Profile: A unique combination of over 8 years of superior student evaluations teaching business, software development, and information technology courses at the University level, over 10 years of successful entrepreneurial and senior executive experience in fast-moving high technology industries, and over 16 years of experience designing and developing complex software applications with high stakeholder involvement & satisfaction. Successful research tracks investigating industry collaboration, curriculum development, student recruitment & retention, academic major choice, post-secondary organizational strategy, green IT, strategic information systems, software development methodologies, project management, and decision support systems.

Core Competencies:

Industry Collaboration
Curriculum Development
Recruitment & Retention
Academic Major Choice
Higher Education Strategy
Skills Gap Analysis
Strategic IS
Green IT
Entrepreneurship
Decision Support Systems

Student Information Systems
Learning Systems
Web Content Data Mining
Web-based Application Development
Software Development Methodologies
Project Management
Strategic Planning
Global IT Delivery
Internationalization & Globalization

Capital Planning
Business Intelligence
Business Analysis
Database Design & Administration
Customer Relationship Management (CRM)
Operations Support Systems
Global IT Delivery
Data Mining
Strong Work Ethic

Education:

Ph.D. in Business Administration	May 2010 (ABD)
College of Business - Southern Illinois University Specialization: Management Information Systems Minor: Computer Science
Masters degree in Computer Science	May 1993
College of Science - Southern Illinois University
Bachelors degree in Computer Science	May 1991
College of Science - Southern Illinois University Minor: Mathematics
Project Management Certification	April 2008
CompTIA Project+

Professional Experience:

Lecturer	Southern Illinois University — College of Applied Science & Arts	2007-2009
Taught Introduction to Java Programming, Web Programming & Scripting Technologies, Installing and Upgrading Computer Systems, Technical Communications, and Computing for Business Administration. Developed web-content data mining application (dogs-it) extracting skills from over 2.1 million job ads Co-authored research paper accepted for publication in IEEE Software, “Mining for Computing Jobs”, based upon data collected with dogs-it Consistently achieved excellent student evaluations Migrated the School of Law’s proprietary Microsoft SQL Server databases to Oracle for the new Banner Student Information System in less than half of the scheduled time Served on the Recruitment and Curriculum committees
President and CEO	GlobalEyes Telecommunications, Inc.	1998-2008
Founded and managed a local telephone company with land-line and wireless services competing with SBC/Ameritech/AT&T and GTE/Verizon. Developed comprehensive Customer Relationship Management with integrated Operations Support System Created software development methodology combining aspects of the traditional SDLC with components of Agile methods Effectively lobbied at federal and state government levels for substantive regulatory changes to the telecommunications environment Managed budget and finances subsequent to reorganization and moved the company back into profitability Negotiated favorable contracts with GTE/Verizon, SBC/Ameritech, vendors, employees, and customers Recruited, trained, and coached 10 senior network administration and software development employees Created a highly reliable telecommunications infrastructure (over “5 nines” reliability — 99.9993%) Expanded service area to 5 central offices. Featured on front page of the St. Louis Post-Dispatch Successfully sold off major assets prior to exiting business
Instructor	Southern Illinois University — College of Business	2002-2007
Taught Intro to IT (including Business Communications), Advanced Web Development, and Web-Based Business Technologies. Awarded the Outstanding Term Faculty of the Year (nominated all 3 years I was eligible) Codified the framework for the CHUNK software development methodology and published it in the peer-reviewed Journal of Internet Commerce as “CHUNK: An Agile approach to the SDLC” Developed a theoretical model for continuous improvement for technology-oriented degree programs and instruments to test that model Modified the GlobalEyes CRM software to be used for content delivery, assignment submission, and grade tracking at the University Favorite student evaluation comment, “The standard by which excellency is measured”
President and CEO	GlobalEyes Communications, Inc.	1997-2003
Founded, managed, and was the Chief Technical Officer for a large regional Internet Service (ISP). Experience in networking, web-based application development, and communications. Acquired other ISPs to expand customer base and reduce competition Supervised and reviewed performance for over 35 employees Oversaw a large customer service and technical support call center Developed graphically-intensive rich media websites for multiple private and public-sector organizations First ISP to offer 56k modems, ADSL, and wireless broadband service in the region Successfully sought and completed merger with larger ISP resulting in very high returns for all shareholders
Software Engineer	Hughes Defense Electronics	1996-1997
Developed components for and maintained the Advanced Field Artillery and Tactical Data Systems (AFATDS) application utilizing the Ada programming language. Secret security clearance Worked towards internationalization of software
Director of Development	The Corporate Word	1995-1996
Led development of software internationalization and document translation system using C/C++, VB, SDLC, and GUI design. Established processes and procedures for implementing internationalization efforts Led 10 development and IT support personnel in an effective and efficient department
Senior Software Engineer	IBM	1993-1995
Developed and continuously enhanced a comprehensive software system used to aid in the development, translation, and creation of National Language Versions of software applications and their documentation. Became a highly regarded leader in the internationalization community within IBM and the industry Presented internationalization concepts at industry conferences IBM Peer Award for recognition from my team members 7 IBM Ideas Awards for operations innovations and process improvements

