September 2008 Archives

My advisor is Dr. Angsana Techatassanasoontorn. Just like many other Thai, she has a pretty long last name. So far as I know, she is the only Thai professor at University Park. Puck (who is a Thai student in IST) once told me that there was a student in penn state who wanted to conduct an interview with a Thai professor. He searched the whole faculty list and surprisingly, he found Dr. Angsana is the only one.

Dr. Angsana has got her family with her in State College. She has a very adorable daughter. But I don't think I have the liberty to post her daughter's photo. Dr. Angsana's husband also works here. As for her hobbies, she likes yoga and takes yoga courses every Friday.

Dr. Angsana has a relatively rich experience in terms of her career. Graduating from the best university in Thailand, she starts off her career as a programmer in two companies sequentially. At this job, Dr. angsana got her passion of using knowledge to teach and train others. About fifteen years ago, she went to Arizona Univ. to further her master degree with concentration on MIS. After that, she came back to Thailand and worked as a college instructor for seven years. In 2000, she began her PhD training at Univ. of Minnesota, which has the largest MIS center in the world. The department chair and well-known scholar in the field of MIS, Professor Robert J. Kauffman is the very advisor of her. In 2005 she came to Penn State as an instructor and then become an assistant professor of IST.

As a young professor, Dr. Angsana doesn't have a fancy CV with a long list of publications. Nevertheless, I can tell that she is pretty knowledgeable. I feel very lucky to choose her as my advisor and work with her. I am her research assistant from the very beginning. She teaches me, trains me and cultivates me a lot and shows the right ways of doing research, rather than just simply assigning me some jobs while not paying too much attention to how to pull them through. That is something more than a relationship between employers and employee. I still remember some hard times in the first academic year and she is always the person I can fall back on. She gives me a lot of encouragement and compliment. I would say she is my advisor academically as well as mentally. For those who are considering applying IST and choosing advisors, believe me, Dr. Angsana is a good choice.

Each time when I meet new friends, they usually introduce themselves by telling me which academic department they come from or which specific major they are engaged. When it is my turn to say some information about myself, I have to say, well, we are from the college of information sciences and technology. With special emphasis, it is a college, not a department, and it is funny to say that we IST have no departments at all. At this moment, people may get a little bit confused about what the hell I am studying. With embarrassment, I have to use more word than simply a name of program to explain my academic background, for example, by numerating the research projects I have ever participated and the courses I have ever taken.

The non-department structure is a unique characteristic of IST. In my opinion, such a structure has apparent advantages as we always advocate, as well as potential disadvantages as we may overlook. We IST have a very, very broad spectrum of research areas, and having no departments to a large extent facilitates the collaboration among faculty/students with different research interests and backgrounds. Another apparent benefit is that it helps student build wide perspectives in addressing issues associated with information technology, rather than analyzing them from a single isolated angel of Information, People or Technology. On the flip side, having no department also brings about some undesirable results. Because of no department, each research slice in the huge IST pizza is not of the same size. That is to say, the development of each area is lack of balance. We have two large groups of computational informatics and HCI, leading by Professor Lee and Professor Carroll respectively. However, groups of computational intelligence and information security are not that big. The overemphasis on the broadth of IST PhD trainning can also be reflected from the curriculum. It seems to me we have fairly few courses beyond those four IST core courses. For second year students, we have no choice but to take a variety of theory or methodology courses outside of IST. I strongly suggest IST open more optional courses focusing on each specific research areas to sharpen our understanding.

A question raised here is what is the best structure for the good of IST's future development. I think we can address this question from the perspective of organization science. There are basically two types of structures for business firms: hierarchical and horizontal. Hierarchical structures allow firms more controls on subsections and thus make sure the firms on the good track. The horizontal one has been accepted as an appropriate model for the knowledge age because it facilitates innovation and creation. Is IST better off to find a good balance between hierarchical and horizontal models in terms of its structure? I think it is an interesting question worth to be explored.

As a new education program, the iSchool seems urgent in identifying itself and being acknowledged by other well-established programs. I think that is the reason why we have a lot of discussion or even debate about who we are and what we are doing here in several courses I have ever taken. So in this posting, I try to summarize some of my previous thoughts toward justifying the existence of iSchools. 

We are facing complex real-world problems in which information, people, and technology intertwine as an interdependent system. Can we just bring together scholars from sociology, computer science and library science to provide any possible solutions? Probably we can. I believe it is not the optimal approach, however, because of communication obstacles and diverse training trajectories. People from different fields are equipped with particular perspectives that substantially influence their experience on certain things. Because of the lack of common knowledge, communication turns out to be less efficient and with loss. Such problem may be better solved provided that scholars have an interdisciplinary background that covers library science, computer science and sociology. Hence, I believe that interdisciplinary program is superior to the add-up of disciplines when addressing interdisciplinary issues.

What we are doing in terms of methodology of research in I-School? Take our IST program for example, research works of T (technology) side are usually dominated by computer programming experiments, or in more common terms, by trial-and-error; research works of P (people) side are largely characterized by multiple methods, from quantitative to qualitative. I-School is a program of many specialties such that no one traditional degree program has the required breadth. I-School is created by recruiting people from different background or by evolving from a traditional program such as library science. We IST fall into the first category. It started from scratch.  Within IST community parallel a number of methods of scientific inquiry, however, these methods do share a common problem-solving schema. Respectively, faculty and students are largely divided into three major sides according to their research focuses. The story is that research works of technology side are very different from that of computer sciences, research works of people side are very different from that of business school and sociology, and research works of information side are very different from that of library science. Why? I guess the reason rests on that we are one rather than multiple research community and we share the common values that issues related to information sciences and technology are better understood through an integrated perspective. Once we become clearer about implicit agreements and shared understandings, many of these differences begin to look like differences of emphasis rather than absolute cleavages.

