MESSAGE FROM THE SWDSI 2008 PROGRAM CHAIR

 

 

Welcome!  Bien venidos!  Huan Ying!  Bienvenue!  Ira Sha I Ma Sen!  Selamat Datang! 

 

On the behalf of the 2008 SWDSI Conference Team, permit me to thank you so much for joining us in Houston, Texas.  Apart from participating in the many paper sessions, please take some time to visit and do some site seeing during your stay in the fourth largest city in the United States.  In addition to the many new tourist attractions in the downtown area that now can be reached via monorail, NASA in Clear Lake and Moody Gardens in Galveston are also within easy driving distance. 

 

Like previous years, the SWDSI 2008 team received a total of 148 submissions.  After a double blind review process, 132 papers were accepted for presentation and publication in the proceedings.  Management information Systems, Innovative Education, and Student Tracks are the three tracks that had the most submissions.  Not only did we have a record number of student paper submissions, the papers submitted were from doctoral, masters and undergraduate students.  While it is true that most of the papers were from institutions in the Southwest region, a good number of papers were received from other parts of the United States and from other countries such as China, India, Japan, Malaysia, Taiwan and the United Arab Emirates.  Please join me in expressing a heartfelt thanks to all the track chairs for going the extra mile with their job responsibilities.

 

This year, we have added a social hour to promote more networking among peers.  New members will find this time to be particularly useful.  This session will be hosted after the General Business Meeting on Thursday evening.  Two panels, one addressing critical thinking skills in the decision sciences and one dealing with enterprise computing challenges will also be featured on the first day of the conference.  New to SWDSI in 2008 is the mini consortium for students and new faculty.  In addition to a keynote by the Director of the UT Telecampus System on “Enhancing access via online technologies”, the consortium will also have three major sessions that deals with job search strategies to assuring continuous effectiveness via instructional innovations.  The 2008 Conference Team would like to thank each of the panelists for their presence and invaluable contribution.

 

Our sincere congratulations to the recipients of the following prestigious awards:

  • Dr. Thomas Jones for receiving the Outstanding Educator Award.
  • Dr. Wayne Headrick for receiving the Distinguished Service Award.
  • Dr. Hsu, Dr. Wang and Dr. Chiu for receiving the Best Paper Award.
  • Dr. Lu and Dr. Linda Haynes for receiving the Alpha Iota Delta Innovative Education Award.
  • Ms. Diaz for receiving the Best Doctoral Student Paper Award.
  • Ms. Beeler for receiving the Best Graduate Student Paper Award.
  • Mr. Luke Koong and Ms. Shirley Yu for the Best Undergraduate Student Paper Award.

The SWDSI Board and the Year 2008 Conference Team would like to thank all the members of the four Committees who were charged with judging and selecting the winners.

 

In closing, I want to thank you for this privileged to serve you as Program Chair.  This conference would not have been possible without the contribution and support of many people.  To all the current SWDSI Officers, track chairs, reviewers, session chairs, panelists, keynote speaker, proceedings editor, proceedings production coordinator and sponsors, thank you from the bottom of my heart.  To Dr. David Chou, Dr. Binshan Lin, and Dr. Chang-tseh Hsieh, thank you for being my mentors.  Last and most of all, thank you so much to you, the delegates of SWDSI 2008, for making this conference a success.  May I ask you to join Dr. Joe Felan, our Program Chair for SWDSI 2009, in Oklahoma City for our next annual meeting.

 

Best wishes for a pleasant stay in Houston and may you have a safe trip home.

 

 

Dr. Kai S. Koong

SWDSI 2008 Program Chair