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What is Machine Learning

Machine Learning

Machine learning is a process of data analysis whose goal is to understand the structure of a large amount of data. Using multiple algorithms, machine learning builds on a computer’s ability to find trends in and authenticate information. What separates machine learning from other methods of data analysis, is the fact that it automates the process of building data models. The computers are not programmed with specific instructions and are instead built to observe patterns in data that create the models. This is especially helpful when researchers are looking at data without any knowledge of trends within the population. Using machine learning, data scientists have the ability to parse through much more data in an efficient way.

The two main methods of machine learning are supervised learning and unsupervised learning. Supervised learning uses data in which the desired outcomes are known. The data scientists that enter the information tell the machine what the correct outputs are so that it can compare new data to that set. This type of learning is very helpful for research that seeks to classify data and make predictions. For example, a system that detects credit card fraud based on inputs by the customer.

Unsupervised learning takes a slightly different approach. While the machine is still fed large amounts of data, the “right answers” are not provided for it. The machine is programmed to find trends in the data without knowing any correct outputs. This type of machine learning is used with large amounts of transactional data where researchers have little background knowledge about the customer makeup. A classic application of this is when data analysts use clustering to identify customer segments based on a series of characteristics. This, in turn, can be used to recognize spending habits of consumers and help to inform a well-designed marketing strategy. Some data scientists use a mix of supervised and unsupervised learning depending on the type of data that they can work with. This “semi-supervised” method is ideal when the cost of using correct outputs for all the data is too high. Typically with this strategy, only a portion of the data shown to the machine will provide the desired outcomes with the majority of the date being raw.

Machine learning relies on algorithms in order to make something out of the data it is given. Some of the common algorithms that are used include decision trees, clustering, and neural networks. Decision trees are typically used when the classifications are already known and the model can predict the outcome of new data. It uses the patterns from previous outcomes to make decisions on future cases. Clustering is a process used with unsupervised learning. This means that the model takes all the data and uses it to group the data based on characteristics associated with it. The researchers can set however many clusters they want until the best model is reached. Neural networks are very advanced and attempt to mimic the biology of the human brain. Based on large amounts of data, the system is able to adapt and update its algorithms as it learns more.

There are many everyday applications of machine learning. One great example is the Facebook Newsfeed. If a Facebook user likes or comments on a friend’s post, the system will show you more content that was posted by that friend on your feed. Another example of this is the Netflix recommendation service. If you have a Netflix account and you watch certain types of movies, the algorithm will display related movies along with other commonly watched movies based on the behaviors of past viewers. As I mentioned earlier, fraud detection is a very common application of machine learning that is used by all major card carriers to ensure the protection of their customers. An application of machine learning that we might see more of in the future is the idea of self-driving cars. This is the ultimate use of machine learning, where dozens of factors must be considered. Especially for a task as complex as driving, the machine learning required for autonomous vehicles to be successful is going to be very high.

Going forward, we can expect to see many innovations within machine learning. This process has just recently begun to take off, with many companies taking advantage of the vast amount of transactional data available to them. Google has declared a primary focus on machine learning for themselves as a company. For over a decade, they have been offering courses to their engineers about machine learning and this dedication has been demonstrated through advancements in their algorithm. As more data becomes available, there will be more opportunity for this field of artificial intelligence to grow. It will be interesting where the technology goes next.

 

Sources:

https://www.sas.com/en_us/insights/analytics/machine-learning.html

https://searchenterpriseai.techtarget.com/definition/machine-learning-ML

https://www.ml.cmu.edu/

https://www.wired.com/2016/06/how-google-is-remaking-itself-as-a-machine-learning-first-company/

Faculty and Staff Updates

Min-Seok-PangProfessor Min-Seok Pang was promoted to Associate Professor with Tenure. Dr. Pang joined the department in in 2014 and has since built an outstanding record of scholarship around the role of information technology in government. He also is a highly-rated instructor in the BBA in MIS, the MBA program, and the Ph.D. program, teaching courses in the strategic management of information technology and data science.

Emily RepshasEmily Repshas has been promoted to Assistant Director of MIS. Repshas joined the MIS Department in 2016. Her contributions to the department include managing the MIS PRO program, the PRO store, and expanding the department’s social media presence. In her new role, she will be adding marketing and communications to her responsibilities, including our undergraduate and master’s programs.

