Message from the Area Coordinator
Another year is behind us, and the Information Systems Area at UT Dallas continues to do well. Faculty research remains in first position based on publications in Information Systems Research and MIS Quarterly combined, for the 2015-2017 period (UTD Top 100 Business School Research Rankings™).
Undergraduate enrollment has increased steadily, and we now have 650 students pursuing the BS in Information Technology and Systems degree. The MS in Business Analytics program also has grown significantly, and is up to 700 students this year. It has been ranked 17th in the 2018 QS World University Rankings, and ninth in the U.S. by TFE Times. The MS in Information Technology and Management program has more than 1,000 students, making it one of the largest in the world. Postgraduate job placement continues to be good, with both master’s programs reporting three-month rates above 80 percent. It is no secret that there has been a downward trend in overseas applications at U.S. universities. We have been nimble in our response and have added many new courses to keep our programs attractive and on the cutting edge. While there is likely to be some turbulence in the short run, the year ahead holds promise. I am cautiously optimistic that most of the positive trends of the past few years will continue, as the quality of our undergraduate program becomes better known and uncertainties related to international student opportunities abate.
Syam Menon
Area Coordinator
Information Systems
Recent Happenings
AIS Student Chapter Leadership Conference
Every year, the Association for Information Systems (AIS) hosts a Student Chapter Leadership Conference (SCLC), which offers students great opportunities to meet peers and industry professionals from across the world, enhance their professional skills and make lasting friendships. The conference features speakers who are industry leaders, executives and students. There are many competitions during the conference that give students the opportunity to work on real-world problems to test their knowledge and expand their skills. These competitions expose students to company-specific case studies focusing on emerging technology issues such as analytics, security and blockchain solutions.
UT Dallas was selected to host the 2018 conference, which will take place April 12-14. The conference will bring approximately 300 students, faculty and industry professionals to campus. Much of the conference will take place in our new Davidson-Gundy Alumni Center. We are very excited to welcome everyone to campus and show off the work of our amazing students. For more information, please visit the conference website.
Students in the UT Dallas AIS chapter are doing most of the conference planning and coordination. The students have been very busy organizing a detailed agenda, securing industry sponsors and booking speakers.
“Planning for such an incredible event has been as large and empowering as it has been enjoyable,” says Cannon Burton, director of outreach for the UT Dallas AIS Student Chapter. “The inside knowledge I have gained from industry leaders, leadership skills I have developed while guiding my peers, and the wonderful interactions with everyone involved have helped me grow as a person. Providing such a vital role in this year’s AIS SCLC is truly one of my proudest achievements.”
Matthew Cocco, president of UT Dallas AIS, adds that “planning an event at this scale and having the opportunity to work with industry professionals to put this together has been an informative growth experience. It’s taught me a lot about what it takes to coordinate between teams to achieve greater objectives.”
Dr. Dawn Owens, faculty advisor to the UT Dallas AIS chapter, says that it has been exciting to see students volunteer and get involved. “Planning an event of this size and scope teaches students real-world skills,” she says. “Most importantly, they are learning the arts of negotiation, communication and coordination. I am thankful to the AIS Advisory Board for choosing UT Dallas and giving our students this opportunity.”
ITS Academy
The ITS Academy continues to bring positive attention to the ITS program and the Naveen Jindal School of Management. The ITS Academy houses various outreach initiatives that introduce middle school and high school students to the wide variety of opportunities an ITS degree can provide. The academy showcases the Science, Technology, Engineering and Math (STEM) offerings at JSOM in two- to five-day programs.
Since the first event in 2016, academy programs have drawn 150 participants. Among those who have attended, five have subsequently enrolled at UT Dallas as BS in ITS students. Sponsorships cover 80 percent of the costs of academy programs. Parents have called the academy an excellent recruiting tool that helps them evaluate options for their children.
