Greg Binder, '75, "Congratulations (on the department's 35th anniversary in 2009)! Little did I know when I graduated MS in Computer Science in 1975 that I had been "touched" by MIS in its infancy. We, MIS and the industry have come a long way!" 

Patrick DeShazo, '78, "Jay Nunamaker was my college savior. I was thrilled when Dr. Manes told me that he was getting this star from Purdue to run his new MIS Department. I immediately transferred to BPA to be in a position to be an MIS student. The rest is history." 

Donald K. Bushell Jr., '82, Systems Architecture Engineer, Boeing. Congratulations to Donald for earning Boeing's 2011 Special Invention Award. Donald was part of a team that invented "Apparatus and Methods for Strategic Planning" — recognized among thousands of Boeing inventions and amid hundreds nominated in 2011."I am thankful for my family and colleagues for supporting me in this quest for innovation," Bushell said. "Long range planning is essential to Boeing's success because we build airplanes that are in service for many decades. This invention helps the company plan new airplane models many years prior to first flight." 

Htay L. Hla, '82, has been the Director, Information Technology at the Mel & Enid Zuckerman College of Public Health, The University of Arizona since 2000. 

Stephen Irish, '82, Chief Operating Officer, Executive Vice President, Enterprise Bank. Congratulations to Stephen as he was recently promoted from Chief Information Officer to Chief Operating Officer at Enterprise Bank in Massachusetts. In addition, Stephen states about the MIS department's 35th anniversary in 2009 "Twenty-seven years later, the MS program in MIS remains one of the major positive influences on my career!" 

Alan Simon, '82, Director, Professional Services - Arizona and Utah, MicroStrategy, Inc. "My time in the MIS program working on my Master's Degree (1980-1982) was instrumental in all aspects of my career: working with emerging technologies; teaching, research and speaking; and writing. In the 30 years since I finished my program at the U of A I’ve written almost 30 books and have held positions as a national or global consulting practice leader. I can directly trace the core skills and ongoing assessment of emerging technologies needed to be a successful consultant and technology executive to what I learned in the classroom at the U of A as well as the teaching and research work I did during my two years there."

Michael E. Starling, '83, Senior Engineer Manager, IBM Storage Technology Group. Congratulations to Michael and his co-inventors on their new patent! 

Gary Fisher, '86, "So nice to hear that the program continues to be highly ranked. Kudos to those who keep it that way." 

Michele Norin, '87, Chief Information Officer & Executive Director, UITS, University of Arizona. Congratulations to Michele on being named CIO of the Year by the Arizona Technology Council. 

Edward Quick, '87, Test Director, GFEBS PMO, Department of the Army. "I'm looking forward to traveling to Arizona for high school graduations." 

Raymond Kelly, '88, is now the Director of Information Technology at The Retail Equation. "Looking back to when I graduated in 1988, the material being taught was directly applicable in my first job, including the platform (an old DEC VAX) in which a lot of the classroom work was performed on.  If I did not have that good foundation I would not be where I am today." 

Christopher Bridges, '89, "I graduated Cum Laud with my MIS degree in 1989, and I'm very thankful for the content of the program in helping me with my career. After spending 2 years at DEC out of school, and an additional 17 years at Intel as a database and automation systems expert and senior manager, I left Arizona to become Director of Engineering at MySpace and moved from Arizona to Beverly Hills. Due to the entrepreneurial nature of the MIS program, it was second nature for me to venture out on my own and create a successful consulting business called ZuumBe. That company name now belongs to the TV and Film Production company founded by Tori Bridges, and myself, where we are creating TV shows and feature films, working through the WME2 and CAA agencies. Additionally, I'm now serving as Director of Business Intelligence at Outlook Amusements, where I'm creating an entire Business Intelligence department, and am charged with creating all methods and practices for all company metrics and analytics. Without the MIS program, I wouldn't have had the business plus technical background to be successful in the amazingly competitive entertainment and internet businesses. One bit of wisdom I'd like to pass on to current students: know your worth, negotiate well, and act with friendly confidence, and people and money will gravitate to you. Cheers!" 

Major General N. Lee S. Price, '89, U.S. Army, Program Executive Officer for Command, Control, Communications Tactical (retired.) On March 3, 2012 General Price was promoted to a Major General. “I feel so fortunate to have served our Nation in uniform for over 36 years. Today was totally humbling as I was promoted to the rank of Major General. No one in the room was prouder than my mom who did the honors of placing my new rank on my uniform.