Peer-Reviewed Publications & Conference Proceedings:

Aken, A., Litecky, C., Ahmad, A., & Nelson, J. (2009). “Mining for Computing Jobs,” Accepted without further revision in IEEE Software.

Aken, A. (2009). “The Reciprocal Impact of Strategic Information Systems on Organizational Structure.” In Proceedings of the 2009 Hawaii International Conference on Business (Honolulu, Hawaii, USA, June 12 — 15, 2009).

Litecky, R., Aken, A., Prabhakar, B., & Arnett, K. (2009). “Skills in the MIS Job Market.” Accepted at the Americas Conference on Information Systems (AMCIS).

Aken, A. (2008). “CHUNK: An Agile approach to the SDLC,” Journal of Internet Commerce, 7(3), 313-338.

Aken, A. (2008). “Mining for Computing Skills,” In Companion To the 23rd ACM SIGPLAN Conference on Object-Oriented Programming Systems Languages and Applications (Nashville, TN, USA, October 19 - 23, 2008). OOPSLA Companion '08.

Aken, A. and Michalisin, M. D. (2007). “The impact of the skills gap on the recruitment of MIS graduates,” In Proceedings of the 2007 ACM SIGMIS CPR Conference, St. Louis, MO, April 2007

Aken, A. (2006). “Towards a functional GDSS - A new framework,” In Proceedings of 2006 Americas Conference on Information Systems (AMCIS 2006), Acapulco, Mexico, August 2006.

Other Publications & Invited Presentations:

Aken, A. (2008). “What skills do IT majors need in today’s job market,” Presented to the Future Information Technology Professionals (F.I.T.E.)

Fitzgerald, S. (2008). “Instructor gets jump on creating job guide,” The Southern Illinoisan. June 8, 2008.

Aken, A. (2008). “Colloquium: Mining for Jobs in IT,” Presented to the Computer Science faculty, students, and alumni at SIU.

Other Research in Progress:

Aken, A. & Michalisin, M. “The Skills Gap and Its Impact on the Recruitment of Computing Graduates”

Aken, A. “Degree-Oriented Guide to Skills — A Web Content Data Mining Application”

Aken, A. “How Skills Development Can Create a Competitive Advantage for Students, Industry, and Schools”

Aken, A. & Michalisin, M. “Decision Criteria of High School Students Selecting a Post-Secondary School and Academic Major”

Aken, A. “What Employers Want: A New Curriculum for MIS”

Professional Memberships:

Association for Computing Machinery (ACM), IEEE Computer Society, Information Technology Education (SIGITE), Computer Science Education (SIGCSE), Management Information Systems (SIGMIS), Association for Information Systems (AIS)

Grants & External Funding:

Collaborated on a funded Faculty Seed Grant investigating recruitment & enrollment. Awarded $14,684 (2008-2009)
Pontikes Center research grant of $1,500 (2006)
Currently preparing related NSF grant proposals (ATE, CCLI, & CDI)

Software Development & Technology Skills:

PHP, Java, SQL, DHTML, C/C++, Pascal, VB, Ada, Assembler, Perl, Ruby, ASP, AJAX, SOAP, CGI, JSP, .NET, SDLC, Agile, ERDs, Windows, Windows Server, Linux, BSD, Solaris, Macintosh, Cisco IOS, Computer & network security, Disaster recovery, MySQL, Oracle, MS SQL Server, PostgreSQL, DB2, Apache, IIS, TCP/IP, LDAP, MS Office, SPSS, SAS, Banner SIS, Adobe Creative Suite, CorelDraw Graphics Suite, Wireless networking, Ethernet, SIP, Asterisk, h.323, VoIP, xDSL

Research Interests:

MIS, CS, & IT curriculum development
Factors in University choice and recruitment
Factors in choice of academic major
Post-secondary organizational strategies
Web-based application development
Web content mining
Strategic Information Systems development
Software development methodologies
Project management
Business applications
Entrepreneurship
Group decision support systems

Teaching Interests:

Software development
Web-based business applications
Business automation
Project management
Telecommunications & networking
Information technology
Database development & administration
Data mining
Internationalization
Entrepreneurship

Editorial Review & Conference Activities:

Session chair for Special Interest Group on Management of Information Systems conference
Reviewed submissions for Journal of Internet Commerce (JIC)
Reviewed submissions for Americas Conference on Information Systems (AMCIS)
Reviewed submissions for SIGMIS
Reviewed submissions for International Conference on Information Systems (ICIS)

Community Service:

Member of Curriculum & Recruitment committees
Active in recruitment activities
Poster for 2008 Research Town Hall at SIU
Lobbied Illinois government for education reform and funding for SIU
Judge for high school science fair hosted by SIU
Website development and hosting for various non-profit organizations
Contributor to various open-source software projects
Designed, built, and donated several woodworking projects to the University and the community
Built throne and parade rifles for the set of “A Children’s Nutcracker” at SIU
Donated networking & telecommunications equipment to the College of Applied Science and Arts
Donated computers and services to be used by local schools and non-profits
Elected Secretary and President of the student chapter of the Association for Computing Machinery
Broadcast the Murphysboro City Council meetings with live streaming audio and video on the Internet with live chat feedback (featured site on Yahoo.com, 1997)

Awards & Honors:

2006-2007 Outstanding Term Faculty of the Year
2004-2006 Nominated for SIU Term Faculty of the Year Award each year
Congressional Medal of Distinction (2006)
NRCC National Leadership Award (2006)
Honorary Chairman of the Business Advisory Council (US Congress, 2006)
Finalist in Southern Angels Business Plan Competition (2003)
IBM Peer Award for recognition from my team members
7 IBM Ideas Awards for operations innovations
National Dean's List
First Sergeant's Award
Army Achievement Medal
Selected to tour Europe in a nationwide competitive concert band