Why do the programs work? They provide students a chance to come to campus and experience campus life. Our current BS in ITS students help with events and interact with participants. Visitors see firsthand many of the wonderful academic, social and other options that UT Dallas has to offer, and they can see themselves as college students. Many students leave feeling excited — rather than intimidated — about college life.
Three ITS Academy events coming up include our first-ever hackathon, Hack IT, where students will learn about the “internet of things.” The hackathon will be followed by our G.I.R.L.S. STEM Symposium and our third-annual ITS Exploration Camp. To learn more about these events, visit the ITS Academy webpage.
The BS in ITS program continues to be a strong undergraduate program in the Jindal School. In the past two years, the program has grown from 400 students in fall 2015 to 650 in fall 2017, an increase of 63 percent.
The program has experienced several positive trends, including an increase in freshman applications. In the past two years, the size of the incoming freshman class has nearly doubled, going from 35 to 67 in fall 2017. In fall 2018, we anticipate our largest freshman class yet, close to 100 students. We attribute this growth to the STEM designation and to our technically rigorous program.
Another growth trend is in the percentage of female students in the program. The 2017 school year not only was significant for JSOM in terms of enrollment, but also was in line with national goals to increase the number of women with STEM educations. In fall 2017, female students accounted for 30 percent of the BS in ITS program’s enrollment, up from 23 percent in fall 2015.
We also are ahead of the national average of 25 percent women in technical education. That gives the undergraduate ITS program one of the highest percentages in the country in terms of women in the program. These numbers are important as we continue to address the shortfall of female STEM workers. Although women comprise 57 percent of the U.S. labor force according to the U.S. Department of Labor, as of this writing, only 30 percent of them are working in the tech industry, and only 28.8 percent of STEM workers are women (Institute for Women’s Policy Research).
The growth in female enrollment can be linked to events like the G.I.R.L.S. STEM Symposium and our Women in Technology and Business (WITB) student organization. The ITS program is proud of empowering more and more female students with a strong degree. Companies such as Pioneer Natural Resources and PepsiCo are committed to an inclusive and diverse employee base, and they have been continual proponents and supporters of our various offerings. For example, Pioneer Natural Resources generously provided a sponsorship to our WITB student organization, and PepsiCo has been working with us on our G.I.R.L.S. STEM Symposium to target underrepresented groups.
Partnering with diversity-focused companies introduces female students in JSOM to the evolving world of IT and shows them how more women are reaching new heights in IT careers. These partnerships are a true representation of core school and University values that revolve around creation of opportunities and inclusivity. These partnerships reflect the strong/unstinting support that JSOM Dean Hasan Pirkul provides to the programs and events we host. Visit the ITS Academy webpage to learn more.
Upcoming Events
MS in ITM Online Information Sessions
Feb 21, noon – 1 p.m.
Mar 21, noon – 1 p.m.
Apr 18, noon – 1 p.m.
May 16, noon – 1 p.m.
BS in ITS Coffee Chats
Feb 28, 9:30 a.m. – 11:30 a.m., JSOM 1.123
Mar 27, 3 p.m. – 5 p.m., JSOM 1.123
Apr 25, 9:30 a.m. – 11:30 a.m. JSOM 1.123
MS in ITM Coffee Chats
Feb 21, 5:30 p.m. – 6:30 p.m., JSOM 1.517
Mar 21, 5:30 p.m. – 6:30 p.m., JSOM 1.157
Apr 18, 5:30 p.m. – 6:30 p.m., JSOM 1.157
May 16, 5:30 p.m. – 6:30 p.m., JSOM 1.157
Student Spotlight
Student Clubs Bridge Gap for MS in Business Analytics Program
The rise of big data has challenged MS in Business Analytics Program Director Kashif Saeed to keep students engaged beyond the classroom and help them keep pace with changes in the field. To bridge the gap, Saeed formed three new clubs this academic year — Data Science, Big Data and Marketing Analytics. Starting three years ago with 30 students, the business analytics program today has more than 700 students and continues to grow. The program is ranked ninth in the country by TFE Times (see Student Clubs Bridge Gap for MS in Business Analytics Program).