Amy LavinProfessor Amy Lavin has been appointed a Dean’s Teaching Fellow for 2018. Professor Lavin has been an innovator in the classroom. She is the Academic Director of the MS in Digital Innovation in Marketing (MS-DIM). In 2017, Professor Lavin was named the MS-DIM Faculty Member of the Program, an award given based on student feedback. She has presented at conferences such as the Americas Conference on Information Systems and the Higher Education Social Media Strategies Summit.

David SchuffProfessor David Schuff was named the Fox School of Business Executive Doctorate in Business Administration 2018 Faculty of the Year. The award recognizes his “significant contribution to the academic and intellectual growth of Executive DBA students,” according to Academic Director and Professor of Marketing and Supply Chain Management Susan Mudambi.

Recent MIS grads Emily Schucker and Frank Tkachenko find their paths to success

Emily SchuckerEmily 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.

Frank Tkachenko

“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.”

Gong’s research finds the unexpected in consumers’ behavior

Jing JongJing Gong’s research looks at the intersection of economics and information systems, analyzing what impact technology has on consumer behavior and business profitability. One of the thing she most enjoys about her work? The results can be somewhat surprising.

“Some of the findings aren’t intuitive when you first think of them, but if you dig deeper, you can usually find theories to support what’s going on,” Gong said. “For good research, you should have strong theories to support your findings. Or if you can create a new theory, that’s good, too.”

Take her current research, looking at how the growth of Uber has affected car sales in certain Chinese cities. Looking at registration data, she found that car sales had increased an estimated 8 percent per month after Uber entered a market.

“People thought there’d be a decrease in sales and that may be true for people in Philadelphia or New York, they may stop buying cars and start to use Uber to go to restaurants and bars. It’s very easy and they don’t have to worry about drinking or missing the bus or missing other transportation,” she said.

For example, “a lot of marginal people who are deciding whether or not to get a car, if they have the money, are getting the car because it can give them an additional income,” she said.

Or consider Gong’s first published research paper, a collaboration with her Carnegie Mellon University Ph.D. advisor, Prof. Michael D. Smith, and Prof. Rahul Telang, a work that was printed in the Journal of Retailing in June 2015. The researchers looked at how changing the cost of digital movie sale prices affected digital rentals of those movies. Contrary to expectations, reducing movie sale prices did not negatively affect rentals. In fact, price promotions in the sales arena boosted rental sales.

“Traditionally, you would expect one channel to cannibalize the other channel. But here there actually was a positive spillover across channels,” said Gong, who is also doing research that looks at online freelancing platforms and crowd funding sites.

Gong joined the Fox faculty as a tenure-track assistant professor in Fall 2018. In addition to her Ph.D. in Information Systems and Management from Carnegie Mellon, Gong holds a Bachelor’s in Information Management and Information Systems from Beijing’s Tsinghua University. Her research has been used to shape public policy and private marketing decisions.

This Spring, Gong taught Data Analytics, a requirement for undergraduates majoring in Management Information Systems that builds a foundation for storing and analyzing data.

“Teaching them to analyze is a lot of fun,” she said. “We teach student different methods so they can discover hidden patterns in the data or predict what consumers are going to do in the future.”

Capstone students demonstrate technology’s transformative impact

Spring 2018 Capstone WinnersFrom streamlining the dining experience to changing the way families care for ailing loved ones, the Spring MIS Capstone Showcase demonstrated the transformative impact of technology. On April 24th, 2018, nine teams of seniors from three classes, as selected by their professors, presented their final projects. These projects were the culmination of a semester (and four years) of hard work, which involved everything from creating a business plan to designing a functional prototype.

The winning team, which was selected by a panel of industry experts and Temple faculty, designed an application geared toward urbanites looking for an enjoyable night out. The app uses real-time data to give insight into the crowd and experience at a given location, while also acting as a marketing tool for bar owners. Mentored by Sondra Barbour, Member of the Board of Directors at 3M, Bridgette Brodnyan, Sean Dougherty, Kevin Lynch, and Marlea Tremper received a $500 prize. 

