ITS Newsletter – Spring 2017

Inaugural ITS Event Encourages Middle School Girls to Join IT

The first Girls Getting Involved as Rising Leaders in STEM (G.I.R.L.S.) Symposium at UT Dallas was held April 7. Dr. Dawn Owens, undergraduate and ITS programs director, said many helpful people made the event successful.

“We were able to introduce middle school girls to the exciting field of information technology, and a number of them left with a desire to learn more,” Owens said.

More than 50 girls from middle schools throughout the Dallas area attended. Fifteen student volunteers and several industry panelists provided supervision and instruction. The girls learned about programming, data analytics and supply chain management.

According to a 2016 U.S. Census Bureau report, about 25 percent of IT professionals are women, and their earnings statistically lag behind men’s earnings regardless of the IT area.

“Women in STEM begins with girls in STEM, and I am so thankful for the support of our sponsor, High-Tech High Heels, and the Jindal School of Management for allowing us to make an impact on these young girls,” Owens said.

One participant said she enjoyed hearing volunteers share their IT experiences and explain that being a woman had no bearing on their ability to reach their goals or have an IT career.

To learn more about the symposium or other outreach events, please visit ITS Academy.

Poster Presentations

In April, both undergraduate and graduate students displayed their course projects in competitive poster presentations for a panel of judges that included 15 industry professionals.

Graduate students in Dr. Dawn Owens’ Systems Analysis and Design class and undergraduate students in Gaurav Shekhar’s Foundations of Business Intelligence class presented their projects. The judges provided feedback and scores in specific categories, such as presentation, delivery, knowledge and content.

The events also gave students the opportunity to discuss their work with potential employers. The judges were both leaders in their organizations and hiring managers. Not only were the poster presentations a great networking opportunity, but they also allowed students to demonstrate how their projects had evolved since the beginning of the semester.

ITS Launches Leadership Council

Last fall, the BS in ITS program welcomed nine students into a new student leadership organization, the Information Technology and Systems Leadership Council (ITSLC), advised by Dr. Dawn Owens and Information Systems Program Manager Beth Kent.

The council promotes the ITS program to prospective students, brings industry engagement to campus to enhance learning for current ITS students and helps them build their leadership and professional development skills. The council organized several successful events during the academic year, including an Internship Panel Discussion, a Tech Bash Week aimed at increasing student engagement, Coffee Chats with the ITS program director and program manager, Lunch and Learn sessions, Coffee with Companies, and much more.

New-member recruiting will take place this fall. Students who apply must have at least a 3.3 grade-point average and include a letter of recommendation and letter stating their interest.

ITS Undergrads Finalists in CoMIS Case Competition

ITS students Joshua Chang, Luis Garcia Fuentes and Chaand Lakhani recently competed in one of the best-known MIS case competitions in the United States, the University of Minnesota’s CoMIS competition. Nineteen teams representing universities across the world attended. Many were from highly regarded MIS programs in the United States, including The University of Texas at Austin, Indiana University, the University of Maryland and the University of Arizona. Other teams came from as far away as Singapore, Hungary and China. Teams were provided a business case and had 24 hours to prepare recommendations. At the 25th hour, the teams presented their recommendations to a panel of industry judges.

Chang, Fuentes and Lakhani were selected to represent UT Dallas through individual presentations they made to a group of Dallas-Fort Worth industry executives. Their preparation for CoMIS included meeting several times with different industry and IT executives to fine-tune their presentation.

UT Dallas competed against TCU, Emory University and the University of Washington in the first round and placed second to Emory, advancing to the intermediate round. In that round, the trio faced teams from Maryland, Penn State, Arizona and a team from China. The UT Dallas team won that round and advanced to the finals, where they placed among the top six teams. The winning teams were from Kwantlen Polytechnic in British Columbia, Canada; Iowa State and HEC Montréal.

Each of the students said taking part in the competition better prepared them for careers as IT professionals. Lakhani summed up the team’s sentiments.

