IST590-FALL2008

The definition of “funny” in graduate school is quite sarcastic. However, if you do not seriously seek fun in graduate school, I am pretty positive that you will find graduate school very entertaining.

Personally, I think being in graduate school is a social experiment. Often time I enjoy watching graduate students “pursuing” their educated goals with different, but not really innovative though, approaches. For me instead of rigorously focusing on ‘the big goal,’ I, to escape mundane graduate student’s life, rather enjoy observing the environment surrounding me on day-by-day basis.

Most of courses provided in graduate school’s levels are discussion-based, so that students are supposedly allowed to scholarly express their ideas toward subject matter in classes. However, this could be also very entertaining since there are many students with diverse backgrounds discuss such the same topics with different interpretation. Sometimes, I feel like my follow graduate students are digressing, but, after listening to them for minutes, I just realized that we they are just making arguments on exactly the same topic with particular perspectives. So, I enjoy seeing myself drawing ideas generated by people whose background and perspectives are varied.

Besides fun in discussion-based courses, embarrassing guest speakers could be another harmless, but enjoyable, hobbies. Graduate students so benefit the learning the guest speakers, and basically students can learn more from the ill-prepared than from the well-prepared. For example, ill-prepares speakers could be buried with flooded questions left unanswered. This reminds me of how harsh the reality is and encourages me to prepare myself very well when I am going to give a talk.

All in all, graduate school fun is not necessary involving caffeine intoxication or suffocating sleepless suffocation; it does not have to be sarcastic or ironic. Instead, the fun is about indulging in learning mistake from the others and absorbing good academic and social culture for future use. However, most of time, watching people doing mistakes in graduate is academically, educationally funny.

How to flourish in graduate school? This is not a question, but it is such very huge agenda, and there many things to be sought for understanding before jumping right into this agenda.

There are a myriad of advice and suggestion about how to survive graduate school. I, however, personally, have never complete taken put my faith in those. For I believe that there are no inclusively complete recipe for living graduate student lives. So, what I usually handle myself in graduate school is to combine those available recipes with my own personality and my goals of life - to live happily.

There are only three objectives that I would like to achieve while living my graduate student life are (a) to stay healthy, (b) to enjoy my life, entertaining, and (c) to work in order to fulfill the graduate school’s requirement. However, the objectives (a) and (b) by far outweigh the (c). I strongly believe mental and physical health is very important; that is why (a) is the first priority. And I also believe that every life on earth deserves a very quality time of living happily, then it would be a very misinformed if we forego out happiness and enjoyment just because we serve our life with academic reason. Finally (c) working hard - this is a very collective term - is very rewarding in the long run.

I would like to compare studying in graduate school to working in real world environment. I don’t want to claim that one of them is tougher than the other since they are also tough in difference point of view. When working, we have to remind ourselves that we are working toward “something” that usually takes us up to 6 years of suffering. Short-term, intermediate-term, and long-term goals can be differently achieved with different requirements. It is acceptable to allow yourselves to get punished for the purpose of achieving goals, and, moreover, it is very important to reward yourselves when you conquer such intellectual quest.

All in all, don’t live life so seriously because you cannot quite it anyway.

It is said that humans are social creature - I definitely think so. However, there are also diverse preferences among them regarding socialization. Speaking of socialization, I used to attend the IST’s beer club ones, but it just turned out disappointing because I felt not very fitted in. Many of IST graduates students attending the beer club are white or American born, and they, except me, have lots vocabulary and common things to share, the American way of life. Therefore, I was looking for an alternative, and I finally found one: The international student club.

Located at Bucke building, the club initiates many international agendas, offering a variety of conversational topic to all the participants. Regularly, we have an official coffee hour session on Thursdays’ evening. Moreover, we also have international films hours. And these two events very encourage attendants to express and discuss their culture perspectives regarding the issues/agendas emerging from the films and the conversation.

Anyway, please don’t be offended, State College, last year, was voted for one of the most livable colleges. However, I feel State College’s atmosphere and livelihood are less welcoming to international students who speak with strong accents. Unfortunately, it seems to be the only way that allows international students to feel safe to mingle is to socialize at international events. I hope that State College could be a better to live. Hopelessly.

