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While Michael Luckenbill ‘08 and Joshua Sandoe ’16 are no longer students, they’ve never stopped learning. Luckenbill has handled business intelligence for a food service conglomerate, merged technologies for two music giants and created custom financial asset software. Sandoe has only worked for one company since graduation, but his job changes every six months, meaning he’s already worked in the company’s business technology solutions center, served as a global information security data analyst and tried his hand at project management.

It’s a lot of change, but both alumni say Temple University’s Fox School of Business prepared them for the professional challenges.

It’s been a really good experience and it speaks to the education I received at Temple because we covered so many different areas,” Sandoe said. “I’ve had business roles, more technical roles, a role as a data analyst; and I was prepared for all of it.

Luckenbill, whose graduation in the midst of the global financial crisis prompted some to advise against technology-related jobs, said taking core Management Information System classes and the accompanying lab work meant he was ready to jump into (almost) any role on day one.

I was prepared to be hands-on with the technology instead of being hands-off,” Luckenbill said. “I used everything, my project management and database course, my software architecture course…

For the last seven years, Luckenbill has worked for LiquidHub, a Wayne-based digital customer engagement firm. As a technology manager in the custom application development division, Luckenbill works with multiple clients, most recently a financial asset firm.

“Even though things are different, custom application development doesn’t change much,” he said. “It’s understanding the business model for that particular client and what they’re trying to achieve.”

After graduating in December 2016, Sandoe joined biopharmaceutical giant Pfizer as a business technology rotational associate, meaning he’ll hold four different positions in his first two years on the job.

“It’s a very unique opportunity to see a lot of different worlds and meet a lot of smart people you may not have met if you were in one role from the beginning,” Sandoe said. “A lot of people say you start to get really comfortable with a job at the six month point and that’s when you pack up and enter next role. If someone’s looking for a routine, every-day-doing-the-same-thing routine, this is not a route I’d suggest taking.”

But it’s worked for Sandoe.

“I always get very excited before I transfer to the next role,” he said. “l’ve learned so much in a year and a half. The difference between then and now, my level of competency, it’s night and day.”

Emily Schucker ’17 thought she’d major in biology when she began studying at Temple University.  Frank Tkachenko ’18 planned to reinvent himself. Both found their paths thanks to the Fox School of Business.

Schucker enjoyed technology, but she couldn’t see juggling her people-focused personality with solitary technical work. Then she learned about the Management Information Systems program.

“I went out on a limb with MIS and I’m very happy I did. I figured out what I wanted to do,” said Schucker, a technical analyst for DecisivEdge, LLC, a Delaware-based business consulting and technology services company. “MIS gave me the perfect balance. I learned to coordinate different technologies and talk to clients. I could manage people and manage code.”

At Temple, Tkachenko launched a fashion-focused Instagram and blog to hone his own style and to help others. That initiative, and his academics, helped land as a social media and content analyst at Adworthy, a Langhorne-based SaaS/Digital agency.

“The side hustle got me into non-traditional marketing, carving out a niche online and putting all you can into it in terms of social media and web design and email marketing,” Tkachenko said. “My favorite MIS class looked at user interface and experiences. It taught me how to be critical of things and how to fix them. It applies to much more than just information systems. I never knew I’d be so interested in UI/UX and design thinking or that I’d use that at my new job.”

Tkachenko expects to front-end manage client accounts and assist with back-end application development.

“For some people, advertising and marketing have a little bit of a negative connotation but the right ad at the right time to the right person gives someone something they’re looking for and helps a company sell a product and it’s a win-win,” he said. “I think I’m most excited about starting and creating something of my own. I know I’ll be working for myself one day.”

Schucker’s internship at the Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia showed her she could mix medicine with technology. With her double major in MIS and Biology, she moved to DecisivEdge. Her first big client was a Maine-based health care company.

 “When they talk about what they do, I can understand both sides of the equation because I have familiarity with both areas,” she said.

As project manager, Schucker designed the company’s web app and portal, something she did as an undergraduate.

“I used a lot of tools I learned in class: how to interact with a client, how to get what I needed out of them, how to ask different questions and then how to manage the information I was given in a professional manner,” she said. “I was also able to manage the business developers who worked on my team.”

Schucker loves combining her passions.

“I love the technology and learning new things and that it’s growing and there’s more to know at all times,” she said. “I love being able to interact with people and the challenge of sitting down with a client who has nothing to start with, just an idea, and bringing it to life, making their dream a reality.”

Our MIS students learn from world-class faculty who are leaders in research and exploring cutting-edge topics. Learn how Konstantin Bauman uses artificial intelligence to create software to help students find their weaknesses to recommend what to study.

Catch up with alumni Ying Liang-Chai (BBA 2002) and Sameer Anand (BBA 2012), who are applying what they learned in the MIS program in their careers. Also learn more about Gord Burch (Ph.D. 2013), who recently won two international early career awards for his research.

We are also preparing the next generation of MIS students for success through the recently updated Professional Achievement Program (PRO), breaking new ground in motivating personal branding and professional development. Read about the accomplishments of our current and graduating students, including the all-MIS student team that won the analytics track of the Fifth Annual Temple Analytics Challenge and the winning team of the Fall Capstone Project Showcase that used cloud-based technology to streamline the lab equipment procurement process.

As 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 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.