Temple sweeps AIS international competition!

AIS_Competition_2013

FOX MIS students (again) swept the 2nd Annual AIS International Competition receiving first, second or third place in the categories they entered. The competition was held as part of the 2013 Walmart IT Summit and AIS Student Chapter Conference, Bentonville, Arkansas, April 18-20, 2013. Read more…

MIS awards honor students, faculty, and staff

FOX IT Awards 2013

The Thirteenth Annual FOX IT awards on April 16, 2013 honored the following students, faculty and staff.

MIS STUDENT LEADERSHIP AWARD
Given annually to a student who has made a significant contribution to the students and extended community of the MIS department.
Ryan Oliveira

MIS STUDENT ACHIEVEMENT AWARD
Given to graduating MIS students for academic excellence.
Iris Kapo
Elias Hessler

MIS RESEARCHER OF THE YEAR AWARD
Given to a faculty member for excellence in research.
Paul Pavlou

MIS FACULTY LEADERSHIP AWARD
Given to a faculty member who has made a significant contribution to the students and extended community of the MIS department.
Richard Flanagan

MIS TEACHER OF THE YEAR AWARD
Given to a faculty member for excellence in teaching.
David Schuff

MIS ADJUNCT OF THE YEAR AWARD
Given to a faculty member for excellence in teaching.
Dina Lichtman

MIS ADMINISTRATIVE ACHIEVEMENT AWARD
Given annually to a MIS or IBIT administrative employee for outstanding performance.
Joseph Allegra

MIS ADMINISTRATIVE LEADERSHIP AWARD
Given to an administrator who has made a significant contribution to the students and extended community of the MIS department.
Cynthia Smith

IBIT INFORMATION TECHNOLOGY LEADERS SCHOLARSHIP
Jennifer O’Malley

NIRAJ AND CARA PATEL SCHOLARSHIP
Rachael Jill Voluck

JOHN H. SHAIN SCHOLARSHIP
Paula L. Kozak

ASSOCIATION FOR INFORMATION SYSTEMS (AIS) AWARDS

AIS Outstanding Officer
Czarina Agravante

AIS Outstanding Member
Gabrielle Lopez

 

David Schuff wins Lindback Award for Distinguished Teaching

David SchuffWith 50 letters of support from students and faculty, Fox School of Business Associate Professor of Management Information Systems (MIS) David Schuff was selected for this year’s Christian R. and Mary F. Lindback Foundation Award for Distinguished Teaching from Temple University.

Learn more…

Yoo, Wattal, and Zhang receive $275,000 NSF grant to study organizational genetics

Organizational GeneticsProfessors Youngjin Yoo, Sunil Wattal, Bin Zhang, and Temple Biology Professor Rob Kulathinal were awarded a $275,000 NSF grant to study organizational genetics. This is the third NSF grant the researchers have received, since a grant from French research foundation CIGREF. In total, the research has received about $675,000 in grant funding. The organizational genetics project is titled “The structure and dynamics of generative innovations: An organizational genetics approach.”

The project will focus on how organizational ecosystems are built and evolve over time. For example, success and failure of digital products, such as smartphones, is determined by the size and scope of various apps that are built by third-party developers in the ecosystem.

Learn more…

New Business Analytics Minor in Collaboration with Statistics

Business Analytics MinorThe Management Information Systems department is pleased to announce a new Business Analytics Minor in collaboration with the Fox School’s Department of Statistics. The coursework exposes students to hands-on, cutting edge tools and techniques in predictive modeling, forecasting, association mining, cluster analysis, decision trees, unstructured “big” data, sentiment analysis, and experimental design. Students will develop skills in these areas and learn to apply them, enhancing their knowledge and marketability. The Business Analytics Minor is appropriate for all business majors who want to be at the forefront of using data effectively in their discipline.

Learn more…

MIS faculty ranked first globally for research in top journals

FOX MIS Research No 1The research output of the Fox School of Business’ Management Information Systems (MIS) Department has been ranked No. 1 in the world in the 2012 update of the Association for Information Systems (AIS) publications survey. The department was ranked first for the period 2009-12, maintaining the leading position it has held for three years.