As we know, some of the established I-Schools come from departments of library science. If a unique I-School curriculum ought to exist, then an I-School ought to be more than a library school with a name that implies modern times. My understanding is a curriculum is the materialization and hallmark of a paradigm: if a curriculum changes dramatically, a revolution takes place. At this moment, I believe I-School has its new paradigm. Moving on to another scenario, I-School is founded from scratch, like IST, that brings together computer scientist, sociologist, management experts as well as law expert. Do we have a new paradigm beyond these territories? I think so at the student level. It is fairly clear that students are trained in a very different way, compared with that of computer science, sociology and business school. Students to a large extent share similar curriculum, though their research focuses vary. For faculty, they come to IST with different academic training colors, such a thing that may undermine the formation of the common paradigm among them for a long time. One the flip side, we must see paradigm evolves as the product of joint effort of faulty, students and social acknowledgement.  It is a process in which our world view is shaped and being shaped by the paradigm. It is like a game which we are all together playing with.

I bet the reason why there are so many international students are pursuing a Ph.D. in the United States is not so much devoting themselves to lifelong scientific research works as gaining some oversea experiences of training and living. Some people may hold the opposite opinion with me by claiming I overemphasized the latter reason which is no more than the side-effect of attending the Ph.D. program. Well, facts speak louder than words. Statistics by China government shows nearly one half of the Ph.D. graduates in China don't pursue tenure-track positions or research-related jobs in academic institutions and industry research labs, but rather they choose to be government officials. Although it sounds weird that so many Ph.D students work in government institutions, it is at least demonstating the variance of the motivations of pursuring a Ph.D degree. Obviously, this phenomenon goes against our long perceived idea that a Ph.D. degree would necessarily mean an academic career.  

If I don't intend to be a scholar in the future, people may question where my passion of attending a Ph.D. program is. I need an intensive Ph.D. training in United States because I think I have not been equipped with solid expertise and knowledge base in my area, because I want to know more about the world personally, and because I want to learn some practical things from a different culture beyond the textbook. Knowledge is of course important, but not as much as the way of gaining knowledge. There is no doubt that the Ph.D. programs in United States are generally much more demanding and challenging than those in China. I will for sure have a great sense of achievement when I pull off the program.

So why choosing IST? It has to do something with my academic background and interests. My undergraduate program is information management and information system. Literally, it was an interdisciplinary program, covering management, economics, information theory, computer engineering, and operations research. The second diploma is Master of Science in system science. Though sounds a little bit weird, the system science is a program in information school. I dealt with social and economic problems by using computational modeling and simulation. Basically, I can say that before I came here, I was closely bounded up with information-related stuff in terms of what I learnt. Such a background cultivates me broad interests and great zest toward knowledge and issues in the field of information sciences and technology. The more I study in this area, the more I feel that it is amazing to explain or solve problems using an integrative perspective. I do believe it is the charm of IST, and other interdisciplinary programs.

Until I am told I passed the candidacy exam, I am not a Ph.D. candidate yet. Technically, I am currently a second-year graduate student in the College of Information Sciences and Technology at the Pennsylvania State University. My research areas span a variety of areas, including IT investment, IT standard and standardization and IT adoption and diffusion. Generally, they are all about social or organizational aspects of information technology. I integrate theories across multiple disciplines including Economics, Information Sciences, Management and social psychology. I use multiple methods (e.g., survival analysis, qualitative data coding, panel data models, social network analysis and computational modeling) to test new theories.

My advisor is Dr. AngsanaTechatassanasoontorn. I have been collaborating with her in several research projects. One project that is about to pull off soon is developing new theories and empirically testing factors that drive the diffusion of municipal broadband wireless network. Through a longitudinal study on the diffusion of municipal wireless networks among cities in the United States, we attempt to explain how interested actors shape the structure and culture of communities in order to facilitate the adoption and use of community technologies.

You may get my name from the description of this blog.Yeah, Shuguang Suo is the name shown in my ID, but I would like you to call me Arthur. I like this name for it was the name of a legendary British leader: King Arthur. I do believe it is a name of patriotism, bravery and leadership.

In terms of the nationality, I come from China, one of the greatest country in the world. The 2008 Beijing Olympics has been perfectly showing China's quest for solidarity, friendship and peace. Back in my childhood, I was born in a coastal city of Shandong province. For some historical reasons, people from Shandong province are most likely given credits for their faithfulness, honesty and braveness. I often miss the old days before I left home and started my college life because I enjoyed a lot of sea foods: they are delicious and nutritive.

I am not a guy with the highest intelligence, but I do have a broad academic interest and more importantly, I like to challenge myself. After earning a bachelor degree in Information Management and Information System, I marched on my academic career toward the M.S. in System Science. The three-year graduate life was the most wonderful times with numerous good memories to cherish. I have been well trained within the classrooms as well as outside of the campus. I associated myself with all kinds of people and some of them became my close friends. Personally, I see friends as a treasure that can benefit me for life. Just before coming to United States, I touched a little bit with industry job. I worked as an intern in China Hewlett-Packard Co. with great enthusiasm and zest. That was my first job experience.     

Besides, I am a big fan of sports: Tennis, swimming, workout, running, badminton, basketball, skiing, skating, hiking and so forth. One thing I need to make it clear is that I don't play soccer because China Soccer has a aweful reputation not only for the skills but for the quality of the players. I should not even take about it in my blog. It sucks.

Travelling is one of my favorite recreations. But based on my first year experience of the PHD, I feel overloaded most of time. Now I can better balance my coursework and leisure time: the dog equally study, the gentleman equally plays.