My name is Patricia Ruma Spence and I am an experienced IT consultant currently pursuing a PhD in the College of Information Sciences and Technology at The Pennsylvania State University. My research focuses on the study of teams, particularly organizational factors that affect collaborative information seeking in teams. This research is supervised by my committee: Madhu C. Reddy, Ph.D. (advisor), Jim Jansen, Ph.D., Sandeep Purao, Ph.D., Barbara Gray, Ph.D., and Wayne G. Lutters, Ph.D.
In the past, I worked as a senior CRM consultant for The Extraprise Group, Inc. in Boston, MA. I have also worked as a senior consultant for Accenture (formerly Andersen Consulting, LLP) in St. Louis, MO. In these roles, I served as a consultant to a number of Fortune 1000 firms on various topics regarding strategic planning and implementation of information technologies.
I am a native of Missouri and hold a BS in Engineering Management and an MS in Information Science & Technology from the Missouri University of Science & Technology.
News and Notes
April 2011: Journal article accepted: Spence, P.R. and M.C. Reddy (Accepted). Beyond Expertise Seeking: A Field Study of the Informal Knowledge Practices of Healthcare IT Teams. Computer Supported Coopertive work, The Journal of Collabortive Computing.
January 2011: I have completed data collection for my dissertation and am now in the writing phase. I intend to defend the second half of 2011.
April 2010: I have been accepted to the Consortium for the Science of Sociotechnical Systems (CSST) 2010 Summer Research Institute. This is an amazing opportuntiy for me to learn and discuss my research with other senior PhD students, junior faculty and industry researchers, and senior researchers from industry and academia.
February 2010: I have started collecting data in Hershey, PA at Hershey Medical Center for my PhD dissertation.
January 2010: Dr. Wayne G. Lutters of UMBC has agreed to be on my dissertation committee. Dr. Lutters' research in organizational memory and information reuse will prove invaluable to me as I work on my dissertation.
October 2009: I have been accepted as a student volunteer for the Conference on Computer-Supported Cooperative Work (CSCW) 2010. I am looking forward to serving this community and taking advantage of all the conference has to offer.
August 2009: I have been accepted to the International Conference for Information Systems (ICIS) 2009 Doctoral Consortium. This is a wonderful honor and a great opporunity for me to further my work. My DC research paper.
August 2009: I successfuly defended my dissertation proposal!
June 2009: I have been accepted to the 2009 Academy of Management Organizational Communication & Information Systems (OCIS) Doctoral Consortium. My DC research paper.
May 2009: Book chapter accepted: Reddy, M.C., Jansen, B.J. and P.R. Spence (2010). Collaborative Information Behavior: Exploring Collaboration and Coordination During Information Seeking and Retrieval Activities. Submitted to J. Foster (Ed.), Collaborative Information Behavior: User Engagement and Communication Sharing. Hershey, PA: IGI Global.
January 2009: Book review accepted: Book Review: Project Management in Practice, Third Ed. Information Processing & Management. 45: p. 397-400.