The analysis also ranked Professor Paul A. Pavlou, director of the Fox School’s PhD program in business administration, as the top MIS researcher in the world for the same three-year period. Fox Associate Professor of Marketing and MIS Angelika Dimoka, director of Temple’s Center for Neural Decision Making, was ranked No. 2.

MIS Professor Youngjin Yoo, who directs Temple’s Center for Design+Innovation and is co-principal investigator on the university’s Urban Apps and Maps Studios, ranks ninth. MIS Associate Professor David Schuff, Fox’s director of innovation in learning technologies, is also on the top 100 individual list, at No. 85.

These scholars explore a wide range of research interests, from e-commerce and big data, to uses of neuroscience in information systems and marketing, to the processes driving the evolution of new IT tools and systems, to the influence of Web 2.0 on politics.

“This distinction for Paul, Angelika, Youngjin and David once again demonstrates the Fox School’s commitment to excellence in research productivity, particularly in top journals,” Dean M. Moshe Porat said. “We congratulate these faculty – and our MIS Department as a whole – as our school and university join in celebrating this remarkable accomplishment.”

The rankings were generated in February 2013 using a database created by the AIS, the premier global organization for academics specializing in MIS, and based on an analysis of publications in the top two journals in the field, MIS Quarterly and Information Systems Research. Full rankings are at http://www.vvenkatesh.com/isranking/index.asp.

“MIS at Fox is a special place; we have the best researchers in the world, the most innovative curriculum and awesome students who continue to excel in a very supportive environment,” founding Chair Munir Mandviwalla said.

In addition to the Fox MIS Department’s research rankings, U.S. News & World Report ranks the Fox School’s undergraduate MIS program No. 17 in the nation and its graduate MIS programs No. 22.

Portfolio points

portfolio
port•fo•li•o (pôrt-fo¹lê-o´, port-) noun – The collection of materials which are representative of a person’s work: a photographer’s portfolio; an artist’s portfolio of drawings.

portfolio leaderboardAs an entry-level IT professional, what is in your portfolio? Besides your transcript and your diploma, what do you have to show to employers that you are going to be a successful IT professional? At Fox MIS, students show their academic and professional development success by:

  • creating and maintaining a digital identity (e-portfolio)
  • (new) compiling a required portfolio of professional development activities that is based on acquiring points for each activity
  • (new) gaining recognition for their achievements through the e-portfolio wire and portfolio point leader board.

MIS students start to develop a portfolio in their first MIS class and continue to receive opportunities to add to their portfolio as they progress through the curriculum.  Checkpoints throughout the curriculum make sure that students stay on course to graduate with the required number of minimum points. Students  receive points for participation in professional development activities and for applying academic learning to practice (e.g., internships, student organization leadership). Students showcase their achievements on e-portfolios.

The portfolio points program was started in spring 2012 by Professor Mart Doyle.

MIS Community v3.0

FOX MIS Connect InnovateThe third major revision of the MIS Community site has been finalized and deployed. The theme of this version is an intense focus on realizing the ‘community’ people-centric vision:

  • The home page layout is logically organized around News (on the left), In-depth content (middle), and Community (the sidebar on the right). This design metaphor is applied everywhere. For example, the BBA in MIS program page includes content on the left and (relevant) community on the right. If you are a top student, you might see yourself on there!
  • Every single page on the main site has been updated and is now focused on the community vision. Related to that, the new totals widget (top right of the home page) shows the full breadth of our community and all the items are clickable – click the “activity today…” to see what is going on today!
  • The new E-portfolio wire showcases the professional interests and accomplishments of students. If a student adds a skill, job interest, updates their job status, changes their major, or submits their e-portfolio. You will see it first on the e-portfolio wire!
  • The site has been re-architected from the ground up to increase performance. You have likely seen performance improvements in the last few weeks. They include (a) a mobile responsive theme that will adjust to different devices, screen sizes, and connection speeds (try the site on your mobile device), (b) custom developed plugins by the MIS department that add community relevant features, (c) feed aggregation that allows us to continue integrating multiple sources of content through RSS but without the performance hit. This was a massive behind the scene effort and critical toward allowing us scale the site and concept.
  • Social integration, so that you can leave comments on the site or push pages to the main social platforms (e.g., Facebook). The department also has related sites on Facebook, LinkedIn, and Flickr.
  • We will be rolling out more updates in the next few weeks as well as new student e-portfolio themes. We are also starting to help other academic units at Temple catch the community wave, but the MIS community site was the first and will remain the gold standard! Stay tuned.