Heartfelt thanks to the dedicated, superb team that execute the PEO C3T and Army mission every day. I am thankful to each of them, and to my family, friends and others who inspired me to greater service throughout my career. I couldn't ask for a better foundation as I take this next step.” 

Glenda Hayes, '90, Principal Info Systems Engineer, MITRE. "At MITRE I am an adviser to various Department of Defense organizations in matters relating to metadata, web services, federated search, taxonomies and more. I work on challenging problems and the solutions must highly scalable. Impediments are generally not technical in nature, but rather policy and culture. Now that our son attends UA, I hope to visit Tucson more often!" 

Darin Soll, '90, CEO, CXT Software. "The best technology executives are those with a strong grasp of the business as well as the ability to lead technology teams and hold them accountable to creating real business value. I can't think of a better foundation for future technology executives than an MIS degree."

Christopher Haggerty, '91, Senior Database Architect, Dell Services Federal Government. "After 12 years I am still working as a production Database Administrator for the Federal Emergency Agency but my employer changed from General Dynamics Information Technology to Dell Services Federal Government in September." 

Michael Beresford, '93, President, NetScope, Inc. “I started NetScope while I was finishing my degree in MIS at the U of A in 1993. 'Analysis, Design and Implementation'... pretty much spells out what I'm lucky enough to do daily with my team and a great roster of clients.” Michael's company announces the launch of a new interactive strategy for a Southern California-based restaurant chain. This launch includes a new kids microsite integrated within the new kids menu now in restaurants.  The microsite includes online games and an iPhone game, the “Pizookie Challenge,” which is now available for download at the iTunes App Store. 

Bruce Hartman, '94, Professor of Logistics and Management, University of St. Francis. Congratulations to Bruce and his new teaching appointment - plus - his research paper titled “An economic model for sustainable harbor trucking” for being published in ScienceDirect’s Transportation Research Part D: Transport and Environment. (Volume 17, Issue 5, July 2012, Pages 354–360.)

Prabhudev Konana, '95, as Chair of the IROM Department, McCombs School of Business. Congratulations to Dr. Konana as he begins his new position as Chair of the IROM Department on September 1, 2011. Sudha Ram (Prabhudev's doctoral advisor) and the rest of the MIS department wished him well in this new assignment! 

Jennifer Walzer, '95, is the President and Founder of Back Up My Info.

Dorothy Edwards, '97, Owner/Broker, Johnson-Edwards Holdings, LLC. Dorothy dropped us a line to let us know that her company is currently focusing in real estate investing, distress property situations, foreclosures, pre-foreclosure auctions, probate short sales and divorce relocation. In addition, Dorothy indicated in March 2010 "Congratulations (on the department's 35th anniversary)! I'm so happy to be a part of such a great tradition." 

Akhilesh Bajaj, PhD, '97, University of Tulsa received full professorship in August 2009. 

Nicholas Romano, '98, Associate Professor, Oklahoma State University, "I am truly amazed at the long term success UAMIS continues to have in all of its endeavors. Congratulations to all the faculty who have made this possible over the years especially Jay Nunamaker, Jim LaSalle, Dave Pingry, Wayne Eirich and Benn Konzynski who started the department. I sometimes wonder if I am the only UAMIS Ph.D graduate that also has both a BA and MS is MIS from U of A. Best Regards!" 

Kubra Basdogan  (Hatice Kubra Coldren), '00, is an Independent PeopleSoft Technology Consultant. She also assists with the areas of technology at Artist Magnet LLC. 

Jeff Perry, '00, Associate Broker, Realty Executives. Jeff dropped us a line to let us know that he was named Realty Executives Southern Arizona Rising Star for 2007. "Real Estate has been revolutionized by technology. It went from being an industry where information was scarce and closely guarded by agents, to one that overwhelms the public with a deluge of information. The one thing that hasn’t changed is that time is of the essence. The skills I learned in the MIS program allow me to stay on the edge of the technologies that are leading the change. I am able to quickly gather data from multiple sources, analyze it and present it to my clients in whatever format works best for them."

Rick Beigler '01, IT Functional Area Lead, US Food Service. "I've been working a year on a conversion/implementation team that travels the country to all our different distribution facilities to get all sites on one operating platform. It takes 15-17 weeks per project and I have between 2-4 projects running concurrently. 100% travel gets weary but I love what I do! I use the concepts I learned in my MIS classes all the time such as algorithms heuristics and problem solving. Go Cats!" 