The full roster of projects presented at the April 2018 event included:

SmartCare
This project integrates smart pill bottles with a proprietary health management application that allows patients to manage their personal health and reduce the physical, mental and emotional burden on caretakers.  
Team: Ian Usher, Kayla Herbst, Eric Rose, Claudine Youssef, Yu Zhou
Mentor: Jeff Hamilton

Course Catcher
An application that allows students to better plan, track, and maintain their course schedules every semester.
Team: Jane Kraus, Michael Biffen, Justin Teyssier, John Kumpf
Mentor: Cindy Leavitt

The Move
An app geared toward urbanites and bar owners that allows users to search through bars based off of pertinent criteria and see real-time engagement data.
Team: Bridgette Brodnyan, Sean Dougherty, Kevin Lynch, Marlea Tremper
Mentor: Sondra Barbour

License Key Sentry
A software enabling organizations to improve the software license management process by distributing, tracking, and retrieving software licenses and notifying managers of improper usage
Team: Kellen O’Connor, Andrew Kondelin, Jack Perrotta, Michael Doyle
Mentor: Dinesh Desai

Blend
An application providing recipes and meal schedules for patients who are reliant on a blended diet.
Team: Cole Derhammer. Anthony Wong, Christopher Kutzler, Amy Njuguna
Mentor: Andrea Anania

myHealth
A patient-facing, patient-maintained mobile digital wallet for personal health records and a proprietary SFTP plugin that healthcare providers can use to access those records.
Team: Ari Abramson, Arlo Antle, Noah Gottlieb, Tymofiy Rabchuk
Mentor: Viktoria Friedman

Dibs
An application that allows users to make reservations at their favorite restaurants, select a seating preference, and order their meal ahead of their arrival.
Team: Ajah Puryear , Jose Gil , Noah Fulkroad  Parth Patel , and Malik Donald
Mentor: Bruce Fadem

Parallel
An application that allows users to rent out their empty driveways to others who need a parking spot.
Team: Gabrielle Finley, Matt Funk, Nicole Bilder, Anthony D’Amico, Alan Divver
Mentor: Michael Luckenbill

Book Broker
A system for college students to buy and sell textbooks at their university.
Team: Angie Wang, Tim McNiff, Jurgen Aliag, Frank Tkachenko
Mentor: Ilya Rogov

From Bridge Repair to Elderly Patient Care, MIS seniors debut innovative solutions in capstone projects

MIS Capstone Winners 2017After years of hard work and study, MIS seniors always have a lot to show off at the Fox School of Business Management Information Systems Capstone Project Showcase. The most recent Showcase, held at the end of April, was no exception: The 17 teams of seniors that gathered to present their final projects unveiled everything from a medical app designed to help doctors track elderly patients’ health regimens to a personalized news aggregation service to an improved search function on Temple’s course database.

The MIS Showcase is a unique opportunity for students to combine all of what they have learned in class with their own entrepreneurial skills, says Fox IT Advisory Board Chairman Bruce Fadem, who oversees the Mentoring program for IBIT. “This year’s teams showcased a wide range of exciting ideas and demonstrated the value of their education with professional business plans and excellent presentations.”

The winning team, selected by a panel of judges, designed an app that tackles the problem of evaluating the maintenance needs of bridges. “On average,” the team notes, “it takes an expert three to six weeks to properly assess a bridge’s structural needs and report these findings to the local government.” Their solution, the app they call Floating Bridges, combines 3D mapping drones, bridge-assessment algorithms and augmented reality to provide local governments with a more efficient, less expensive way to survey and prioritize problem bridges “on a yearly or even monthly basis.”

The team, which included Alexandra Iacovetti, Nicholas Rivera, Bridget Silk and Benjamin Sulaiman, won $500 for coming in first place — though the entire Capstone process has been rewarding in itself, Silk says. “We really benefited from bouncing ideas off each other,” she adds. “It was an awesome experience to end the year with.”

The Capstone projects are often cited by students as one of the highlights of the MIS experience. The opportunity to put so many skills and practices to the test (not to mention the chance to flex their creative muscles) in a competitive setting is both fun and helpful in terms of prepping for life outside of the Fox School.

“The project created an opportunity to fully develop and pitch a real, live platform that addresses a problem,” says Kate Morrison, whose team, District One Sports, created a one-stop digital resource for high school sports stats. “Going through this process end to end created more passion, teamwork and ownership than any other group project I’ve worked on, and it was a beneficial transition from the teaching/learning environment into the professional workplace.”

