Nineteenth President of AIS: Jane Fedorowicz

Jane Fedorowicz is the Chester B. Slade Professor of Accounting and Information Systems at Bentley University in Waltham, MA, USA, where she holds joint appointments in the Information & Process Management and Accountancy Departments. Previously, she served on the faculties of Boston University, University of Massachusetts, Northwestern University and Carnegie-Mellon University. She is proud to be a founding member of AIS and may hold the record for serving more years and in more capacities than any else on its Council.

Her presidential election platform statement was based on the premise that AIS is at a financial and strategic crossroads. She vowed to help the association begin to take steps to keep it on what she called the Road to Relevance as it approached its 20^th year. She set several goals for charting the organization down this Road, summarized here:   

1. Focusing on AIS’ key member constituencies. She stressed awareness of the wide-ranging needs of members across all three regions, each geographic chapter, and AIS’ many SIGs, conferences and affiliations.  Examples of new initiatives instituted to reach across regions include the multi-journal author workshop hosted at PACIS in Korea, the women’s reception held at ECIS in the Netherlands, and the IS Job Index.
2. Understanding what we need to do well. What does AIS do better than those groups or associations that provide similar or competing products and services?  During her presidency, AIS conducted several surveys including a multi-association survey and member needs assessment to learn what members value about AIS and what needs they have for the future.  These helped to drive strategy setting and product and service offerings. Conferences, the eLibrary, SIGs and chapters continue to provide significant value for members.
3. Identifying and making hard decisions about those products and services that divert us off our Road. She instituted regular reviews of AIS initiatives and Council decisions so that AIS and Council can retain a focus on mission-critical goals of the association and its members.
4. Developing revenue streams. AIS must move beyond relying on conference surpluses and conference-linked membership renewals. Council continues to explore ways to augment these two major pools of revenue.
5. Practicing what we preach! AIS is badly in need of an overhaul of some of its systems and technology products, with progress being made on replacing the current conference review system, adding a plagiarism detection system, transitioning to new ways to communicate with members, and improving the functionality of our association management system and website.
6. Increasing participation by IS academics, students and professionals. AIS must take steps to attract new academic members, help members attract new students, and help students succeed in the workforce. As one example, even though women make up half of the world’s population, they remain a relatively small percent of AIS members, IS faculty, IS students, and IS professionals. In 2012, AIS became an Academic Alliance member of the National Center for Women and Information Technology whose mission is to increase women’s success in the computing professions. Professor Fedorowicz appointed a task force on Women in IS to facilitate AIS’ relationship with NCWIT, and to think more broadly about how AIS can improve its understanding of and work with diverse populations globally.

In addition, she assembled a Task Force on Association Outreach which was tasked with improving the value AIS provides its members and society by working with sister associations, extending the reach of member research beyond association borders -- to practice and the media, and providing input about societal concerns to government bodies or other interest groups. She participated in these efforts in several ways, by initiating AIS presence at a very large US STEM Festival, authoring the association’s position on Net Neutrality to submit to the US Federal Communications Commission, staffing an exhibit at the practitioner SIMposium conference, and overseeing the creation of a consumer website for reaching potential students.

Prior to her presidency, Jane served on Council as AIS Secretary from 2009-2012 and as Vice President of Chapters and Affiliations for two terms (1998-2004). She was president and member of the governing board of SIG ASYS from 2006-2011. She was co-general chair of AMCIS 2001 in Boston, and served on many ICIS and AMCIS conference committees in other roles. She stepped down as senior editor of the Communications of AIS to take on the presidency in 2012. She will continue to represent AIS as a member of the leadership team of the NCWIT following her appointment in 2014.

Jane has published over 100 articles in refereed journals and conference proceedings. AIS recognized her contributions to the information systems field by naming her an AIS Fellow in 2006. Her interdisciplinary research supports a sociotechnical perspective on organizational collaboration design in both the public and private sectors. She was principal investigator of a National Science Foundation project team studying design issues for police and government agency collaboration using public safety networks. She also served as principal investigator for the Bentley Invision Project, an international research team housed at Bentley examining interorganizational information sharing and the coordination infrastructures supporting these relationships in supply chain, government, and health care. She has recently begun a funded program of research on police use of social media.

Jane has been married to Michael Golibersuch for over 30 years. They have two grown sons. In her spare time, she enjoys traveling, camping, playing games and cards (especially Hearts), cooking and gardening.

She earned MS (1978) and PhD (1981) degrees in Systems Sciences from The Tepper School at Carnegie Mellon University in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, USA and a BS (1976) degree in Health Systems Analysis from the University of Connecticut, Storrs, Connecticut, USA.