Welcome aboard: New faculty

The Department of Information Systems added four new faculty members this fall, building expertise in business analytics among other relevant areas of research, and adding to the department’s store of industry experience.

New faculty bring fresh energy and expand the research horizon of the Department of Information Systems. Four scholars joined the department this fall, building expertise in business analytics and other relevant areas of research, and adding to the department’s store of industry experience. “As a department, we take pride in the quality of our faculty members,” said Raghu Santanam, department chairman. “When accomplished academics and professionals choose to work with us, it is a reaffirmation of our commitment to quality. We welcome our newest faculty members and wish them the best in their new jobs!” KnowIT sought out these new faculty members for a brief introduction. Look for coverage of their research, teaching and leadership in coming issues of KnowIT.

Associate Professor John Zhongju Zhang

The department’s newest associate professor comes to W. P. Carey from the University of Connecticut, where he was the founding program director of the master of science in business analytics and project management. He earned his Ph.D. in information systems at the University of Washington’s Michael G. Foster School of Business in 2003. He has extensive knowledge with experiential and executive learning. Zhang’s research focuses on how information technology and data analytics impact consumer behavior and decision-making, create business value,  transform business models and help companies to innovate. “Dr. Zhang brings with him over a decade of academic experience at his previous institutions,” Santanam said. “He is a renowned and productive scholar in analytics research. He strengthens our department’s research leadership in a highly relevant and emerging area of research in business domain.”

Clinical Assistant Professor Hina Arora

This fall marks the return of Clinical Assistant Professor Hina Arora. She was a doctoral student here several years ago, and since then she has led two data science teams at Microsoft — perfect positioning to be faculty director of W. P. Carey’s Master of Science in Business Analytics. “I've always enjoyed working in applied research, so I've straddled between industry and academia almost all of my career,” she said. “I've always found that each experience has helped enrich the other for me.” Arora says there are three critical blockers to the creation of value from analytics in the industry right now. In addition to the oft-cited skills gap, there’s a lesser known translation issue, she says, when research, engineering and business stakeholders don't speak the same language. Lastly, there's organizational inertia, when companies are slow to bring about the cultural change to actually start using analytics to empower their business. “Graduating students from our program have the ability to affect change in all three of these areas,” she said.

Clinical Assistant Professor Michael Frutiger

Clinical Assistant Professor Michael Frutiger says he’s always thought that “the ideal profession was one where you never intended to retire because the work itself was simply too fulfilling.” With years of working in the industry under his belt, he thinks he’s found the right fit in academia: “In the right setting, academia feels like the right place to celebrate continuous learning and the quest for understanding, while working to assist others along that path.” Frutiger’s research interests are broad: technology standards and effective online community design. “Technology standards hold the potential to enable many beneficial effects in technology use and development,” he said. “Online communities are increasingly an important and sometimes pivotal element of online services, making their effective design paramount to many flavors of online service.” He’s also interested in how individual and group behaviors vary across different "real" and technology contexts. He will be teaching the Honors Introduction to Information Services course this fall. His approach is to make his classes engaging for the instructor and the students. “If I’m not having a good time, how can we expect them to?” he joked.

Clinical Assistant Professor Matthew Sopha 

Clinical Assistant Professor Matthew Sopha spent the last few years as a faculty member at Loyola University Maryland after earning his Ph.D. at W. P. Carey. He has been a project manager, web developer and business technology consultant, but is also an accomplished musician and actor, having performed for several years in theaters as a professional. Sopha’s current focus is information systems pedagogy: new and creative ways to engage with students and to help them to use and explore emerging technologies. This summer, in addition to teaching, he spent time planning for the Honors CIS 236 sections he will be teaching this academic year. This is a course that all business majors are required to take. He is also researching the ways in which independent digital content producers, using digital music as a framework, can leverage social media platforms to help drive adoption of their content. “This centers on the ways in which people engage not only with their peers on social media platforms, but in the unique ways that content providers can engage with individual users in a far more personal way than in traditional commerce models,” he explained.