“The experience of being surrounded by a community of like-minded individuals who shared our passion for technology, leadership, academics and success was unlike any other opportunity I’ve had,” she said. “We were coached and trained by Professor Kelly Slaughter, industry professionals and our very own body language specialist over three months prior to the competition.

“Luis, Josh and I found a healthy and creative synchrony in the way we practiced and worked, and ultimately left the competition with a stronger skill set in communication, presentation and networking abilities. … Our team left the competition with a newfound sense of accomplishment, pride and true friendship. We are beyond grateful for the opportunity that JSOM and Professor Slaughter presented us.”

Second Annual IAS Case Competition

The UT Dallas Intelligence Analytics Society’s second annual case competition attracted 58 teams who vied against one another through the spring semester to win the Intelligence Analytics Challenge 2.0. Besides UT Dallas, teams from UT Arlington and UT Austin competed. In the first round, competitors mined a large healthcare dataset to develop meaningful insights using any statistical tool or software for their analysis and visualization. The top 10 teams were invited to a “datathon” on April 8. During the daylong event, teams used transactional data to create meaningful business solutions they presented to a panel of industry professionals from AT&T and professors from UT Dallas. Competition was fierce, and two teams tied for third place. The top four teams shared $1,800 in prize money.

JSOM Study Analyzes Healthcare Quality, IT, Reimbursements

A new UT Dallas study examines the relationship between healthcare service quality, health-information technology usage and Medicare reimbursements for congestive heart failure cases. IS doctoral student Danish H. Saifee and IS professor and area coordinator Dr. Indranil Bardhan produced one of the first studies to explore the dynamics of these mechanisms using health IT and Medicare data on actual payments to healthcare providers. The study was published in Volume 9, Issue 2-3 of the International Journal of Electronic Healthcare. Saifee and Bardhan found that hospitals with greater mortality rates are likely to receive lower Medicare payments, while those with greater readmission rates are likely to receive higher average payments. Medicare and Medicaid insurance programs now reward physicians and hospitals for healthcare service quality, using metrics such as readmission and mortality rates. For more information, please see the April 2017 UT Dallas News Center story.

Raghunathan Named to Ashbel Smith Professorship

Dr. Srinivasan Raghunathan, professor of information systems, recently was appointed to an Ashbel Smith Professorship, an endowed post named for the first president of The University of Texas Board of Regents. The honor was formally bestowed at an investiture ceremony on April 7. “Dr. Raghu” has received a number of recognitions, including Best Paper awards; served as an editor for several prominent publications; served as Information Systems Area coordinator; and supervised numerous PhD students, many of whom continue to co-author papers with him after graduation.

“I feel privileged and honored to receive this recognition. It has been very satisfying to be part of this wonderful institution and to see the growth of the Naveen Jindal School of Management,” Raghunathan said.

Lahiri Co-Chair of TEIS 2017 Workshop

IS faculty member Dr. Atanu Lahiri co-chaired the Theory in Economics of Information Systems (TEIS) Workshop in Sonoma, California, in March. “This is the premier conference for analytical economics-based research in the area of information systems,” Lahiri said. “The conference was attended by more than 50 scholars. Speakers hailed from the U.S., Canada, European countries, China and India. They presented a diverse set of topics — platform economics, telecommunication pricing, e-tailing, digital piracy, online advertising, online ratings and reviews, mobile internet and computer security.”

Lahiri and the IS Area thank longtime area administrative assistant Aylin Calisir for her key role in organizing this conference.

Bardhan Interviewed on Accountable Care Organization Study

IS Area Coordinator and faculty member Dr. Indranil Bardhan was recently interviewed by Healthcare IT News about his invited talk at the HIMSS Population Health Forum in Boston, April 3-4. He said the goals of this first national study comparing accountable care organizations were to develop new methodology to compare ACOs and to look at the impact of health-information technology on the cost and efficiency of ACOs, using both hospital- and physician-led care. The study found that the efficiency was inversely proportional to the size of the ACO, use of health-information IT improved ACO efficiency and use of health-information IT mitigated the negative effects of size on ACO efficiency. The second part of the study focused on determining the types of heath-information IT that increased this efficiency.