Addendum: Courses Taught

IST 405 — Web Programming and Scripting Technologies: Developed instructional materials and taught course providing an overview of web hosting platforms and web development programming languages. Covered Apache, IIS, XHTML, Perl, Java/JSP, PHP, ASP.NET/C#, Ruby, and SQL. Instituted debate format to involve students in the discussions comparing web hosting platforms and the dominant web programming languages.
Average student evaluation of 4.04 out of 5. Excellent feedback from students.
Spring 2009, Fall 2008
IST 209 — Introduction to Java Programming: Taught students the basics of syntax and programming constructs in the Java programming language.
Average student evaluations of 4.27 out of 5 in Spring 2008.
Spring 2009, Spring 2008, Fall 2007
ISAT 366 — Applications of Technical Information: Taught students several variations and formats of technical writing. Also focused on research methods.
Average student evaluation of 4.33 out of 5.
Fall 2008
ISAT 229 — Computing for Business Administration: Taught business students the fundamentals of effectively using office applications.
Average student evaluations of 4.49 out of 5.
Spring 2009, Fall 2008, Spring 2008
ISAT 121 — Installing and Upgrading Computer Systems: Hands-on activities and lectures designed to prepare students for becoming certified computer technicians (CompTIA A+ certification).
Average student evaluations of 4.16 out of 5.
Spring 2009, Spring 2008, Fall 2007
MGMT 380b — Web-Based Business Technologies: Developed from scratch a course designed to introduce students to software development methodologies, design and hosting approaches to web-based applications, and developing a sample shopping-cart application using PHP and SQL.
Average student evaluations of 4.08 out of 5.
Spring 2007, Fall 2006, Spring 2006, Fall 2005, Spring 2005, Fall 2004, Spring 2004, Fall 2003, Spring 2003, Fall 2002
MGMT 362e — Advanced Web Design: Developed from scratch a course designed to introduce students to the fundamental and advanced practices related to project management, requirements specifications, and systems analysis en route to the development of a robust website designed to meet a specific customer’s needs. Students were required to work individually and in teams together with real-world customers to determine what the customer’s needs were, implement them, and resolve any problems. Students were also introduced to best practices in web development and web graphics.
Average student evaluations of 4.97 out of 5.
Spring 2003, Spring 2005
MGMT 345 & 345b — Computer Information Systems: Taught business students the fundamentals of effectively using office applications and work on a group research project.
Average student evaluations of 4.00 out of 5.
Spring 2007, Fall 2006, Spring 2006, Fall 2005, Spring 2005, Fall 2004, Spring 2004, Fall 2003, Fall 2002
CS 200b — Computer Concepts: Taught business students the fundamentals of effectively using office applications.
Fall 1992, Spring 1992
Introduction to Computer Programming: Taught not-for-credit adult and youth classes in introductory computer programming techniques utilizing Pascal through the Lincoln Park District.
Fall 1983, Spring 1984, Fall 1984, Spring 1985
Intermediate Computer Programming: Taught not-for-credit adult and youth classes with more advanced topics in computer programming techniques utilizing Pascal through the Lincoln Park District.
Spring 1984, Fall 1984, Spring 1985
Introduction to Calligraphy: Taught not-for-credit adult and youth classes in introductory calligraphy through the Lincoln Park District.
Fall 1983, Fall 1984

Addendum: Major Software Development Projects

dogs-it (Degree-Oriented Guide to Skills in Information Technology): A web content data mining and analysis application used to retrieve job ads from the major job websites based upon the ads requiring a particular academic major or group of majors (e.g., CS, MIS, IT, etc.). The application then extracts and analyzes the skills mentioned in the job ads to discover which skills and skill combinations are relevant in the current job market. As of July, 2009, over 2 million job ads had been retrieved and analyzed. Although developed to address the need for this type of knowledge regarding the Computing careers market, it has been designed and could be appropriately utilized to address these needs for any major which exhibits significant technological or skills changes (e.g., medical or other similar fields). Enhancements currently under development to the dogs-it application include incorporating an expert system to help advise students to select the most appropriate coursework based upon their interests and the current state of the job market, assisting students and displaced workers in finding a job based upon their own set of skills (and alerting them when matches are made), advising post-secondary educators on curriculum needs, and providing succinct and timely data regarding the current state of the job market.
siu.akenbros.com: A modified and adapted version of the GE-CRM used as a student information system including course content delivery, assignment submission, and grade tracking (analogous to many of the features in “Blackboard”, but with better performance and greater student satisfaction).
GE-CRM: An extensible web-based customer relationship management application used to maintain data regarding all customer contacts, service & support, billing, and accounting information. GE-CRM was also integrated with telecommunications equipment to implement new, modified, or deleted customer services. Integrated with Asterisk to provide unified communications. Utilized PHP, SQL, MySQL, Oracle, LDAP, C/C++, Cisco IOS, and other proprietary IOSs.
PWSTRAN: A translation management, software building, and testing application used for internationalization of software and documentation which was designed and developed for IBM. It substantially reduced costs and sped the time to market for internationalized applications. Utilized C/C++, Pascal, SQL, DB/2, & OS/2 GUI.
GlobalEyes: An internationalization and globalization software package which was used to extract localizable information (e.g. text, monetary units, date and time information, numeric formatting) from source code, replace it with calls to GlobalEyes’ APIs, and assist in the subsequent translation and validation of the extracted text. Utilized, C/C++, VB, MS Windows GUI.
AFATDS (Advanced Field Artillery and Tactical Data Systems): Enhanced and maintained a Department of Defense application used by the military’s command and control and fire control officers to correctly aim direct and indirect fire towards a target. Utilized Ada.
phpSurveyor: Contributed to the development of phpSurveyor (open-source survey software now known as LimeSurvey) and substantively enhanced it for research-oriented web-based surveys. Utilized PHP and JavaScript.
Radiator: Contributed to the development of Radiator (open-source RADIUS server software) and substantively enhanced it for records retrieval. Utilized SQL, Perl, and JavaScript.