I had been spending some time looking up for famous people in my field. So, I came up with the people that are well-known for their contribution to computing industries.

Steve Jobs, Steven Paul Jobs (born February 24, 1955) is the co-founder, Chairman, and CEO of Apple Inc and former CEO of Pixar Animation Studios. In the late 1970s, Jobs, with Apple co-founder Steve Wozniak, created one of the first commercially successful personal computers. In the early 1980s, Jobs was among the first to see the commercial potential of the mouse-driven GUI (Graphical User Interface). After losing a power struggle with the board of directors in 1985, Jobs resigned from Apple and founded NeXT, a computer platform development company specializing in the higher education and business markets. NeXT’s subsequent 1997 buyout by Apple Computer Inc. brought Jobs back to the company he co-founded, and he has served as its CEO since then. Steve Jobs was listed as Fortune Magazine’s Most Powerful Businessman of 2007.

William Henry “Bill” Gates III (born October 28, 1955), is an American business magnate, philanthropist, the world’s third richest person (as of February 8, 2008), the second richest American (as of October 10, 2008), and chairman of Microsoft, the software company he founded with Paul Allen. During his career at Microsoft, Gates held the positions of CEO and chief software architect, and remains the largest individual shareholder with more than 8 percent of the common stock. He has also authored or co-authored several books.

Gates is one of the best-known entrepreneurs of the personal computer revolution. Although he is admired by many, a large number of industry insiders criticize his business tactics, which they consider anti-competitive, an opinion which has in some cases been upheld by the courts. In the later stages of his career, Gates has pursued a number of philanthropic endeavors, donating large amounts of money to various charitable organizations and scientific research programs through the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, established in 2000.

Bill Gates stepped down as chief executive officer of Microsoft in January, 2000. He remained as chairman and created the position of chief software architect. In June, 2006, Gates announced that he would be transitioning from full-time work at Microsoft to part-time work at Microsoft and full-time work at the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation. He gradually transferred his duties to Ray Ozzie, chief software architect and Craig Mundie, chief research and strategy officer. Gates’s last full-time day at Microsoft was June 27, 2008. He remains at Microsoft as a part-time, non-executive chairman.

The two key fingures are not only the business men, but they are also ones of the greatest researchers in the history. They were orignally fascinated by computing technologies, and then they related their computing knowledge to computing market, generating very great fortune. Here, what I can reflect from their success is that, to be successful, we, as researchers, have to horizontally explore the landscape of the society. Just looking for research gaps by traversing through huge stacks of literature seems not to be helpful and successful in order to survive in the IT industries.

The journal that I very want to have my work published is the Information Policy and Information Society. Recently, I have strongly been developing my research interests toward information, communication, and technology (ICT). Ever since I was a co-author of the paper submitted to Decision Science in the summer 2007, “Toward Thailand’s Path to Knowledge Economy,” I have realized that knowledge is a fundamental commodity which greatly benefits a country. Moreover, knowledge becomes by far important as an economic and societal driver in lesser developing countries (LDCs). Information and technology of course have economic qualities themselves, and these qualities are forceful enough to country social welfare at large. With this regard, developing ICT policies means a lot to LDCs. Viable ICT policies could be regarded as a shortcut for those countries developing for technologically, economically, and societal heightening the country’s welfare at large. All in all, I consider Information Policy is a very practical research outlet suiting my interest toward conceiving ICT policies for developing countries. In addition, Information Society quite favors ICT policy in country level. What I plan to do this venue is to conduct a case study on Thailand’s ICT policies using Influence-Impact model developed by Dr. Eileen M. Trauth (2000).

Besides research venues about ICT policies, another publication venue that I have long been interested in is ACM SIGCPR/MIS. Every IT offshore outsourcing have gained popularity, there have been sprung of many labor concerns and issues. When IT offshore outsourcing seems to benefit the firms. However, it has also brought up many controversies in the Home Counties where the jobs are outsourced. Many IT professionals have already experienced psychological effects from a fear of losing their jobs. Even worse, some empirical studies show that IT professionals in home countries are reluctant to facilitate the jobs transferred to offshore sites. Some of them even creatively impede the process of job transfer and even knowledge transfers. And this could account for mysterious failure in job transferring phase.

