Dr. Jim Courtney received his Ph.D. in Business Administration (Management Science) from the University of Texas at Austin in 1974. Currently, he is a McCallister/Humana Eminent Scholar Chair in Information Systems and Professor of Computer Information Systems at the Department of Management and Information Systems at Louisiana Tech University.

His research interests are knowledge-based decision support systems, knowledge management, inquiring (learning) organizations and sustainable economic systems and most recently Information  Assurance.

His academic experience includes faculty positions the University of Central Florida in Orlando, Texas A&M University.  Georgia Tech, Texas Tech, Lincoln University in New Zealand and the State University of New York at Buffalo. Other experiences include positions as Database Analyst at MRI Systems Corporation and Visiting Research Scientist at the NASA Johnson Space Center.

Dr Courtney is the co-developer of the Systems Laboratory for Information Management (Business Publications, 1981), a software package to support research and education in decision support systems, co-author of Database Systems for Management (Second Edition, Irwin Publishing Company, 1992), and Decision Support Models and Expert Systems (MacMillan Publishing, 1992). 

His papers have appeared in several journals, including Management Science, MIS Quarterly, Communications of the ACM, IEEE Transactions on Systems, Man and Cybernetics, Decision Sciences, Decision Support Systems, the Journal of Management Information Systems, Database, Interfaces, the Journal of Applied Systems Analysis, and the Journal of Experiential Learning and Simulation.  

Dr. Courtney was my mentor at the University of Central Florida throughout my master's program and has been a great supporter while I was embracing the thought of the PhD venture.  My research interests have been impacted by Dr. Courtney's.

Last week I introduced some venues that I hope to have my work accepted in. Today I will blog about three academic communities that I might be part of someday. (I should have reversed the order of these 2 blogs!)

The Association for Information Systems

Since I talked about AMCIS and ICIS in last blog, it just makes sense to introduce Association for Information Systems (AIS) community that I am already a member of. AIS is a professional organization founded in 1994;  its purpose is to serve as the premier global organization for academics specializing in Information Systems. The need for such an organization was first spelled out in an editorial authored by five past Editor's-in-Chief of the Management Information Systems Quarterly in March of 1993. Bill King, of the University of Pittsburgh, was first among many to play key leadership roles in bringing the association into existence. He served as the first president.

Association for computing Machinery

ACM is widely recognized as the premier membership organization for computing professionals, delivering resources that advance computing as a science and a profession; enable professional development; and promote policies and research that benefit society.
ACM hosts the computing industry's leading Digital Library and Guide to Computing Literature, and serves its global members and the computing profession with journals and magazines, conferences, workshops, electronic forums, and Online Books and Courses.

I am considering this community because I have been reading many articles that are relevant to my research area.

IEEE

   Finally, I will introduce one more community which is IEEE and more specifically IEEE Computer Society Technical Committee on Security and Privacy.  

 IEEE, an association dedicated to the fostering of technological innovation and excellence for the benefit of humanity, is the world's largest technical professional society. It is designed to serve professionals involved in all aspects of the electrical, electronic and computing fields and related areas of science and technology that underlie modern civilization.

AMCIS    

I will start my academic communities by the Americas' conference on Information Systems (AMCIS) for the simple reason that I attended the 2008 conference before the start of my PhD. The conference was held in beautiful Toronto, Canada.

The annual Americas' Conference on Information Systems (AMCIS) is a conference of the Association for Information Systems (AIS), and is managed by an ever changing group of volunteers. It is associated with the Society for Information Management (SIM) and the International Academy for Information Managment (IAIM).

AMCIS 2009 will be held in San Francisco, CA.

ICIS   

International Conference on Information Systems (ICIS) is also a conference of AIS with much lower acceptance rate. ICIS was founded in 1980 at UCLA and the first conference was held at the University of Pennsylvania as the " Conference on Information Systems". Next ICIS conference in Held in Paris, France this coming December and my advisor Dr. Chu will be attending.

From Conferences to Journals:

During pre- AMCIS conference in August 08, I had the great pleasure to meet in person the MIS Quarterly Editor-In-Chief  Dr Detmar W. Straub and ISR Editor-In-Chief  Dr. Vallabh Sambamurthy.  They may "butcher" our submission but they are actually pretty nice.

MIS Quarterly

The Management Information Systems Quarterly (MIS Quarterly) is a journal aiming the enhancement and communication of knowledge concerning the development of IT-based services, the management of IT resources, and the use, impact, and economics of IT with managerial, organizational, and societal implications.  Professional issues affecting the IS field as a whole are also in the purview of the journal.

ISR     http://www.informs.org/site/ISR/

Information system research (ISR) publishes research topics from a wide range of theories including, but not limited to, cognitive psychology, economics, computer science, operations research, design science, organization theory, organization behavior, sociology, and strategic management. 

I do not see these conferences/journal as different professional associations but as one IS/IT large community with different levels. As I may be able to publish in AMCIS and hopefully with ICIS during my PhD journey, attaining the level of MIS Q and ISR will realistically require a much longer breath.

Data from this blog is extracted from conferences/journals websites

MITHU BHATTACHARYA is a 4th year IST student at the RFID lab directed by Dr. Chao-Hsien. She is also co-advised by Dr. Tracy Mullen. Mithu's dissertation topic is titled RFID Implementation Issues in Consumer Packaged Goods (CPG) and Pharmaceutical Value Chain. She claims it is only a tentative title at this time but she was very gracious in providing a brief description of her research. " I am using mixed method for my research work. My primary method is Content Analysis where I convert qualitative textual information into quantitative information and perform different statistical tests on the frequency data for drawing inference. For my data I use trade articles (industry press releases and white papers that are published) along with academic (published conference, journals, and academic magazines). So basically I am analyzing RFID Implementation issues for CPG retailers, CPG manufacturers, and Pharmaceutical manufacturers and then comparing across these sectors statistically for different issues"

Mithu has attended and presented in 2 conferences and managed already to publish three conference papers and one journal paper. She has two more journal papers under preparation. "Out of this 1 conference paper and 1 journal paper are not from my dissertation area. Those two papers came out as an outcome from my independent study".

Mithu is planning her  proposal defense by the end of the Fall 08 semester or by early spring 2009 at the latest. "IST has given me a very wide perspective about academia and it has been a good journey."

Mithu research interest are very similar to mine as she is embracing a "business"  versus a computer science approach to her research. However, I am more interested at the privacy and security aspects of RFID within the healthcare domain.

Mithu's publications based on Wen's blog:

Mary Beth Rosson, Hansa Sinha, Mithu Bhattacharya, Dejin Zhao: Design Planning in End-User Web Development. VL/HCC 2007: 189-196.

Mithu Bhattacharya, Chao-Hsien Chu, Tracy Mullen. RFID Implementation in Retail Industry: Current Status, Issues, and Challenges, Decision Science Institute (DSI) Conference, Phoenix AZ, 2007.

Mithu Bhattacharya, Chao-Hsien Chu, Tracy Mullen. A Comparative Analysis of RFID Adoption in Retail and Manufacturing Sectors. 2008 IEEE International Conference on RFID, Volume 16, Issue 17, April 2008 Page(s):241 - 249.

Dr. Chu's most up-to-date CV