Temple MIS

Connect and innovate with an elite information systems program

Fox School of Business

Munir Mandviwalla

Great Teacher Award for David Schuff

DavidSchuffGTATrophyProfessor David Schuff, chair of the MIS department received Temple’s most prestigious teaching award, the Temple University Great Teacher Award at a special university convocation on March 28, 2019. 

According to the university official documentation:

“Established in 1988 by the Board of Trustees, the Temple University Great Teacher Awards recognize faculty members annually for their continuous excellence in teaching. Each award carries a stipend and each awardee receives a commemorative sculpture and framed certificate. In addition, each recipient’s name is engraved on the Great Teachers Wall in the Founder’s Garden. ” 

MIS launches new Visiting Scholar series

Amrit TiwanaDr. Amrit Tiwana, P. George Benson Professor of Management Information Systems at the University of Georgia, is the inaugural MIS Visiting Scholar.

The MIS Visiting Scholar Series engages leading academics in a short residency at Temple. As part of the residency, the scholars engage with Fox faculty, doctoral students, and Institute for Business and Information Technology board members.

According to MIS Department Chair David Schuff, who created the program to foster collaboration and bring in new research and teaching ideas: 

“The Visiting Scholar program is a great way to gain new perspectives from top faculty in the field, and also to share with them the great things we are doing at Fox.”

Tiwana, an expert in platform ecosystems and IT architecture, has collaborated with organizations such as UPS, SAP, IBM, Lilly, and Toshiba. During his Temple visit, he led seminars on industry relevant research. Tiwana also engaged in one-on-one collaborative sessions with faculty, met with members of the Fox IT advisory board, and served as a guest speaker in a doctoral seminar.

The series will host one visiting scholar per semester. The next visitor is planned for Fall 2018.

Alums Ying Liang-Chai and Sameer Anand excel in their careers

Sameer AnandAs a Senior Program Manager of Connected Home Quality at Comcast, Sameer Anand tries to address problems before customers even know they exist. He and his team review operational data, machine metrics and customer reports, all tasks Anand can easily tackle in part because of what he studied while earning his BBA in Management Information Systems from Temple University’s Fox School of Business.

But even more critical to his current success, he said, are the “soft skills” he learned at Temple.

A lot of professors tried to relate things to the real world, not only the ‘hard’ skills, like coding, but also how business decisions get made with analysis and process,” said Anand, who graduated in 2012.  “I’ve been able to apply those skills to every job and position that I’ve been in and it’s really helped me.

Ying LiangYing Liang-Chai, BBA ’02, agreed. The things she learned adjacent to the classroom– working with teams on class projects and leading a student  organization, in her case the campus chapter of the Association for Computing Machinery (now called Association for Information Systems) – have proven crucial to her career success.

All the courses prepare you technically but the soft skills are just as important,” said Liang-Chai, who has been an Audit Director for Information Security and Privacy Risks at GlaxoSmithKline since 2012. “That’s the real world.

After leaving Fox, Anand spent four years working as a Senior Consultant focusing in Enterprise Applications (SAP) at IBM. Before taking his current full-time job at Comcast in June 2017, he worked for the company as a contractor deploying Next Generation Cable & Internet hardware and assessing cross-functional impacts.

These are all very different jobs, Anand noted, but again his soft skills training made the transitions easier.

There’s always a learning curve with a new job but people can learn how our products work; that’s pretty easy,” he said. “But it’s a lot tougher to learn how to conduct high-level analysis, how to solve business problems, to understand what questions to ask and what steps to take.  

Liang-Chai, too, held a variety of positions at different companies before first joining GSK as an audit manager in 2008. Her first job after Fox was as an Enterprise Risk Services consultant at Deloitte, where she also interned before starting her senior year. She used Fox’s Career Services office and other resources to help secure internships every year since she was a sophomore.

All the services Temple offered definitely helped,” Liang-Chai said. “It not only helps you decide what you want to do but it also helps you identify things you don’t want to do.

