July 2000, Hadzikadic, UNC Charlotte Chancellor James Woodward and Provost Denise Trauth began meeting with leaders of some of the top IT companies in the United States. The purpose of meetings was to introduce the college and to learn how it might work together with companies to solve IT problems.
More corporate partners are likely to join the institute in the next few months.
Preliminary plans call for institute personnel to be housed primarily within the facilities of the College of Information Technology and later within the planned Charlotte Institute for Technology Innovation complex at UNC Charlotte. The College of Information technology will add a second department in July 2001. Its instructional area of focus will be software and information systems. UNC Charlotte is the only university in the Carolinas with a college solely devoted to the study and advancement of information technology.