Connect and innovate with an elite information systems program
ProjectorCentral – one of the top sites on the Internet for projector reviews – has featured Speakman 200 as an example of innovation and low cost implementation. Read the article and check out the video below. Speakman 200 is also featured in a news story by College Planning & Management Magazine in an article titled Furnishing for Connection.
Fox School of Business alumnus Niraj Patel recently donated $50,000 to create a scholarship fund for outstanding students in Management Information Systems (MIS). Two $5,000 scholarships will be awarded annually.
Patel has been an avid supporter of the MIS Department since its founding and sits on the department’s Advisory Board. “The Fox MIS program is one of the most innovative and exciting in the nation, especially with the new BBA in MIS,” Patel said. “I am very pleased to support the entrepreneurial and hardworking students at Temple Fox MIS.”
Since graduating from Fox in 1990 with a degree in MIS and finance, Patel has built a distinguished career. He serves as president of ISGN, a partner of Witmer LLC and managing director of the Musser Group. As a multi-national border expert, he has a strong client base in India and has completed large-scale projects bridging nations.
Previously, Patel served as a founding member and executive vice president/chief information officer for GMAC Commercial Mortgage. There, he increased loan originations from $2 billion to $29.9 billion.
Patel, an award-winning innovator, is viewed as one of the leading technologists of his generation. He serves on numerous boards and panels, speaks at industry conferences and has been quoted by The Wall Street Journal and numerous commercial real estate, finance and technology publications
Niraj Patel, BBA ’85, President, ISGN, Partner, Witmer LLC, and Managing Director, Musser Consulting Group has been appointed “Executive in Residence” at the Fox School’s Management Information Systems (MIS) department and the Institute for Business and Information Technology for the 2011 year.
Mr. Patel was selected as Executive in Residence because of his stature in the field and his continued support for the Fox School. As part of the appointment, Mr. Patel will be spending several days through the year interacting with Fox School MIS students and faculty. Patel will be visiting Fox in March 2011 to start the program. “We are fortunate to have Niraj Patel, one of our most successful, entrepreneurial, and innovative alums as our Executive in Residence” said Munir Mandviwalla, associate professor and chair of the management information systems department at the Fox School of Business.
“As a proud Temple alum, I am very much looking forward to engaging with Fox School MIS faculty and students” Patel said. “The MIS faculty and students at Temple have an entrepreneurial spirit and focus on innovation that is closely aligned with my interests.”
Biography
Niraj Patel
President, ISGN
Partner, Witmer LLC and Managing Director, Musser Consulting Group
Niraj Patel is a senior business executive with a successful track record of uncovering a corporation’s hidden value and opportunities to create long-term strategic and innovative solutions to increase profitability and performance. His plans have included strategies to address organic growth, in-organic growth through acquisitions, investments, technology solutions and exit strategies. Patel has a passion for distinguishing where possibility does or does not exist in a business endeavor. His business expertise represents the culmination of 15 years focusing on growth strategies through innovation. His business acumen coupled with utilizing some of the most forward thinking business minds, enables him to assist international organizations with value innovation, calculated risk and exponential growth.
Patel currently serves as President of ISGN, a Partner of Witmer LLC and Managing Director for the Musser Consulting Group. As a multi-national/cross border expert, he has a strong client base in India and has completed large scale projects bridging nations. Patel works closely with his diverse clients including single product firms, medium size firms targeting rapid growth and international conglomerates. It’s their potential that drives Patel to engage their leaders to conceptualize and generate innovative ideas, analyze business strategies, and develop effective solutions, processes and procedures to produce streamlined profitable operations. His approach assists organizations accelerate growth and realize their fullest potential.
Patel is one of the founders of ISGN. ISGN has grown from 100 employees to 1,800 worldwide and customer base has increased to over 1,100. Previously Patel served as a founding member and Executive Vice President/CIO for GMAC Commercial Mortgage. As a member of the Executive Committee, he was a key contributor to the organization’s international growth by consistently delivering double-digit net income growth reaching as high as $341.6 million annually, increasing loan originations from $2 to $29.9 billion, building loan servicing from $5 to $276 billion.