Alumni Spotlight
Two IS PhD Graduates Begin Faculty Careers
Dr. Jyotishka Ray joined UT Dallas in August 2011 in the Management Science PhD program. His doctoral thesis, “Essays on Commercialization of Information Technology Products” — which included his paper “The Design of Feature-Limited Demonstration Software: Choosing the Right Features to Include” — was published in January 2017 in Production and Operations Management (Vol. 26, Issue 1: 9-30). He is now an assistant professor in management at California State University, East Bay. “Joining UT Dallas was a life-changing decision,” he says. “I really liked my department’s open culture and easy accessibility of the faculty.”
Dr. Lusi Li also came to the program in August 2011, and has joined California State University, Los Angeles as an assistant professor in information systems. Her doctoral thesis, “Economics of Recommender Systems in Online Marketplaces,” is under review in leading information systems journals.
Alumni Corner
PhD Alumni Publications
Ayabakan, Sezgin, I. Bardhan, Z. Zheng and K. Kirksey, “The Impact of Health Information Sharing on Duplicate Testing,” MIS Quarterly, Vol. 41, Issue 4, December 2017: 1083-1103. DOI: 10.25300/MISQ/2017/41.4.04.
Baktir, M.A., Y. Ceran and J. Myers, “Exercise Capacity and Mortality in Veterans With and Without Type-2 Diabetes: An Analysis Using Propensity Matching,” ISSN: 1841-0987, 1843-066X; Acta Endocrinologica, Vol.13, Issue 3, July-September 2017: 378-384. DOI: 10.4183/aeb.2017.378.
Bandyopadhyay, Tridib and H. Zafar, “Influence of Information Overload on IT Security Behavior: A Theoretical Framework,” proceedings of the Americas Conference on Information Systems, Boston, August 2017.
Ghoshal, Abhijeet, A. Lahiri and D. Dey, “Drawing a Line in the Sand: Commitment Problem in Ending Software Support,” MIS Quarterly, Vol. 41, Issue 4, December 2017: 1227-1247. DOI: 10.25300/MISQ/2017/41.4.10.
Kwark, Young, J. Chen and S. Raghunathan, “User-Generated Content and Competing Firms’ Product Design,” Management Science, published online October 20, 2017. DOI: abs/10.1287/mnsc.2017.2839.
Sun, Zhen, M. Dawande, G. Janakiraman, V. Mookerjee, “Not Just a Fad: Optimal Sequencing in Mobile In-App Advertising,” Information Systems Research, published online June 8, 2017. DOI: 10.1287/isre.2017.0697.
Faculty Focus
IS PhD Candidate Earns Conference Paper Accolades
Lecturer Danish H. Saifee, who is pursuing a PhD in management science with a concentration in information systems, earned the Best Student Paper award at the Conference on Health IT and Analytics (CHITA) in Washington, D.C., in early November for “Are Online Reviews of Physicians Reliable Indicators of Clinical Outcomes? A Focus on Chronic Disease Management.”
The study focuses on the question of the reliability of online reviews of physicians on websites such as Vitals and Yelp, which are growing in popularity among patients and other healthcare consumers. In particular, the study questioned the reliability of such reviews relative to quantitative clinical outcomes — such as 30-day readmission and emergency room visit rates — for chronic conditions such as chronic obstructive pulmonary disease. The key finding of this study is that online reviews of physicians may not be dependable when considered for evaluating the quality of care provided by these physicians to patients suffering from chronic conditions. In other words, if a physician receives better online reviews compared to her peers, this does not imply that her patients will experience lower rates of readmission or visits to the emergency room.