Kapil Chhibber '01, Senior Vice President, Bank of America. Congratulations to Kapil who was named as one of the San Fransico Business Times 40 under 40 in February 2014!

Dr. Vance Cooney '01, Coordinator - Health Informatics, Eastern Washington University. Congratulations to Vance and his new promotion as the HIT coordinator and internship director for Business Informatics (formerly MIS) and Health Informatics program that he helped launch in 2009 at Eastern Washington University. 

John Franklin Heidenreich '02, recently graduated with a Juris Doctorate from the Franklin Pierce Law Center.  In August he will begin as an associate for the law firm of Oliff & Berridge in Alexandria VA office. He will be practicing in the area of intellectual property. 

Eduardo Canessa, '04, CIO, Palmas del Ixcan. "Came back to Guatemala and after a lot of work I am now the CIO of Palmas del Ixcan a subsidiary of Green Earth Fuels". 

Patrick Knodle, '04, Director, Information Technology, The Little Gym International, Inc. "My (MIS) education really inspired me to be creative, understand not only the technical need, but the business need for what I was working on. At The Little Gym, before designing a technical solution, we understand the Business need and approach the project or task from a business point of view, then the technical solution simply follows. My education also taught me how to work with end users of the application to deliver a high quality application that was user focused." 

Vincent J. Miranda, '04, is the Senior Project Manager at Business & Decision, North America a global consulting and systems integration consulting firm. "Eller’s curriculum gave me the much needed background to be flexible and understand the 360 degree view of business as a whole. This knowledge has aided me tremendously when I am working with and talking to my marketing, accounting and finance clients."

Alysha Periso, '05, Technical Account Manager, Amazon.com. "I am currently working as a Technical Account Manager at Amazon Web Services. Each day I can use the information I learned at U of A in the MIS program. The cloud is taking over the world and its been a joy to be a part of this. MIS represent!" 

Srini Venkataramani, '05, Livelink Workflow Architect, Gen Probe. "Congratulations on the #1 ranking for the undergrad program." 

Noel Ata, '07, IT Manager, Grant Thornton, LLP. He gives this advise to new MIS graduates including "Make sure you are passionate about what you do and that you have the opportunity to challenge yourself." And, "As an IT consultant, it was essential to have the technical knowledge as well as the business acumen to understand how they interact.  As part of my daily responsibilities, I assist our clients in identifying business risks and opportunities for improvement from an operations and IT perspective.  The MIS program essentially prepared me for my career by exposing me to management and IT concepts that are used by my clients.  I was able to lessen the learning curve at the start of my career as the MIS program was able to prepare me well in advance giving me a competitive advantage in the marketplace."

Dan Parmelee, '07, Senior Enterprise Monitoring Analyst, The Tribune Company. Dan indicated that his company recently wrapped up a 6-month project to outsource an entire department. Dan was one of the project leads who oversaw and directed the initiative, and supervised 14 people during that time. As per Dan "(this project) was a perfect example of business and technology coming together". 

Casey Tealdi, '07, Senior IT Auditor, Advisory Services Group, Ernst & Young. "As a graduate of both the MBA and Masters in MIS programs at the Eller College I look back on my time at Eller very fondly which is the primary reason I am so excited about the prospect of returning to the classroom as part of the Enterprise Security Certificate program". 

Ahmed Abbasi, '08, Assistant Professor, MIS, Sheldon B. Lubar School of Business, University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee. Ahmed recently won the Roger L. Fitzsimonds Scholarly Achievement Award for Junior Faculty. 

Eduard Ciocanescu, '08, Business Analyst, JP Morgan Chase, London, England. "After successfully completing my degree at Arizona, I worked as a management and strategy consultant for A.T. Kearney. One year and a half later, I got my dream job in London where I work as a Business Analyst for JP Morgan's Investment Bank in the Fixed Income Department." 

Sapna Kaul, '08, is an Associate Analyst, Program Management at Moody's Analytics. "Completing my Masters in Management of Information Systems at Eller College of Management has given me hands on experience on working with live clients on academic projects and leveraged my project and time management skills. I also acquired useful knowledge to handle large volumes of information/data. My education thus helps me perform efficiently in the Program Management Office at Moody’s Analytics."