Anand said he has now found what he wants to do. His current job is in a growing space, including smart home technology as well as security monitoring. He’s also a fan of the tech which allows him to do things like turn on his home heating system so he can return to a warm, welcoming space at the end of a long, cold day.  

It’s interesting to be working for a company that is trying to be at the front line of innovation. Comcast is watching consumer behavior pretty closely and aligning some of our future products accordingly,” said Anand, noting his growing interest in smart home tech and automation. “It makes my day to day pretty interesting and keeps me engaged because not only am I working in the space but I’m also a consumer.

Liang-Chai enjoys her current work because the internal audit function provides an enterprise view of the business, offering lessons  in complex businesses and processes in a short time and identify areas of improvement. Every audit or project beings a new challenge.

You are constantly learning,” She said. “I enjoy working in partnership with stakeholders from around the world to drive meaningful action and improve risk management strategies.

She also likes that her job allows her to juggle her work and being mother of a 6-year-old son and a 4-year-old daughter.

I think that’s important too, balancing work and personal life, ” Liang-Chai said. “It can be hard at times, but knowing your priorities, finding work you are passionate about and having a strong support system helps.

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Capstone projects focus on analytics, matching, procurement, biometrics, and contact management

Sandbox 2017MIS seniors presented final projects at the Fall 2017 Capstone Project Showcase.  The showcase featured ten teams of seniors who presented projects on everything from automated grocery store checkout to a better way to find events in the area.

The winning team, which was selected by a panel of industry experts and Temple faculty, designed a platform for engineers to procure and track equipment for universities and makerspaces. The platform uses digital forms and cloud technology to procure lab equipment transparently. Mentored by Chris Cera, CEO of Arcweb Technologies, the Sandbox team of Shawn Niederriter, Ed Lahm, Zach Trona, and Ken Fong received a $500 prize. 

The full roster of projects presented at the December 2017 event included:

MIS Achievement Points
An application that analyzes student data, identifies patterns, and provides suggestions for how MIS students can earn MIS Professional Achievement Points to ensure that they graduate on time.
Team: Marc Gold, Adriana Shuster, Josh Veloso, Run Zhu
Mentor: Munir Mandviwalla

Temple Course Scheduling 1
An application that utilizes historical data to provide better academic planning recommendations to academic advisors and course administrators.
Team: John Canavati, Liang Wu, Kevin Zheng, Taiki Sugiyama
Mentor: Sunil Misra

Temple Course Scheduling 2
A platform that helps course administrators and academic advisors better plan for upcoming semesters to ensure the most efficient allocation of resources.
Team: Melina Ghuman, Xueming (Ming) Guo, Kou-Lun Chang.
Mentor: Joe Spagnoletti

RoomMe
An application that provides a centralized platform for college students to identify and connect with potential roommates based on various preferences.
Team: Xiaozhou (Hana) Yu, Matt Oberst, Josh Grover, Kasey Brown
Mentor: Sondra Barbour

Maptivities
A central hub for users to identify events in their area, connect with others attending those events, and arrange for safe transportation to and from the area.
Team: Dan Genuario, Chris Resentreter, Stan Okoro, Serena You
Mentor: Bruce Fadem

Sandbox
A procurement platform for universities and makerspaces who are looking to purchase and track engineering equipment while managing their inventory.
Team: Shawn Niederriter, Ed Lahm, Zach Trona, Ken Fong
Mentor: Chris Cera

TU Study
A way for students at Temple University to identify and reserve common spaces for studying. App will allow for reservations in the TECH Center, Writing Center, and more.
Team: BS Srinath Amruth, Glen M. Diener, Jacky Wong
Mentor: Cindy Leavitt

Impulse
An application that combines real-time biometric data with GPS to allow police offers to more efficiently call for back-up when in pursuit of a suspect.
Team: Tony Nguyen, Weiming He, Yaning Wang, Siling Zhang
Mentor: John Wiggs

