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IU Kelley professor receives lifetime achievement award for contributions to information systems

• Jan. 30, 2014

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
 
BLOOMINGTON, Ind. -- Alan Dennis, the John T. Chambers Chair of Internet Systems and a professor of information systems at Indiana University's Kelley School of Business, has received a lifetime achievement award for his educational contributions in the field.
 
The Association for Information Systems has presented Dennis with its AIS Award for Outstanding Contribution to IS Education. The award recognizes a professor who has influenced curriculum development and teaching methods, produced valuable research and left a lasting impact on his or her students.
 
"It is a great honor to win this award. I really enjoy teaching, so it is great to be in a profession where you get paid to do something that is so much fun," Dennis said.
 
Dennis is publisher of MIS Quarterly Executive and was senior editor of MIS Quarterly, two leading journals in his discipline. He also is a track chair at Hawaii International Conference on System Sciences, which is one of the longest continuously running information systems conferences.
 
He is best known for his research on virtual teams but also has done research on business process improvement, knowledge management, professional issues facing academics, the use of the Internet to improve business and education and, more recently, neuro information systems.

“Alan has a great passion for finding what’s next, and his record of outstanding research has certainly proven to be beneficial for the entire information systems community,” said Idalene Kesner, dean of the Kelley School and the Frank P. Popoff Chair of Strategic Management. “He is reinventing curricula to ensure his students are learning essential skills and knowledge to be successful in today’s information technology environment as well as making sure they are well equipped to answer tomorrow’s challenges. Alan is also changing how students learn with his work in electronic textbooks. As such, his influence reaches far beyond the Kelley School and Indiana University.”

Dennis was one of the first scholars in his field to recognize a need for a new curriculum and teaching tools for better understanding the Internet and networking applications. As a professor at the University of Georgia, he redesigned the data communications course to focus on the Internet and wrote a seminal textbook on the topic.
 
Since joining the Kelley School faculty in 2000, Dennis has continued to develop new courses, including a popular doctoral-level class on theory development.
 
Because of his expertise in teaching networking, he was approached by the Cisco Networking Academy for help with designing better instructor training materials. The academy provides course tools used by more than 1 million students in more than 170 countries.
 
The author of about 150 research papers, Dennis has won numerous awards for theoretical and applied research, including honors from the Academy of Management and AIS Senior Scholars. A year ago, he received the association's prestigious AIS Fellow Award.
 
Over the past two decades, he has published 19 articles in MIS Quarterly and Information Systems Research, making him the third most productive information systems researcher, according to Viswanath Venkatesh's rankings for the Association for Information Systems.
 
Dennis has written four textbooks -- two on data communications and networking and two on systems analysis and design. In 2012, he received the Distinguished IS Educator Award from the Association of Information Technology Professionals' Education Special Interest Group for his efforts to improve information systems education.
 
He also was an innovator in the move to electronic textbooks and co-founded e-textbook startup Courseload Inc., whose vision is to make learning customizable and social and to change the business model by which textbooks are sold to dramatically cut their cost. More than 50 colleges and universities use the Courseload model and software.
 
The Association for Information Systems, founded in 1994, is a professional organization whose purpose is to serve as the premier global organization for academics specializing in information systems.

Related Links

• Kelley School of Business