IT ALLIANCE SPRING 2015 MEETING MINUTES
Romain College of Business at USI
Wednesday, April 29, 2015, 7:30 a.m.
Business and Engineering Center, Lippert Hall, 0035
Members Present: David Bottomley, Terry Clements, John Cobb, James Derk, Lisa Hobgood, Bob
Humphrey, John Kamin, John Knight, Larry May, Mike Neeley, Kelly Reisinger, Dave Smith, Richard
Toeniskoetter, Mark Uhrin
Members Absent: Brian Beard, Susan Everett, Pat Fleck, Scott Franzel, Karen Fuchs, Patrick Heck, Dave
Klepak, Kevin Kolley, Alan Letterman, Doug Petitt, Kim Angermeier Poynter
Ex-officio Members Present: Nancy Bizal, Abbey Foroughi
Faculty Present: Scott Anderson, Dinko Bacic, Julie Brauser, Bruce Mabis, Ernie Nolan, Kenneth
Shemroske, Hui Shi, Jennifer Williams, Gongjun Yan
Students Present: Dustin Crawford, Cody Duff, Jake Eckert, Brian Ensor, Thomas Fallwell, Corey Fishels,
Chad Greenwood, Andrew Heid, Courtney Henson, Jared Hermayer, Bryan Humphries, Chase Hunt,
Matthew King, Derrick Kuhn, Mark Lewellyn, Matthew Lockard, Joshua Marlow, Darren Miles, Jared
Shade, James Shaw, Dillion Smith, Caleb Stout, James Tabor, Dane Taylor, Eric Titzer, Casey Voelker, Cleo
Walker, Christopher Weaver
Guests Present: Mark Browning, Richard Litov, Jason Salstrom, Amy Word
Administrative Assistant Present: Michelle Simmons
WELCOME: Terry Clements welcomed everyone to the spring meeting.
SELF INTRODUCTIONS: Clements requested self-introductions of members, faculty, and students.
MINUTES: Clements asked for a motion to approve the Fall 2014 minutes as distributed and edistributed. John Knight moved and Mike Neeley seconded the motion to approve the minutes. The
minutes were APPROVED.
Membership Report: Clements gave the membership report, thanking the returning members: Brian
Beard, David Bottomley, Jim Derk, Pat Heck, Bob Humphrey, John Kamin, John Knight, Kim Angermeier
Poynter, and Dave Smith. He also presented the new members: John Cobb (CEO, CP Handheld
Technologies, LLC), Lisa Hobgood (CIO, Deaconess Health System), Kelly Reisinger (SVP Deposit
Technologies, Old National Bank), and Mark Uhrin (CIO, City of Evansville).
CS and CIS SENIOR PROJECTS: Dinko Bacic gave a brief review of fall semester’s project. He said, the
client, Dr. Kate Winsett, selected both projects for a trial run in separate large classes which then will be
reviewed by her students. Bacic and Gongjun Yan discussed this semester’s four projects, two games, a
phone application, and a website. Each team consisted of CIS and CS students and three of the teams
utilized graphic arts students under the guidance of Professor Xingran Hu.
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Team “Fall in Love with Franklin Street” created a new website for the Franklin Street Events
Association. The old site was hard to navigate, outdated, ineffective, and difficult to update. The team
members are Brian Ensor, Jared Hermayer, Chase Hunt, Matthew King, James Shaw, and Casey
Voelker. The client was Amy Word, President of Franklin Street Events Association. Word gave a brief
description of the Association and thanked the students on behalf of the Association for their wonderful
work on this project.
Team “Project Thunderbolt” created an Android App for The Freedom Heritage Museum. The Museum
had students in a previous senior project create a website and wanted it to be more mobile. The team
members are Steve Babcock, Chad Greenwood, Courtney Henson, Mark Lewellyn, Matt Lockard, Jared
Shade, Eric Titzer, and Cleo Walker. The client, Richard Litov, President of the Freedom Heritage
Museum, along with Mark Browning attended the meeting and gave positive feedback on the project.
He thanked the students for their work on the project.
The above projects enhanced the students’ skills set and solution-finding skills and positively impacted
the two non-profit large community events.
Team “Immortia”, who named themselves Sinister Sponge Studios, created a digital card came along the
lines of the physical trading card games that are in the market today. After giving a demonstration, they
said they plan to work together in the future to improve upon the current game and put it on the
market. The team members are Dustin Crawford, Cody Duff, Jake Eckert, Derrick Kuhn, James Tabor,
Christopher Weaver. John Cobb gave the students advice on the cost of producing games of this type.