First of all, this is a heavy writing, and it maybe critically goes against your fundamental belief of the value of education. Thus, let’s keep your mind open and stay optimistic but realistic.

It has already been almost 3 years that I have been around in IST even though I have less interactions with other students and faculty due to my personality. In IST, publishing papers seems to me the uttermost of the topmost priority of the faculties and the students. Acquiring funding resources seems to be the critical interest of the all the colleges since it is basically contributing to existence of those. The school needs to be funded, the faculties need to make their living and creating their professional identity, and the students desperately want to graduate and, thus, have a decent career after graduation. This phenomenon is so true not only in IST, Penn State, but also in all the schools over the US and, somewhat, in EU.

Funded graduate students sitting in air-conditioned office, looking for research gaps in the literature

Most of us, academic people, spend several hours a days, almost everyday in months reviewing literature just hopefully to find research gaps. Once those gaps are located, we are already on something which is economically, financially sexy. Of course, closing a research gap means a lot to us and to the community.

However, I doubt the value of the research that we all have been done so far. What are we actually doing good things to social world at large? At the time we spend our time to “re-discover” such gaps, the serious gaps have already been out there in the real world. Millions of people’s lives in the Africa are being devoured by hunger and by HIV/AID. Hundreds of millions of children in the less developed countries are unschooled, forced to be working more than 10 hours a day, have less access learning environment.

This is a hand of a young girl in Uganda.

The bird is standing by to eat this starving child. This picture was voted as the best the best journalistic photography many years ago. And the photographer later committed suicide because of his emotional breakdown attaching to his own work.

Child labors are ubiquitous seen in China, glorifying capitalism and supplying uncountably incredibly cheap goods to the Walton family, making them the richest family in world.

One of the reasons that I pursue Ph.D. program is to help changes the world to be “livable” place to continue humankind. I don’t just want to get a prestigious meal ticket to get an access to premium meal since I think it would not be necessary to further push myself for approximately 5 years to earn a little bit higher salary. Unfortunately, I at the moment am feeling my strong will has politically been rotten because of game of the education system over time. If we look at the topics of IST M.S. theses and IST Ph.D. dissertations, we would say that we have no doubt toward their academic values. But how about their contribution to the world’s most pressing needs and problem?

I would say that we are not a God (and I actually don’t believe in God); we have no power to change how the world works. But I feel like we, claiming that we are making scientific, technological advancement implanted into the world, should responsibly return something socially good to the world. And the end of the day, the very topic for all of us who are pursuing academic or professional careers would be: How we can do for making a livable world, not what it takes to get ourselves graduated.

ACM-SIGMIS The ACM Special Interest Group on Management Information Systems promotes best-practice and research in the management of information systems and technologies and the use of these systems and technologies. SIGMIS is a founder of ISWorld Net at www.isworld.org, and a sponsor of several conferences on information systems and technology. Founded in 1961 as SIGBDP (Business Data Processing), SIGMIS is one of the oldest ACM Special Interest Groups, and for decades has been instrumental in defining and developing the field of management and information systems.

The Decision Sciences Institute (DSI). DSI is a professional organization of academicians and practitioners interested in the application of quantitative and behavioral methods to the problems of society.

Asia Pacific Region of Decision Sciences Institute (APDSI) APDSI is a sub-vanue of the DSI. The main objective of thie community is quite the same. However, the difference lies the scope of the problems of society. That is, while DSI globally deals with research agendas in terms of the problems of society, APDSI is geographically specific in Asian region.

I belong to ACM SIGMIS community mainly because my research interest lies in job burnout in IT workforce. Often time IT professionals, according to the human factor view, are being eclipsed by their technological artifacts; moreover, they are also viewed as functional, utilizable units which are embedded into such technology. This illusion has impacts toward all the stakeholders. The distorted images of IT professionals can mislead the IT managers to treat them differently. Such modern telecommunication technology renders IT personnel exposed to overwork. Support engineers, for example, are expected to be on-call in order to respond to any request of service 24 hours a day, IT people feel overwhelmed by demands of support jobs. Since an organization increasingly employs technological equipments, the demands of supports of course grow in parallel manner.