Grocery Guru
A mobile application that allows grocery shoppers to scan as they go and manually check out rather than waiting in line at the store.
Team: Tony Wu, Vincent Furlong, Emily Schucker, Jonathan Kerr
Mentor: Sukumar Narayanan

Intro
Rather than using physical business cards, Intro allows users to sync their social media accounts and contact information into one application so that it can be shared with others in an instant.
Team: Ben Bucceri, Martin Esser-Munera,  Oscar Zhang, Matt Maling, Mohammad Alkurdi
Mentor: Niraj Patel

Bauman is building the next generation of learning software

BaumanKonstantin Bauman’s research – building novel machine learning models – sounds challenging. Then he provides more details.

For a recent experiment with the University of the People, a non-profit online higher education institution, Bauman developed systems that were able to assess a student’s overall course work, find weaknesses and then make specific study recommendations before the final exam. The experiment showed that students who received personalized tips received significantly higher grades than the students who received no guidelines or generalized ones. 

It was a very simple algorithm but we really helped real people with their studies,” Bauman said.  “I’m really proud of the results of these first experiments and now we’re looking at going to the next stage, not only telling students what to read but saying, ‘You should participate in this online discussion’ or ‘You should watch this video.’

Assistant Professor Bauman, who joined the Management Information Systems Department of Temple University’s Fox School of Business for the Fall 2017 semester, has undergraduate degrees in Mathematics and Data Mining and earned his Ph.D. in Geometry and Topology in 2012 from Moscow State University. 

Before coming to the United States to work as a postdoctoral research scientist at New York University’s Stern School of Business, Bauman was in charge on machine learning research at Yandex LLC, “the Russian version of Google.” One of his projects there involved developing algorithms to determine which advertisements would be most appealing to users. Even a slight increase in the click-through-rate can mean millions of dollars for a business, he said.

Everything you do – any application you use or your clicks on a website — generates data,” said Bauman, who is teaching a course this semester on data mining. “A good business person should know how to get knowledge and insights from the data.

Many people don’t realize that machine learning and recommender systems are already making their lives easier, he said. It’s the technology behind email spam filters, Google’s top search results, Amazon product recommendations and Yelp restaurant suggestions. It is moving beyond algorithms identifying that someone who enjoyed the first book in the Harry Potter series should read the second one. 

That’s something that’s most likely already on your radar. We should provide new recommendations or unexpected recommendations,” he said. “We have information coming at us from everywhere and trying to consume it all would be overwhelming so we need this advice.

Bauman’s current projects include creating algorithms to make better restaurant recommendations based on user input and further exploring how machine learning can help humans in their studies. He is collecting data from students in his current programming class with the hope of aiding future students.

Since it’s a first programming course for most of our students, the best approach would be to practice, practice a lot.  We are developing a system where students can study online and take the provided learning activities in any order,” he said. “My idea is to find a way to recommend the ideal path so they don’t take all of the assignments, just the ones that will be beneficial to them. These recommendations should help students reach their learning goals in the most efficient and effective way.

PRO accelerates student professional development

Professional Achievement Dashboard

MIS announces the successful rollout of version 4 of the Community platform professional achievement program. Since 2008, the program continues to break new ground in creating a structured measurable process for student professional development that provides recognition, external and internal branding, and opportunities for high achievers. The program pioneered at Fox MIS has been licensed at other universities, while portions have been copied by others. 

Changes in version 4 include:

  • New e-portfolio design with interactive customizable widgets that highlight professional achievement and a verified badge
  • New Dashboard analytics to manage graduation requirements and comparison with peers
  • New much simpler PRO point submission, review, and management process
  • More PRO point earning opportunities (e.g., study abroad)
  • New calendar to locate PRO point earning opportunities
  • More curriculum checkpoints for on-time graduation
  • New PRO site that integrates all the information related to the program
  • Much better swag
  • New name – PRO!