This finding is in significant contrast to what has been found in the context of products such as books and movies, hospitality services and even medical surgeries such as cardiac surgery. This finding can be intuitively understood by appreciating that the outcomes of treatment of chronic conditions, which can prolong life by many years, are not easy to clearly observe and comprehend, particularly by patients who, unlike their physicians, often have not undergone extensive medical training. Additionally, the reviews a patient provides may be based on interaction(s) with the physician, and/or her staff, and may not capture the nuances of the actual clinical outcomes experienced as a result of the care and treatment the physician provided.
Saifee’s co-authors on the study are JSOM Information Systems Area faculty members Drs. Zhiqiang (Eric) Zheng, Indranil R. Bardhan and Atanu Lahiri.
A previous version of the paper with the same co-authors won the Best Paper Award at the International Conference for Smart Health (ICSH) in Hong Kong last June.
New IS Faculty for Fall 2017
Last year, he transferred to the Naveen Jindal School of Management as a clinical professor in the Information Systems Area. He teaches undergraduate courses in information systems and graduate courses in business analytics and digital strategy.
Prior to joining UT Dallas, he held senior executive roles in the communications and media industries, including Bell Laboratories and AT&T. He was a partner at Arthur Andersen, serving telecom, media and high-technology clients in the U.S. and Canada. At Siemens, he led the company’s telecom and media consulting practice for North and South America. He also held senior management positions at Fujitsu and Cognizant. In his management-consulting career, he has been responsible for sales and delivery of more than $100 million in client engagements.
Bose received his bachelor’s degree in electrical engineering from the Indian Institute of Technology, Kanpur, his master’s degree in systems engineering from Case Western Reserve University, and his PhD in operations research (with a minor in finance) from The University of Texas at Austin. He holds a Project Management Professional certification. He is a senior member of the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers and has served on the board of governors of the IEEE Communications Society and as technical editor of IEEE Communications Magazine.
Dr. Jason Parker joined UT Dallas last fall as clinical assistant professor in the business analytics program. While working toward his PhD in economics at UT Dallas, he received the School of Economic, Political and Policy Sciences’ Comet Teaching Award in 2013. Parker served as a postdoctoral research fellow at Michigan State University before returning to UT Dallas. His research interests include applied econometrics (panel data, cross-sectional dependence) and applied microeconometrics (economics of crime, public health). His papers have appeared in the Journal of Business and Economic Statistics and Journal of Affective Disorders. Other papers are under review in several journals on economics and public health.
New ITM Program Manager
Gaurav Shekhar joined the Information Systems Area as program manager for the MS in Information Technology and Management program in fall 2017. A spring 2016 graduate of JSOM’s MS in ITM program, he initially went back to the industry where he worked as a program manager for a leading telecom company. An adjunct faculty member for both undergraduate and graduate students, he also serves as the faculty advisor for several student organizations on campus in addition to his new program manager duties. He has been leading the effort to recruit new students and guide current ones in their academic and career pursuits. Shekhar says he feels servant leadership is the key to strengthening the program and has been working with several stakeholders at UT Dallas to revitalize the mentoring program.
Faculty Research Corner
Digital Markets
Aseri, Manmohan, M. Dawande, G. Janakiraman and V. Mookerjee, “Procurement Policies for Mobile-Promotion Platforms,” Management Science, published online October 2, 2017. DOI:10.1287/mnsc.2017.2837.
Dey, Debabrata, A. Lahiri and A. Kim, “Combating Online Piracy: The ‘Longer Arm’ of Enforcement,” Management Science, forthcoming.
Geng, Xianjun, Y. Tan and L. Wei, “How Add-On Pricing Interacts with Distribution Contracts,” Production and Operations Management, accepted in November 2017; Best Problem-Driven Analytical Research Paper, 2017, Annual Meeting of the Decision Sciences Institute, Washington, D.C., November 2017.
Ghoshal, Abhijeet, A. Lahiri and D. Dey, “Drawing a Line in the Sand: Commitment Problem in Ending Software Support,” MIS Quarterly, Vol. 41, Issue 4, December 2017: 1227-1247. DOI: 10.25300/MISQ/2017/41.4.10.