Notes

How to retrieve assignments submitted through the website

Logon to the class' webserver
Click on the Grades tab
Drill down to the assignment names
Click on the name of the assignment you want to retrieve

There will be a link at the bottom of the evaluation page to the file that was uploaded.
It may have a different name than the file that was uploaded, but it is the same file.

Download Microsoft Software

You can download many Microsoft applications while on campus from here.

If you are looking for Windows XP Pro SP2, click on the dropdown menu and scroll to the very bottom of the list.

You will need to have CD creation software installed on your computer and a CD burner in order to create a CD from these images downloaded from the MSDN website.

Note: You WILL need to write down the serial number of the software when you download it in order to be able to use it...

Form processing test script

Using the CGI, http://hosting.globaleyes.com/TestForm.php, as the action in your form, it will display all of the variable names which are passed into the script or are present on the server on which the script is executing.
e.g.,

<FORM ACTION="http://siu.globaleyes.com/TestForm.php" NAME="MyForm"
    ID="MyForm" method="post">

Files

File Downloads

Links

Assignments

Andrew Aken

DocAken @ gmail.com

173 Cherry LaneMurphysboro, IL 62966

Cell:

(618) 924-5805

Curriculum Vitae

Core Competencies:

Education:

Ph.D. in Business Administration

May 2010 (ABD)

Masters degree in Computer Science

May 1993

Bachelors degree in Computer Science

May 1991

Project Management Certification

April 2008

Professional Experience:

Lecturer

Southern Illinois University — College of Applied Science & Arts

2007-2009

President and CEO

GlobalEyes Telecommunications, Inc.

1998-2008

Instructor

Southern Illinois University — College of Business

2002-2007

President and CEO

GlobalEyes Communications, Inc.

1997-2003

Software Engineer

Hughes Defense Electronics

1996-1997

Director of Development

The Corporate Word

1995-1996

Senior Software Engineer

IBM

1993-1995

Peer-Reviewed Publications & Conference Proceedings:

Other Publications & Invited Presentations:

Other Research in Progress:

Professional Memberships:

Grants & External Funding:

Software Development & Technology Skills:

Research Interests:

Teaching Interests:

Editorial Review & Conference Activities:

Community Service:

Awards & Honors:

Addendum: Courses Taught

Addendum: Major Software Development Projects

How to retrieve assignments submitted through the website

Download Microsoft Software

Form processing test script

File Downloads

HTML

JavaScript

Cascading Style Sheets (CSS)

Dynamic HTML (DHTML)

PHP

MySQL

Perl

Tools

Links

The Degree-Oriented Guide to Skills in Information Technology (DOGS-IT)

PHP Official Website

MySQL Official Website

World-Wide Web Consortium

ActiveState Perl for Windows

Miscellaneous Links

173 Cherry Lane
Murphysboro, IL 62966