According to Dr. Munir Mandviwalla who is working on the project with Assistant Director Manoj Chacko and Assistant Professor Laurel Miller: 

PRO provides the structure for professional development. The goal is for students to get good jobs; so the e-portfolio badge summarizes professional achievement, the points widget lists the activities, while the posts show how each activity influences professional development. Finally, PRO points measure activities so that students can get started early and stay on track using analytics available on an integrative Dashboard. 

As part of the above roll out, the overall MIS Community site was updated with new content, a new mobile responsive look and feel, including the new Community activity widget. The e-portfolios of faculty, staff, and Master’s students also have a new mobile responsive look and feel with capabilities that integrate with the main site (e.g., research news). 

MIS Majors are the highest-paid business school graduates

IS Job IndexStudents who earn degrees in information systems (IS) earn higher starting salaries than fellow business-school counterparts. And they benefit from one of the fastest national placement averages.

These statistics are just some of the findings from the latest edition of the Information Systems Job Index, produced by researchers from Temple University’s Fox School of Business, in partnership with the Association for Information Systems (AIS).

Published and released in January 2018, the third installment of the IS Job Index culled the responses of 2,140 IS graduates of the Class of 2017, from 58 universities nationwide.

Some of the index’s more-interesting findings include:

  • Salaries for IS undergraduates ($62,820) are the highest among students who pursue typical business majors ($52,047).
  • The percentage of women in IS jobs (39%) is more than double that of women in other STEM fields like computer science (18%).
  • Internships double the likelihood of an IS student getting a job offer (39% for those who hold at least one internship vs. 16% for those who do not).

There are more than 3 million IS jobs in the U.S. alone,” said index co-author Dr. Munir Mandviwalla, associate professor of management information systems (MIS) at Temple University’s Fox School of Business. “This data is critical for parents of college-age children, current and prospective students seeking an accurate job outlook, employers, and policymakers—and it cannot be found anywhere else.

Mandviwalla conducted research for the latest installment of the IS Job Index and co-authored it with Dr. Crystal Harold, associate professor of human resource management at Temple’s Fox School of Business, and Maria Boggi, a junior MIS major in the Fox School and Temple University Honor’s programs.

The AIS-Temple Fox School Job Index is the only systematic assessment of the IS job market. It is a joint project, with support from AmerisourceBergen and LiquidHub, to produce reliable national-level data on placement, job type, satisfaction, and related factors like career services, knowledge level, preparedness, and search strategies. 

MIS alum, Gord Burtch receives two international awards

Gordon BurtchGordon Burtch (Ph.D., 2013), Assistant Professor of Information and Decision Sciences and Lawrence Fellow, University of Minnesota, Carlson School of Management received the 2017 Association for Information Systems – AIS Early Career Award. Gord is one of five recipients worldwide. He also received the 2017 Information Systems Society Sandra A. Slaughter Early Career Award of The Institute for Operations Research and the Management Sciences (INFORMS). Gord is a Temple MIS alum who was advised by Dr. Sunil Wattal. 

Cognitive computing, AI, and analytics

Cognitive ComputingLearn best practices and current state-of-the-art from industry experts and leading researchers on November 15, at the Institute for Business and Information Technology (IBIT) symposium.

Jeff Hamilton, Senior Vice President, Business Technology, Pfizer will deliver a keynote speech focusing on AI-based approaches to improve patient health.  

Speakers from QVC, NBCU, Alexion, Comcast, DARPA, and other leading edge firms will focus on data platforms, cognitive networking, separating hype from reality, use of robots for process automation, adoption and ROI challenges, feature engineering, fraud, waste, and abuse applications, forecasting ratings, diagnosing problems, predicting customer behavior, and generating targeted personalized experiences. Presentations will include:

  • Case studies that showcase best practice examples
  • How to manage, organize, and implement pilot projects
  • The pros and cons of different implementation and organizational approaches
  • The current state-of-the art and a vision for the future

Join us to learn more and chart the path forward at: http://ibit.temple.edu/cognitivecomputing/

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