Vishal Gupta, '09, Data Analyst – Enterprise Analytics, CVS Caremark Corporation. Vishal indicated that this is his "dream job."  "I love working for a prescription benefit management company. It's a great place to be - lots of innovative and really intelligent people. It seems to be a very young industry, and by that I mean there is ample room for growth and innovation. My everyday job involves providing insights and information to strategic product management team to support development, evolution and enhancement of CVS Caremark core clinical products."

Harsha Gunnam, '09, Senior Web Analyst, Staples - Congratulations to Harsha on his new job at Staples! 

Josh Hottenstein, '09, CEO, Verdant Earth Technologies. Josh has been keeping us posted on his new company, Verdant, which grows environmentally controlled agriculture.

Rohit Kohli, '09, Sunquest Information Systems was recently promoted to Associate Program Manager. 

Clayton Rogers, '09, Solution Delivery Consultant, Cerner. "After 22 years living in Tucson I am off to begin my career in Kansas City Missouri. I will be working for Cerner as a Solution Delivery Consultant. I begin September 14th and am excited to finally start my career. Hopefully some of the things I learned in Sue Brown's database class and Dr. Alex's networking class comes in handy"! 

Devarsh Shah, '09, Business Intelligence Analyst, Persistech. Devarsh celebrated India's Independence Day by jumping out of an airplane! In a newspaper article written for News India Times by Bhargavi Kulkarni: “Instead of the usual ways of celebrating India’s Independence Day, Atlanta’s Deversh Shah chose an unconventional way to mark the birthday his homeland. Shah went skydiving while carrying the Indian tricolor. He jumped from 14,000 feet above ground on August 15 at a diving zone in Rockmart, GA. The 24-year-old, who has been skydiving for three months, told News India Times he wanted to try something different."

Seungmi Lee, '10, Manager, LG Electronics. Congratulations to Seungmi on her new job at LG Electronics. In this new position she is working on the platform services and business intelligence of LG's smart TV. We wish her the best! 

Chandrasekhar Manda, '10, Technical Consultant, Axway Inc. Chandrasekhar touched base to let us know about his job and how much fun he is having! He says "MIS helped me figure out how to arrive at a solution for a business problem. It helped me understand that technology alone cannot solve the business problem. Technology can only play the role of a facilitator.It augmented my experience as a software engineer and helped give me a personality of a consultant - all while earning a degree from a top-5 ranked program."

Reese Potter, '10, Logistics Management Intern, Department of the Army. "I was fortunate enough to receive this job with the Department of the Army two days prior to my May 2010 graduation. Thanks to the MIS/OM and other Eller professors I feel that I have been adequately prepared for the challenges that I have encountered and will yet encounter in this job. I encourage all who are interested in serving our country and challenging themselves to apply to any of the armed forces. BEAR DOWN!" 

Rahul Tekchandani, '10, Assistant Vice President, Architecture & Strategy, Global Risk group, Bank of America. Congratulations to Rahul on his new position as V.P. at Bank of America!! We are proud of you Rahul and keep up the great work! 

Kushal Aurangabadkar, '11, Program Manager, Microsoft. Kushal sent us an email stating "I started working with Microsoft two weeks ago. I am very happy to let you know that the Master's course met its purpose and helped me adjust to the very fast and efficient corporate environment. My role as a Program Manager is very challenging (though exciting), it requires sound communication and analytical skills along with technical knowledge. Thank you again!" 

Dhanesh Prasad, '11, Associate Member Technical Staff (AMTS) - Software Engineer, Salesforce.com. Dhanesh "checked-in" with the department and wanted to share news about his job as a software engineer! "The MS MIS program at the University of Arizona not only shaped my professional life, but also made significant impact on my personal development. During my time in the MIS program, I not only honed my technical skills - but more importantly - I learned the importance of the business logic that drives software development. The program helped me understand the approach of viewing software products from a customers point of view which in turn has helped me produce and deliver software with high quality standards and improved user experiences."

Francisco Morin-Corona '13, is a Software Tester at General Motors.

The James F. LaSalle Teaching Award is given yearly to a MIS graduate student instructor who exemplifies the best of teaching and who is following Jim's steps of excellence in the classroom.

The LaSalle-Chen Scholarship's goal is to provide funds and support for students with significant academic promise that have overcome personal challenges to obtain advanced standing in MIS.