DSI and APDSI is very attractive to me because these two venues just focus on the very pressing global agendas regarding ICT development. Information has price, and ICT has been regarded an active economic commodity, and this commodity could make a great effect in developing world. Therefore, it is very important for developing world the exercise the right ICT policies to economically, socially, and technologically improve them.

It has been almost three years that I know Louis-Marie Ngamassi Tchouakeu. We first meet in fall 2006 because we took the same class, IST501. And later we became officemates, the desk no.2 and no.3 in the room 307G. Amazingly, we later found that we are sharing the same research interest which is about constructing ICT policies for developing countries. Besides, he is also interested in NGO/UN work which is pretty disaster relief. With this regard, we quite have a lot of things in common, so to speak.

As Louis-Marie’s research interest lies in ICT policy and NGO relief, he has several conference papers which were internationally published such as Information and Internet Policy, 17th Biennial Conference of the International Telecommunications Society, International ISCRAM Conference, etc. Now, he endeavors to have his research papers which are about ICT for development and ICT in Africa published in African Journal for Information Systems.

As I mentioned above, we have a lot commons in terms of research interests. On top of that, Louis-Marie is very polite and mature in person. No only can we talk about work, but also life. I can talk with him with any topics; it is not necessary to professionally break the ice with him. And I feel very comfortable talking with him.

There two terminology that people usually use interchangeably: friend and colleague. Personally, I would consider Louis-Marie as friend more than colleague since he has never expected a productive relationship from anyone.

Dr. Trauth’s research interests heavily lie in IT polices, in IT workforce, computing and diversity, and lately critical agenda in gender and IT. Dr. Trauth has substantial publications in the world-class leagues journal; statistically, most of her publication papers appear in the journal of Information Technology and People. This is not a surprising fact anymore since Dr. Trauth very theorizes IT and P overtime. Besides having publications in top league journals, Dr. Trauth’s work heavily appears in top conferences; among those is the ACM SIGMIS Computer Personnel Research Conference that Dr. Trauth regularly has her proceedings published.

Apart from doing research, Dr. Trauth also internationally provides lectures in several countries in several continents. Speaking of her teaching role in IST, she has recently taught a couple classes. In undergraduate level, she teaches the topic in Diversity and IT. This subject comprises all the issues related to human diversity in IT profession, hence global diversification. And in the graduate level, she teaches Qualitative Research Method. Personally, I think she is the best fitted in this subject, regarding her research that she has done so far.

Ones of the great achievements in the past year are the Theory of Gender and IT and the Influence-Impact Model; they both have increasing been gaining recognition over time since they are practically applicable to I-research agendas.

My advisor, Prof. Dr. Eileen M. Trauth, was originally from Ohio, where she and a couple of her sisters were raised with love and care by her adorable, supportive Garman parents. She did her bachelor degree in English, Speech Communications, and Theology (Magna Cum Laude) at the School of Education, University of Dayton. Right after graduating, she spent some time teaching at local high schools. And that was also a time that she began to have a would-be family of her own, wedding with a true gentleman. Not too long, she decided to further her academic career by pursing a Ph.D. at the School of Information Science, the University of Pittsburgh. And it was the place that she has deeply founded her research interests in socio-culture, international, IT workforce, and diversity.

Personally, Dr. Trauth loves reading and travelling. In the past six months, she was visiting a few countries in Africa and a couple of countries in Europe. And during a year, she often visits her sisters and her parents in OH. So far, travelling back and forth between PA and OH seems to be her routine. Although spending more time on traveling and working, she has a very lovely small family with her very own eternal soul mate, long life friend, and life partner, Kathy, who is now spending her retirement with Dr. Trauth at an off-campus house. So far, it has already been over thirty years that they both, Dr. Trauth and Kathy have been living together, and I am still looking forward to seeing them living together for the rest of their lives.