Over a year ago I launched this site and it was an amazing accomplishment for me. To the average visitor, this site is nothing more than another wordpress blog; to me, on the other hand, it was (is) the pinnacle of my learning success in regards to understanding PHP, WordPress’ API, and web development. I created my own custom theme/widgets and–as flawed as it may be–I was (am) very proud of my work. The site immediately started generating a great deal of interest amongst my peers and the online community; to this day, I find this exciting enough for me to want to keep the site a priority in my busy schedule.

Unfortunately as my coursework began to pick up, these fun, extra-curricular projects were unjustly competing for my attention and had to go. But, without further ado, I am returning to my blog after almost an entire year away. I return with hopes that I can manage this site with minimal effort; being powered by wordpress, I believe this to be possible.

Having just come back I do have a bit of a to-do list to take care of:

• First and foremost, I want to get this blog caught up with my last year of activities. This includes a project I am re-hatching–the project management plugin for wordpress. This is my MIS capstone project, so I can assure the world it will be done.
• I would like to see this site slightly more organized to enhance user navigation. This means changing blog categories and such.
• I want the photo blog moved to a sub-domain. I love the pics, but I feel they distract the blog from its purpose-a professional reference. I don’t know how to do this without installing another instance of wordpress. But, as always, I will be sure to share my solution.
• And finally, I am seriously considering adding in some video blogs. I feel this would be a good way to add personality to my site and show a little more of myself. If nothing else it could be fun-we shall see.

To wrap this up, I appreciate the feedback I have gotten over the past year–even though I have been hiding from the world. I look forward to bringing this site back to life and hopefully it can be exciting as what it was once before.

This is long overdue.

MIS at Temple University has officially been ranked on the top 10 list of programs for undergrad IT.  It’s nice coming from a publication like techrepublic.com–as they actually built a set of metrics and surveyed the schools they ranked.

View the Tech Republic report (pdf).

Pictures from MIS Top 10 Celebration on Facebook

Why Fox MIS Dominated

The curriculum, the professors, the staff and administrators, the students, the alumni, the SPO (AMIS), the internships, and the post-graduation job placements all play a part in earning Temple’s MIS program a spot on the list of top 10 MIS programs in the nation!

Reviewing some of the metrics, there is no question why Fox MIS is on this list.  I can only speak from my experience, so here is what I see:

Curriculum of the IS/IT program

Firms are finding value in employees with practical business knowledge–after all, they are hiring for business needs.  The hardcore programmers that cannot work with “the end in mind”–ie the business solution–are going to be less desirable to a firm.  This day and age firms want to integrate technology to compliment their business model and to integrate business and technology firms need leaders with working knowledge of both.

Fox MIS is taught in the business school by business leaders. There are two parts to this to be considered: (1) Fox MIS students go through the business core classes–ie

• Accounting I & II,
• Finance I & II,
• Human Resources Management,
• Risk Management and Insurance,
• Management Science and Operations Management,
• Marketing;

and (2) MIS professors have nothing less than applicable business experience to relate to–each speaking from a different industry.

Fox MIS is creating a group of extremely well-rounded business leaders.

Cost value analysis for the education

Temple always wins this category. Tuition is slightly more than chump-change compared to our neighbor schools and the university presents just as much opportunity as any other school.

Co-ops  and/or internships offered in the program

Opportunity for Co-op and Internships is a core strength of the Fox School of Business.  Anyone that really tries can get a summer internship or a co-op placement.

My internship experience has been key in making my classroom learning practical and relevant.  Relating classroom material with personal experience is going to be much more effective than just reading text books.

Placement

I am pretty sure Fox MIS still has 100 percent placement for graduates.  Fox MIS is a high performance program with high expectations. And as long as our graduates maintain this work ethic employers will continue to fight each for Fox MIS graduates.

Overall “strength” of the program

This is a very ambiguous criteria from Tech Republic.  Maybe this is refering to group synergy?

In regards to strength I will say that even before this ranking was released I had no doubt in my mind that Fox MIS was one of the best.  I walked with nothing less than confidence that I would get to where I wanted to be.  If the program’s ability to instill confidence into its students is not strength, than I don’t know what strength of a program even could be.

Someone once recommended that many firms could go 100% paperless in an effort to go green.  You can do a lot of things with computers, but is going paperless possible?  I plan on giving it a shot for Spring 2009.

The Parameters

Going 100% paperless might be possible if the entire community is committed to going paperless. Otherwise, it would be impossible-there would be no interface with paper-dependent people. For this project I will go reasonably paperless.  Here are a few exceptions that I have to acknowledge:

1. Deliverables – Some professors will accept email homeworks-most will not.
2. Notation issues – The econometrics course I have next semester is a very math intense course with a lot of equations and symbols. My mac is not equipped with a tablet, so paper notes may be necessary.
3. Hand-Outs – I can not NOT accept hand outs because I am going paperless.
4. Books – If this was about replacing books, I think I would have campus-wide support.

Paper in ’08

So why are there stacks of paper in my bag right now? Some of the things you would find:

• Notes
• Handouts and Syllabi
• Deliverables – Homework, Test, and Quizzes
• Sudoku puzzles

Is all of this necessary?

The Logistics

My fancy macbook is going to be key in making this work.  Notes and class power points can be accessed from the internet – as opposed to being printed.  This alone eliminate the bulk of anything that I would ever print. A portable document scanner should be able to take care of hand-written notes and handouts-I’ll have to purchase one of those.  My goal is to proactively scan and recycle paper handouts within the hour that they are issued.  Once a document is scanned I would not need the physical copy anymore, would I?  Ideally, I will only ever carry a few sheets of blank paper with me and my mac.

The issues

We are talking about going paperless in a paper-dependent world. As long as paper is the standard I will have to do the extra work to interface with the others.  Most of my professors will not make an exception to allow email assignments-even if they already require them to be typed.. It seems that people  still have a fascination with printed pages. Am I missing something that explains why this would not work?

The point

Putting it into perspective, I am taking the next step to working with less paper.  As of right now, there are stacks of paper in my bag and it would be almost impossible to find the one I needed–if i did need it.  Those stacks of paper are not part of any filing system so going paperless will certainly make me more organized.  It is much easier to organize data digitally than it is physically and this is a real benefit.

This project is about integrating technology in our lives–again.  The technology I will be using has been available–and functionally practical–for the last 5+ years, yet there has been no attempt to seriously integrate these devices into our daily operations.  People resist change, but is this not excessive? I will be looking for solutions to these questions through-out the duration of this project.

Bachelor of Business Administration (BBA)

• May 2010 Graduation
• Finance
• Management Information Systems (MIS)

About Temple

This school is driven by visionaries, diversity, and diligent workers. Temple is a school where our people–students and professors alike–are working towards fulfilling their life goals; there is so much more to this community than simply graduating and getting a job.

The diversity you would find on this campus teaches us to be empathetic towards culture and difference–we are accepted, in return we accept.

The unofficial university mantra of “student by day and worker by night” speaks to the dedication found on this campus. This is a working campus–we work to support our selves, our lifestyles, and, for some, our families. This added commitment teaches due diligence–using lunch breaks to study, learning to learn efficiently, and–when “doing more” is no longer an option–understanding what it means to “work smarter, not harder“.