The full roster of projects presented at the April event included:

Solutions to Medical Non-Adherence
A digital solution for health-care providers, pharmacies and patients to insure that patients are taking their medication consistently and following correct procedures after leaving the hospital.
Team: Michael Ingram, Heather Makwinski, Joshua Michalik, Samantha Talarico
Mentor: Dale Danilewitz

Documed: Improving Patient Engagement
Real-time access for doctors to patients’ medical records to help improve diagnosis and treatment.
Team: Johnathan Holland, Jeremy A. John, Alan Kim, George Raymond
Mentor: Matt Winter

WorkFit
An application designed to motivate people to make exercise a priority, using social tools, games, geolocation and goal suggestions.
Team: John Kerin, Matthew Leaver, Sara Monahan, Thompson Nguyen
Mentor: Ben Hasan

CaParkLee
An application that measures the core body temperatures and heart rates of elderly patients, aiming to help doctors track their patients’ regimens.
Team: Leor Capunitan, Thomas Lee, Chris Park
Mentor: Jeff Hamilton

Social Academic Studying Solution
A web-based solution for connecting students who have similar courses and curriculums, aimed at enabling collaborative studying, as well as helping students manage deadlines and study hours.
Team: Evan Chiao, Kin Lee, Connor Gawlik, Mike Dennis
Mentor: Satbir Bedi

District One Sports: Simplifying High School Sports Statistics
A one-stop digital resource for reporting and viewing high school sports scores and statistics.
Team: Rob Higgins, Kate Morrison, Rhea Prabhu, Ben Shaffer
Mentor: Sondra Barbour

Airline Entertainment
A digital platform providing airline passengers with in-air and terminal entertainment and gaming options.
Team: Stephanie Cheng, Tyler Gaber, Kevin Santoni, Dario Trabucco
Mentor: Sunil Misra

Vulpine Analytics
An analytics tool to help provide employees with information and insights about the connection between their wellness and their productivity, helping them balance health habits with performance at work.
Team: Derek Gibbs, Eric Koeck, Erika Nixon, David Yastremsky
Mentor: Paul Amorello

VisRecs
A visual-recognition application that harnesses unstructured data hidden within images, videos. and gifs uploaded onto social media and/or the Internet, and helps structure it into meaningful ideas.
Team: Dominick Falco, Alex Korjeski, Alex Meyer, Louisa Carleton
Mentor: Niraj Patel

SpotaGuide
A platform that connects travelers with personalized, low-cost tour itineraries.
Team: Phil Tocci, Kevin Vong, Anthony Vu, Brian Wallace
Mentor: Bruce Fadem

Floating Bridges
An application that combines 3D mapping drones, bridge-assessment algorithms and augmented reality to give experts a cost-effective way to assess a bridge’s structural needs.
Team: Alexandra Iacovetti, Nicholas Rivera, Bridget Silk, Benjamin Sulaiman
Mentor: Joe Spagnoletti

Newsence
A system for aggregating multiple news sources and customizing them in a fashion that fits into each user’s lifestyle and preferences.
Team: William Agentowicz, Brandan Mackowsky, Eugene Tartaglione, Adama Traore
Mentor: Sukumar Narayanan

Gamer Connect
An application that allows gamers across all platforms (Xbox, Playstation and PC) to find one another and form teams based upon their respective skill levels.
Team: Andrew Fiss, Tyler Urquhart, Elijah Jamison, Kyle Domsohn
Mentor: Shariq Khan

DDesignate
A ride-sharing application in the vein of Uber/Lyft that helps users avoid driving while intoxicated, while providing a way for the user to get his or her car home safely.
Team: Rob Lesnik, Kyle Matusik, Jonathan Plugaru, Casid Sohou
Mentor: Andrew Porter

Esperanza Database Consolidation
A database-consolidation tool for merging and centralizing data from the non-profit Esperanza to allow for better and more streamlined marketing and communication efforts.
Team: Danielle Buerger, Kevin Hamilton, Leeya Ressom
Mentor: Jon Scott

BookLit
An application aimed at third-grade students within the School District of Philadelphia, focused on improving reading skills via online competition, incentives and reading comprehension quizzes. Teachers are able to track students’ improvements.
Team: Andi Agolli, Jeffrey Craskey, Mohit Patel, Urvesh Patel
Mentor: Andrea Anania

Course Search
A search function that allows Temple students to look for any class in the Temple database based on keywords/categories that pertain to class topics or subtopics.
Team: Quy Le, Kevin Diem, Darpan Patel, Michael Black
Mentor: Chris Cera

MIS senior presents research at major national conference

Erick KoeckReceiving notable recognition for a research paper is not what senior Eric Koeck originally set out to do.

