IS Department News
Personnel Change
This fall the IS department has a new assistant professor, Dr. Hua Dai. She earned her Ph.D. degree in information systems from University of North Carolina, Greensboro, and also had a bachelor degree in electrical engineering from China and a masters degree in telecommunications from Denmark prior to coming to the U.S. Given Dr. Dai’s solid technical background we are confident in her ability to deliver a more rigorous series of data communication courses in IS 310 and 330. Also welcomed to the IS department this fall is our visiting scholar, Dr. George Wang, from National Kaohsiung University of Applied Sciences in Taiwan. Dr. Wang has a Ph.D. degree in finance from the Imperial College of London and a MBA degree from University of Connecticut. He will be collaborating with Dr. Wen on a year-long research project related to financial information systems.
Program Sizes and Class Size Pressure
Both the IS major and minor programs have experienced significant growth in the past year. As of the end of September 2009, there were 74 IS majors and 21 IS minors. The larger programs have put noticeable pressure on the sizes of a few IS courses that are required of both programs. While the large size (34 students) of IS 401 this semester has forced us to teach it outside of the IS teaching lab, the sizes of IS 310 and 330 next year will create more serious problems if the courses have to be housed in rooms other than Wing 25 where adequate technologies are available. The Department is looking into solutions to alleviate this growing pain.
Winter Course Offering
The IS Department will offer one section of IS 220 in the coming J-term. Up to 35 seats will be available from Dr. Hua Dai.
Spring Course Offerings
For spring 2010 the Department will offer 6 sections of I-S 220 with 35 seats per section. We also plan to offer a section of this course during the first summer session to relieve any excessive demand pressure that may build up in the spring. Dr. Haried will teach one section of IS 411, which is the second and final course in the IS capstone sequence. As Dr. Haried will be teaching both courses of the sequence, perfect coordination of leaning subjects and activities will be achieved. This ideal teaching assignment will also be accomplished for the data communication sequence of IS 310 and 330 as Dr. Dai will be the sole instructor of them in two consecutive semesters. Students will be leaning the basics of data communications in IS 310 in the spring term and moving up to the more advanced IS 330 in the fall semester. Again, Dr. Yang will offer a section of MGT 370 for the management department in spring while Dr. Wen will continue to offer IS 300 and one of the MBA core courses, BUS 755. No upper-division IS elective course is scheduled for next spring. Students who need electives for timely graduation are encouraged to take IS internships for credits, the IS independent study course, or qualified elective courses in the Computer Science Department or Management Department.
International MBA Programs in Taiwan
The joint MBA program with National Kaohsiung First University of Science and Technology (NKUAS) Dr. Wen helped to establish has entered its second year of operation. Currently, there are six students from NKUAS taking our regular MBA courses on the UW-L campus. It is expected that the enrolment will continue next year, especially with potential participation of students from our second joint program with National Kaohsiung First University of Science and technology in Taiwan. As the overseas MBA students market has become highly competitive in recent years, the CBA will need to invest sufficient effort in the area of promotion and administrative coordination to sustain these programs. On the other hand, the influx of international students to our on-site MBA program is changing the dynamics of and exerting size pressure on the core MBA classes. The CBA Graduate Committee is visiting these issues and endeavoring to identify their ramifications.
Faculty Research Output
REFERRED JOURNAL
Dai, H. and Palvia, P. "Factors Affecting Mobile Commerce Adoption: A Cross-Cultural Study in China and United States," The DATA BASE for Advances in Information Systems, forthcoming.
Haried, P. and Nazareth, D. "Application of Ethical Frameworks to IT Offshoring," Business and Professional Ethics Journal, forthcoming.
Wen, K. and Chen, Y. "E-business value creation in Small and Medium Enterprises: a US study using the TOE framework," International Journal of Electronic Business, forthcoming.
Yang, K. “Finding critical success factors for virtual community marketing,” Service Business: An International Journal, 2009(3), p 149-171, 2009.
CONFERENCE PROCEEDINGS
Dai, H. and Salam, A. "Determinants and Influences of Service Convenience in Electronic Mediated Environment (EME): An Empirical Study of Chinese Consumers," Proceedings of the Fifteenth Americas Conference on Information Systems, San Francisco, California, August 6th-9th, 2009.
Hu, T., Zhang, P., Zhang, X., Dai, H. "Gender Differences in Internet Use: A Logistic Regression Analysis", Proceedings of the Fifteenth Americas Conference on Information Systems, San Francisco, California, August 6th-9th, 2009.
Wen, K., Ku, C., Chang, T., and Ho, H. "An Integrated Decision Model for Selecting Appropriate Alternative of Business Continuity Plan," Proceedings of the Eighth International Conference on Information and Management Science, Kunming, China, July 20th-28th, 2009.
Yang, K. "Finding Appealing Factors of Download Type Mobile Games," accepted for 2009 DSI conference in New Orleans.
BOOK CHAPTER
Yang, K. "An Integrated Model for e-CRM in Internet Shopping: Evaluating the Relationship between Perceived Value, Satisfaction and Trust," accepted for publishing in the book “Encyclopedia of E-Business Development and Management in the Digital Economy."
Yang, K. "A RFID Based Ubiquitous-Oriented 3rd Party Logistics System: Towards a Blue Ocean Market" is accepted for publishing in the book "Radio Frequency Identification Fundamentals and Applications."