Lahiri, Atanu and D. Dey, “Versioning and Information Dissemination: A New Perspective,” Information Systems Research, forthcoming.
Mu, Liying, M. Dawande, X. Geng and V. Mookerjee, “Milking the Quality Test: Improving the Milk Supply Chain Under Competing Collection Intermediaries” Management Science, Vol. 62, Issue 5, May 2016: 1259-1277; Best Publication Award in Natural Resources, INFORMS Section on Energy, Natural Resources and the Environment, 2017 INFORMS Conference, Houston, October 2017. DOI: 10.1287/mnsc.2015.2171.
Ray, Jyotishka, J. Samuel, S. Menon and V. Mookerjee, “The Design of Feature-Limited Demonstration Software: Choosing the Right Features to Include.” Production and Operations Management, Vol. 26, Issue 1, January 2017: 9-30. DOI: 10.1111/poms.12604.
Healthcare Information Technology
Ayabakan, Sezgin, I. Bardhan, Z. Zheng and K. Kirksey, “Impact of Health Information Sharing on Duplicate Testing,” MIS Quarterly, Vol. 41, Issue 4, December 2017: 1083-1103. DOI: 10.25300/MISQ/2017/41.4.04.
Bao, Chenzhang and I. Bardhan, “Antecedents of Patient Health Outcomes in Dialysis Clinics: A National Study,” Journal of Centrum Cathedra: The Business and Economics Research Journal, Vol. 10, No. 1: 25-48. DOI: 10.1108/JCC-09-2016-0015.
Bao, Chenzhang and I. Bardhan, “Measuring Relative Performance of Accountable Care Organizations: The Role of Health Information Technology,” proceedings of the International Conference on Information Systems, Seoul, December 2017; Conference on Health IT and Analytics, Washington, D.C., November 2017; and INFORMS Conference on Information Systems and Technology, Houston, October 2017.
Bardhan, Indranil and D. Saifee, “Healthcare Outcomes, Information Technology, and Medicare Reimbursements: Hospital-Level Analyses,” International Journal of Electronic Healthcare, Vol. 9, No. 2/3: 129-156. DOI: 10.1504/IJEH.2017.10003171.
Saifee, Danish H., E. Zheng, I. Bardhan and A. Lahiri, “Do Online Reviews of Physicians Reflect Healthcare Outcomes?” proceedings of Conference on Health IT and Analytics, Washington, D.C., November 2017.
Saifee, Danish H., Z. Zheng, I. Bardhan, and A. Lahiri “Are Online Reviews of Physicians Reliable Indicators of Clinical Outcomes? A Focus on Chronic Disease Management,” proceedings of the proceedings of Workshop on Information Systems and Economics, Seoul, December 2017.
Corporate Outreach
Donor Data Analysis for City House
The Center for Information Technology and Management began the fall 2017 semester with a unique and significant collaboration with City House, a Plano nonprofit that provides emergency shelter and transitional residential services to at-risk children and young adults who are in need due to abuse, neglect or homelessness.
Five Jindal School graduate students under the guidance of the CITM director, Dr. Kelly Slaughter, worked on the real-world donor data of City House to analyze and investigate numerous trends, patterns and insights using state-of-the-art analytical techniques and methodologies.
The project aimed to help City House recognize key insights in data in order to aid the organization in gaining and retaining more donors using business intelligence. This association also provided the students with a one-of-a-kind opportunity to interact with business stakeholders of City House while getting a feel for a real-world nonprofit corporate venture and gaining valuable educational experience.
The project concluded with students handing over key deliverables and recommendations to benefit City House and help it realize its vision of helping every child, youth and young adult in its care develop confidence to succeed in life, especially while coping with difficult relationships and circumstances.
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I am an artist, illustrator, designer and front-end/UX web developer. In my spare time I enjoy raising two children with my wife, reading books with and without pictures, practicing yoga and making things out of cheap wood.