What started as Koeck’s summer research project turned into a presentation he delivered at the 2017 Winter American Marketing Association (AMA) Conference in Orlando. The paper, “Tweets, Retweets, and the Brand Positioning of the 2016 U.S. Presidential Candidates,” is co-authored with two professors from Temple University’s Fox School of Business – Dr. David Schuff and Dr. Susan Mudambi.

Koeck, a 22-year-old senior who majors in Management Information Systems (MIS), utilized different tools to scour the Twitter feeds of each presidential candidate. Then, he analyzed the difference between word choice and how those words affected the virality of their tweets. To do this, candidates were split into two groups: insurgent candidates (or those who never held political office with their respective political parties) and establishment candidates (those who had).

“I’m very interested in data analytics and I wanted to complete a project that would give me the opportunity to work with that,” said Koeck, a Collegeville, Pa., native. “I was forming this project when the presidential primaries were in full swing. I’m interested in politics and an active Twitter user. It lined up nicely as something into which I could really immerse myself.”

The main findings, Koeck said, showed that insurgent candidates were more likely to express both positive and negative emotion, as well as gender references, while establishment candidates were more likely to express affiliation. In addition, the traits most positively linked to retweets were negative emotion and female gender references.

Impressed organizers of the AMA conference waived Koeck’s fee, and his travel expenses to and from the conference were sponsored by Temple’s Creative Arts, Research, And Scholarship program.

The three-day event provided eye-opening exposure for Koeck.

“It was a really great experience,” he said. “I learned a lot about academia and business research. One professor from a university in Canada asked me to send her my presentation, because she was interested in her students following the election closely.”

While Koeck remains humble, his capabilities, as they pertain to research, have not gone unnoticed.

“They were both wonderful,” Koeck said of working with Mudambi and Schuff, Professor of MIS. “Dr. Schuff has been mentoring me on this project the whole way through, and Dr. Mudambi helped us integrate different marketing concepts into the paper so that it was appropriate for AMA. Dr. Schuff’s work is relevant to my interest in analytics and statistics, which made sense for our collaboration. I was really glad when he agreed to work on this with me.”

As the trio work to get the paper published in an academic journal, Koeck prepares to present the project to state legislators at Temple Undergraduate Research Day April 24.

Future opportunities for Koeck, a graduating senior, already have sprouted. Said Koeck: “Starting in September, I’ll be working for PricewaterhouseCoopers in their Advanced Risk and Compliance Analytics practice. I interned there last summer and had a good experience so I’m excited to start my career there.”

— Carine Lavache

Facebook CIO Atish Banerjea (’91) honored by AIS

Atish BanerjeaThe Association for Information Systems honored Atish Banerjea, Chief Information Officer, Facebook, and Fox School ’91 alum, with the inaugural Association for Information Systems Leadership Excellence Award on December 12, 2016 at the 37th Annual International Conference on Information Systems (ICIS). Banerjea also delivered the keynote address at the conference while accepting the award.

Banerjea was recognized for his distinguished leadership and innovation in the use and development of information systems. Renowned for his extensive experience in adapting to succeed in the rapidly-changing technology landscape, his new role puts him in charge of Facebook’s global IT functions.

“Atish is at the forefront of the ongoing digital revolution that is transforming both business and higher education,” said AIS President, Jason Thatcher. “He is a fantastic role model for IS students and his success in digital transformation resonates with the research focus of much of the IS academic community.”

Banerjea has previously served as Executive Vice President and CIO for NBCUniversal where he leveraged digital technologies to drive change, constructing a networked infrastructure that positioned IT as a partner capable of substantively contributing to the company’s strategic aims.

Banerjea also served as the Chief Technology Officer and Senior Vice President of Dex One Corporation, where he led a major redesign of that company’s IT functions, helping to transform Dex One from a print-centric business to a digital media marketing company. Prior to that, Mr. Banerjea served as Executive Vice President and Chief Technology Officer for Pearson, where he was responsible for the global planning and management of IT.  He currently serves on the boards of directors for Hibu, Inc, a digital marketing firm, and Nelson Education, Canada’s leading educational publisher, and is also a member of the Fox IT advisory board at Temple University.