Team “Visual Game on Eye-tracking Technology”, who named themselves Scarlet Game Studios, created
a zombie shooting game that utilizes eye-tracking technology with minimal use of keyboard or mouse.
The team members are Thomas Fallwell, Corey Fishels, Andrew Heid, Bryan Humphries, Joshua
Marlow, Darren Miles, Dillion Smith, and Caleb Stout. The students gave a demonstration. Cobb
participated in the demonstration and told the students about the Kolmen filter that could fix some of
the tracking problems. The students plan to continue working on the project in the future to improve
the game and put it on the market. This project could be a technology that could be adapted to enlarge
what paraplegic people could do, i.e., press an elevator button.
IT ALLIANCE CHAIR’S REPORT: Clements thanked the students for their presentations and stated how
exciting these senior projects are.
He listed the following IT scholarship recipients: Noah Estel (IT Alliance Scholarship),
Walter Babcock (Old National Technology Scholarship), Okairy Sulaiman (Keller Schroeder Technology
Scholarship), Dane Taylor (Shoe Carnival Technologies Scholarship), Curt Wasson (Old National
Technology Scholarship), and Arik Westbrook (Atlas World Group Technologies Scholarship). Taylor
thanked the Alliance and Clements for the Shoe Carnival Scholarship. Clements announced that the ITA
Scholarship balance was $14,604.33.
John Kamin discussed the Plan of Action for the IT Alliance for the following year. A copy of the plan is
attached. However, after the outstanding senior projects presentations, he stated the ITA wants more
engagement than senior project involvement and proposed meeting with students three to four time a
year, maybe a sophomore get-together, junior get-together, and senior get-together. He asked, “What
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can we do to help more?” and invited feedback. Kamin wondered about an innovation center to show
Chamber of Commerce and others and to invite mini venture or angel investors.
DEPARTMENT CHAIR’S REMARKS: Abbey Foroughi reported CIS faculty are working to redesign CIS 305
(Management Information Systems). CS faculty are working on curriculum updates and creating a
tutoring system to help students in C# programming courses.
Plans of Action for Fall 2015: CIS discipline will implement the newly redesigned curriculum; Fifth-year
Program Reviews for both CIS and CS will begin; Faculty will review the student learning outcomes and
assessment methods used. As part of the Program Reviews, blueprints will be developed for the next
five years, capturing improvements that have been made since the last Program Review: what has been
successful, challenges that remain, and plans for the coming five years regarding resources (staffing),
courses, curriculum changes, teaching, research, and engagement activities. The revised CIS Curriculum
will be implemented in fall 2015:
CIS REQUIREMENTS
CIS 111 Introduction to Computer Information Systems
CS 258 Introduction to Object-Oriented Programming using C#
CIS 276 Introduction to Enterprise Web Development
CIS 305 Management Information Systems
CIS 345 Information Systems Security& Risk Management
CIS 367 Data Communications
CIS 375 Systems Analysis and Design
CIS 376 Intermediate Enterprise Web Development OR CS 358 Intermediate Programming
using C#
CIS 377 Database Concepts
CIS 385 Enterprise Resource Planning
CIS 454 Managing IT and Bus. Analytics
CIS 477 Applied Software Development Project
Foroughi reported the following: CIS/CS students have been very active in student organizations and
performed well at national-level competitions against students from other universities. Bacic and Yan
were recognized and congratulated for their students’ huge success at the recent Ball State University
Information Systems Project and Case Competition. Bacic is recipient of the 2015 Dean’s Teaching
Award, and Yan is recipient of the 2015 Dean’s Research Award.
The CIS and CS faculty have actively involved expert speakers in their classrooms: Mark Browning (MD),
Jack Buttrum (Jacobs Engineering—retired), Michael Conati (Conati Enterprise, LLC), Brad Garnett
(Kemper Technologies), Don Owen (Cisco), and Tarek Soukieh (PWC).
Julie Brauser stated that the CIS and CS internship report is in the packet. A copy of the report is
attached.
ALLIANCE/FACULTY INERACTION COMMITTEE: John Knight thanked all the speakers that participated in
the classroom. He also stated that the new faculty in the industry partnership are Bacic and Kamin.
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Scott Anderson discussed enrollment of Computer Science majors. Enrollment appears to be stabilizing
with 60 freshmen, 30 sophomores, 30 juniors, and 30 seniors. He stated that in two years CS 458
(Advanced Programming in C#) will become a requirement.
Jennifer Williams mentioned the continuation of track implementation; current students are switching
to the new tracks. Changes are being proposed for the format of CIS 305 (Management Information
Systems) which will be implemented in Fall 2015. Tool issues for CIS 151 and CIS 261 are currently being
discussed.
ADJOURNED
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