Recognized as an award winning innovator and viewed as one of the leading technologists of his generation, Patel serves on numerous boards and panels, speaks at industry conferences and has been quoted by The Wall Street Journal and numerous commercial real estate, finance and technology publications. Patel’s community and professional memberships have included the Microsoft Executive Circle; Eastern Technology Council; the Board of Advisors of the Management Information Systems department at the Temple University Fox School of Business; the NPower CIO Advisory Council. and His executive board experience includes: the Mortgage Industry Standards Maintenance Organization (MISMO) Board of Directors, EnableUS and MortgageRamp.
He has a BBA in Finance and MIS from Temple University and resides in suburban Philadelphia with his family.
About the Fox School’s Management Information Systems (MIS) department and Institute for Business and Information Technology (IBIT)
The Fox School’s MIS department offers undergraduate, graduate, and doctoral programs in information systems and includes more than 600 majors and minors and 12 faculty members. Ranked number 1 in the world for research in 2010 by the Association for Information Systems, and in the top 10 by The Chronicle of Higher Education and TechRepublic in 2008/2009, the MIS department is one of the youngest and most successful IT oriented departments in the U.S. The associated Institute for Business and Information Technology (IBIT) connects students and faculty with industry leaders through a membership structure, and provides project and professional development opportunities. For more information, visit community.mis.temple.edu or ibit.temple.edu
The Fox School of Business at Temple University is honoring three top technology leaders at its Eleventh annual Fox Information Technology Awards on Tuesday, April 12.
Awardees include Joseph C. Spagnoletti, senior vice president and chief information officer, Campbell Soup Co.; Kurt Holstein, vice chairman and co-founder, Rosetta; and John H. Shain, president and chief operating officer, Automated Financial Systems. The awards will be presented on Temple’s Main Campus in Philadelphia.
“These awards recognize outstanding role models in industry for our students,” said Munir Mandviwalla, chair of the Fox School’s Management Information Systems (MIS) Department.
Spagnoletti will receive the Fox Information Technology Leader Award for leadership in the use and development of IT in business, and Holstein will receive the Fox Information Technology Innovator Award for applying IT to create business opportunity. Shain will receive the Fox Information Technology Award for Distinguished Alumni, given in recognition of his distinguished IT career and his contribution to the community, industry and Temple. The event will also recognize excellence in leadership among the school’s MIS faculty, administration and student body.
Spagnoletti leads Campbell’s global information technology function, providing IT strategy to help the company meet its business goals. Spagnoletti created a new IT competency model focused on business unit achievement and is in the process of redefining the relationship of IT with the company at all levels of organization.
Holstein helped build Rosetta from a four-person consulting firm in 1998 to the fifth largest digital agency in the country with more than 1,200 employees and nine offices in the U.S. and Canada. He has led the organization that developed many industry firsts in digital and data-driven personalized marketing, including the first iPad-based physician-detailing tool for the pharmaceutical industry. He holds five patents on the use of advanced segmentation to enhance personalization of marketing and the application of segmentation to digital personalization. Holstein also developed integrated mobile/web/social/CRM-based programs that leverage customer databases to provide unified digital experiences.
Shain is president and chief operating officer for Automated Financial Systems (AFS), the market leader in the provision of commercial lending solutions and industry benchmarking in risk, operational performance and pricing to more than 60 percent of the top 25 banks. In the 1990s, with Shain as president, AFS became the first major supplier to announce a Y2K solution. More recently, he started a new distribution strategy that ultimately evolved to cloud computing, which now accounts for 50 percent of AFS’ revenue.
Click here to register for the Eleventh Annual IT awards (registration required, no walk-ins permitted)
How can we use increasingly pervasive digital technology to re-imagine the future of the city?