The MIS community site is a unique learning, collaboration, and social platform; there is no other like it. And now it is better and even closer to the community vision.

Youngjin Yoo receives $635,000 grant from Knight Foundation to expand Urban Apps and Maps

Youngjin YooProfessor Youngjin Yoo is the principal investigator on a grant from the Knight Foundation to expand Urban Apps and Maps Studio. Over the next three summers, 300 high school and college-age students will take part in a six-week program at Temple’s Urban Apps and Maps Studios, learning the basics of digital design and business skills. About a dozen will then become year-round community fellows working with the university and developers to create apps that solve the challenges of urban communities. 

By integrating design, technology and entrepreneurship together with world class research at Temple in the area of humanity, social science, engineering, computer science and business, we are trying to build next generation urban leaders who can build their own solutions for the challenges that their communities are facing in our cities.

Urban Apps and Maps Studios is a university-wide program initiated last year through a grant from the U.S. Department of Commerce’s Economic Development Administration.

For more information, click here.

Fox hosts 2nd annual MIS Academic Leadership Conference (MALC 2012)

MALC 2012The Fox School’s Department of Management Information Systems hosted the second annual Management Information Systems (MIS) Academic Leadership Conference (MALC 2012) from Nov. 1-3 at Alter Hall.

Academic leaders of MIS departments across the world were invited to network and learn from others facing similar responsibilities and challenges. The format was small and highly interactive, with 70 professionals with leadership responsibility for MIS at their respective college or university in attendance. Attendees represented 53 universities, including some of the top schools in the nation.

The conference featured a keynote presentation by Joseph C. Spagnoletti, senior vice president and chief information officer at Campbell Soup Company, as well as a keynote deans’ panel led by Fox School of Business Dean M. Moshe Porat.

Temple Provost Hai-Lung Dai introduced Porat by saying:

the business school under the leadership of Dean Porat is recognized as a powerhouse of Temple University, and our MIS program is a gem of the Fox School.

University President Richard M. Englert praised the accomplishments of Fox MIS faculty and students and called MIS:

“one of the most dynamic academic disciplines,” adding that it “is an essential and powerful tool in business development and economic growth.”

The deans’ panel was titled “The Digitalization of Business Schools” and included Leonard Jessup, dean of the University of Arizona’s Eller College of Business, and Peter A. Todd, dean of the Desautels Faculty of Management at McGill University in Quebec. Opportunities and threats posed by the digitalization of business schools were debated, and discussion focused heavily on online learning. “I think it’s inevitable we will have to provide all of these things online,” Porat said, stressing that online classes cannot lose quality. The panelists shared varying views. Jessup noted the importance of online classes at Arizona while Todd shared that McGill does not see much of a need for them yet. “I think it depends on the culture of the institution and the strength of the brand,” Porat added.

In the general sessions, conference presenters represented schools from Boston College to Aalto University in Finland. Each shared insight as to what their schools are doing on topics such as information systems advisory councils and best practices for MIS graduate programs. Associate professor and founding chair of Fox’s MIS Department, Munir Mandviwalla, served on the conference committee and presented at the session titled, “Where will MIS go in 2015? 2020?” Another MIS faculty member, Professor Paul A. Pavlou, chaired the session. Assistant Professor Richard Flanagan presented in the “Recruiting Strategies” session. Flanagan is the director of Fox’s new Master of Science in IT Auditing and Cyber-Security program in the MIS Department. Assistant Professor Mart Doyle and Fox IT Advisory Board Chair Bruce Fadem also moderated sessions.

The MIS Academic Leadership Conference is the only conference specifically designed for individuals responsible for leading MIS in higher education to network and learn. The conference was co-sponsored by Temple, the University of Arizona, University of Minnesota, Indiana University and University of Texas at Dallas.

For more information click on: http://ibit.temple.edu/malc2012/