April 05, 2012

Open forums set with CASA dean finalists

by Pete Rosenbery

CARBONDALE, Ill. -- Three candidates for the position of dean of the College of Applied Sciences and Arts at Southern Illinois University Carbondale will meet with constituents during a series of forums beginning next week.

The candidates are:  David M. Conway, professor and director of the Aviation Sciences Institute at Southeastern Oklahoma State University; David Chi-Chung Yen, the Raymond E. Glos Professor in Business and professor of Management Information Systems at Miami University; and JuAn (Andy) Wang, professor and chair of the Department of Information Technology at Southern Polytechnic State University.

The dean is the chief academic and administrative officer for the college and is responsible for its academic programs, fiscal management, personnel, external relations, recruitment and retention, among other areas.  All candidates must have a strong record of academic leadership and administrative experience.

The forums, which will include a presentation by the candidates, will give University students, staff and faculty an opportunity to meet with the candidates and ask questions about their proposed approaches to the position and will be done in conjunction with their interview for the position.

Full curriculum vitas for the three candidates are available at pvcaa.siuc.edu/searches.html.

Here is a schedule of the forums:

  • Yen will hold his forum 11 a.m. to noon, Wednesday, April 11, at the John C. Guyon Auditorium in Morris Library.
  • Wang will hold his forum 11 a.m. to noon, Friday, April 13, at the SIU School of Law in the Hiram H. Lesar Law Building auditorium.
  • Conway will hold his forum 10-11 a.m., Wednesday, April 18, in the John C. Guyon Auditorium in Morris Library.

David M. Conway earned his doctor of education degree in higher education in 1995 at Oklahoma State University.  He earned his Master of Science in 1981 systems management from the University of Southern California, and a Bachelor of Science degree in biology and English from East Texas State University in 1974.

He joined the Oklahoma State faculty as an aerospace education specialist in 1994 following a 20-year career as an officer with the United States Air Force.

He chaired the aerospace department at Southeastern Oklahoma State University for four years beginning in 1998, and has directed the University’s Aviation Sciences Institute since 2002.  He became an associate professor in 1998, earning full professor in 2004.  Since 2001 he has also been director, professor and graduate studies chair of the John Massey School of Business.

He is responsible for managing a $1.25 million annual operating budget, in addition to $1.735 million in education grants. He also manages off-site undergraduate and graduate degree programs at Tinker Air Force Base.

Among awards and honors, Conway has received a Faculty Senate Award for Excellence in Service at Southeastern Oklahoma State University and was named a Paul Harris Fellow.  He is vice chair of the state’s Aeronautics Commission, and was president of the University Aviation Association.

JuAn (Andy) Wang earned his doctorate in computer science from Beijing University of Aeronautics and Astronautics in Beijing, China, in 1992.  He earned his Master of Science in Computer Science from Changsha Institute of Technology in Changsha, China, in 1989, and a Bachelor of Science degree in Applied Mathematics, with Computer Science concentration, from the Zhengzhou, China, Institute of Technology, in 1982.

In addition to being chair and professor at Southern Polytechnic State University’s Department of Information Technology, he is founding director of the University’s Center for Information Security Education, which he developed in 2004.  The Center earned designation in 2008 by the Department of Homeland Security and the National Security Agency as a National Center of Academic Excellence in Information Assurance Education.  That is the same designation that SIU Carbondale’s School of Information Systems and Applied Technologies earned last year.

Wang began at Southern Polytechnic State University as an associate professor in the Department of Software Engineering in 2001. Prior to that, Wang was an assistant professor in the Department of Computer Science and Information Systems at the University of Nebraska at Kearney from 1997 to 2001.  Previous experience includes serving as an assistant professor in the Department of Computer and Information Science at the University of Macau from 1993 to 1997.

David Chi-Chung Yen earned both his doctorate in management information systems and a Master of Science degree in computer science from the University of Nebraska-Lincoln in 1985.  He earned an MBA in business administration and a Bachelor of Science degree in computer science, both from Oklahoma State University, in 1982.

In addition to being the Raymond E. Glos Professor in Business at Miami University, Yen is also director of the China Business Program in the university’s Fanner School of Business.  He began at Miami University as an assistant professor in the Department of Decision Sciences and Management Information Systems in 1985.  He became an associate professor in 1989, and professor in 1994.  He served as department chair from 1995 to 2005.

During Yen’s tenure as chair, the department received two endowed professorships and a number of consulting scholarships.  He has served as an external assessor to evaluate grants and funding proposals for many organizations, including the National Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada, Hong Kong Research Advisory Council, and the National Sciences Funding and Grants Council of the People’s Republic of China. 

Among his awards and honors, Yen is a Distinguished Scholar of the Graduate Faculty at Miami University, and he earned the business school’s senior faculty research award in 2006.