Murphy garners 2016 MIS Student Leadership Award

ciara murphyCiara Murphy doesn’t give up easily — especially when it comes to helping others.

As she wound her way through five different majors — education, then special education, journalism, photojournalism, and marketing — finally landing in MIS, she knew she wanted that perfect fit that combined her desire to help people with an intellectually stimulating career.

It’s this stick-to-itveness, and the success that has followed, that helped garner Murphy, the vice president of operations for Association for Information Systems, the 2016 MIS Student Leadership Award.

“It’s an extremely competitive group of students this year due to the quality of the candidates,” said Jeremy Shafer, assistant professor of Management Information Systems. “However, Ciara is well deserving of the award, since she has demonstrated a willingness to take on challenging tasks, such as Hootathon and other successful fundraising efforts.”

In fact, Murphy’s determination shone throughout her efforts for Hootathon, a fundraising event for the Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia, as she led her team in a series of diverse fundraising efforts, such as canning at football games and running a kickball tournament. Ultimately, her team raised the most funds of any group at Temple University, to the tune of more than $7,600.

What drives Murphy through all of this is a desire to give back and help others, since she sees herself as the beneficiary of that type of generosity growing up in Boston, Mass.

“I was practically raised in the Boys and Girls Club, from my school work to my swim team,” Murphy said. “It has always been really important to me to give back to people, because they’ve given to me.”

This pay-it-forward commitment is reflected not only in her role as a TA for the introductory course for MIS majors, where she guides many students through the intellectual and emotional challenges of navigating their way to a major, but also in her role with AIS, where she coordinated fundraising events, such as the aforementioned Hootathon, and social events for the group.

Murphy sees the social events for AIS as more than just a time to have fun and bond; in her mind, these events are helping her fellow MIS students gain important soft skills, such as empathy and networking, that are crucial for future success.

“I think it’s important to create that sense of community within an organization,” said Murphy, noting that the organization’s members typically only meet twice a week to hear invited speakers. “Ten years down the road, we are going to be in positions all over the country, and these social events will catalyze our future network. I think that’s invaluable for your future in this field.”

Murphy, who had an internship at JP Morgan and Chase, plans to continue to focus on ways she can help others with her job at Cigna, where she will help develop ways to use technology to incentivize people to improve their health.

“I really enjoy being able to understand and engage in meaningful ways with both IT and the business side of things,” said Murphy, who feels the MIS program equipped her with the determination and skill set to solve problems creatively and act as an effective liaison. “I guess that’s really just a theme for me.”

The MIS program has left her feeling well prepared for the next step of her journey, as an endpoint asset management analyst for Cigna’s Technology Early Career Development Program, and she even feels she has the foundation to reach for her ultimate goal: CIO.

“Everyone who graduates has big dreams, and I’m just going to keep at it and do my best, and hopefully, I will be granted the opportunity to take on leadership activities in the corporate world” she said. “This program has helped make me feel like that’s a feasible goal, preparing me in ways I didn’t even know were possible — and I’m just very grateful.” 

Read more about Murphy’s future plans here.

Writer: Elizabeth Hillaker Downs

AIS earns HootaThon “Top Student Organization” Recognition

AIS Hootathon 2015

In their first year of participation, Temple AIS was named “Top Student Organization” for their fundraising efforts during HootaThon, Temple’s Miracle Network Dance Marathon held on November 7th, 2015. The AIS team of 65 members raised over $7,600 for the Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia. This accounted for the 4th largest fundraising effort out of 110 teams and the largest amount among Temple student organizations. 

In addition to personal fundraising, AIS implemented a HootaThon committee to plan fundraising events throughout the month of October. These events included two canning trips at the Temple homecoming and Halloween football games. The committee also worked with the Temple American Marketing Association to hold a kickball and bake sale fundraiser. 

The HootaThon fundraising effort is part of an organizational-wide focus on community service for this school year. Starting this fall, AIS members are required to participate in at least one community service event to earn active membership for the semester. Other fall community service efforts included volunteering at nearby Duckrey Elementary School and sponsoring a “Black Tie” event held to benefit Temple’s Operation Smile Chapter. 

In only its third year, HootaThon raised a total of $280,620.76 to support the Child Life Department at the Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia. Those interested in learning more can visit hootathon.org. 

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