The Fox DESIGNweek Challenge, “North BROADband”, is the first annual student competition to transform ideas into actions. Organized by the Center for Design and Innovation and the Fox School of Business in cooperation with the City of Philadelphia, the challenge brings together college and university students from the Philadelphia region to collaborate across disciplinary lines to create innovative solutions to address some of today’s most challenging urban issues. Work with facilitators James Moustafellos, Fox School of Business, and Lucy Kimbell, Oxford University, and a panel of industry leaders to formulate your competition submission to re-imagine the city through the integration of technology and design.
Be part of a dynamic, collaborative environment of active learning with opportunities for networking and developing new business. $1000 (first place) and $500 (second place) cash prizes.
Kick-off: Monday, March 14th
Workshop and final submission: Thursday, March 17th
Students may enter as a team or as individuals. For more information and to register please visit http://design.temple.edu/challenge2011
Read the February 2011 issue of the Fox Update which features FoxMIS
The Fox School’s Institute for Business and Information Technology in collaboration with the Management Information Systems department presents the Fox IT distinguished speaker series, featuring talks by leading professionals on essential business technology topics.
Jack Hughes
Founder and Chairman
TopCoder, Inc.
February 10, 2011
The world of work is rapidly changing. The internet will have profound effects on how companies manage a highly diverse, mobile and global workforce. Management models will undergo shifts to meet these new challenges and opportunities. Managers will need to develop new skill sets, measurement and motivation systems to engage these new models of work. Mr. Hughes will discuss these changes and their effects in the context of TopCoder – the world’s largest competitive software development community.
Biography
In November 2000, Jack Hughes founded TopCoder on the premise that talent and skill are the determinant factors in the quality and utility of software — and software has become central to the global economy.
In both his own programming experience and as co-founder and chairman of Tallán Inc., a provider of web-enabled business solutions, Hughes recognized that while successful projects were driven by superior programming skills, the talent was unqualified and largely unrecognized. TopCoder’s mission is to create objective ratings that place high value on the programming industry’s best and brightest, and build opportunity and community for programmers through ongoing programming tournaments and employer connections.
Under Hughes’ tenure as chairman at Tallán, the company was recognized as one of the fastest-growing technology companies in North America four years in a row by consultancy firm Deloitte & Touche and by Inc. magazine for its outstanding performance. In 2000, CMGI, Inc. acquired a majority ownership of the company.
Hughes holds a Bachelor of Science degree in computer science from Boston College. He is Chairman of the Board for the Christopher & Dana Reeve Foundation.
Registration and attendance
Attendance is free on a space available basis for qualified industry and academic professionals. For more information, please contact ibit@temple.edu.
FoxMIS announces fall 2010 e-portfolio contest winners
The department of Management Information Systems is proud to announce the recipients of the Fall 2010 e-portfolio winners. This winner is Michelle Dy-Reyes, BBA in MIS/International Business and the runner up is Kevin Kish, BBA in MIS. The winners were selected by a committee chaired by Laurel Miller, Director, IBIT and included Fox School Administration and faculty members. The committee rated each of the 21 eligible submissions and then discussed the results to select the winners. The e-portfolio contest recognizes students that have developed a clear, content filled e-portfolio which showcases their work both at Temple and in the community. Their e-portfolio is a place where they display their work experience as well as their skills for the workplace.
AMIS was named a 2010 Outstanding Student Chapter by the Association for Information Systems (AIS), the premier association for information systems. The association’s annual Student Chapter Awards recognize outstanding achievement among more than 3,000 students associated with AIS student organizations worldwide. For more information see http://www.fox.temple.edu/features/amis_award.html.
WordCamp Philly is scheduled to be held at the Fox School on October 30, 2010. WordPress is one of the most heavily used content management and blogging platforms in the world. The Fox School’s Management Information Systems (MIS) department is leading the way in applying these technologies to higher education. WordCamp follows a very informal format and this will be a good opportunity to network with and learn from other WordPress users. More information is available at http://wordcampphilly.com/. Temple University students, faculty, staff, and alumni are eligible for special discount. Please contact ibit@temple.edu for the discount code using your Temple email.
