Undergraduate Courses 2017-18

This course provides an analysis of the power of social media, such as Facebook, twitter, blogs, mashups, wikis, etc. It examines how social media can facilitate creativity and collective intelligence, through enhanced information sharing and online collaboration among netizens; ultimately building the social pool of knowledge. It also examines the downside of this participatory culture.

This course describes the development of technology and innovation from social and business perspectives. It covers the technology side of innovations, how an invention can be developed into a successful commercial product, the role of innovation in society and how innovations are created from a socioeconomic perspective. It highlights that successful development and adoption of innovative products relies not only on the technology itself but also a complex process that is subject to the impact of cultural, political, economic and managerial factors.

The course helps students develop better analytical and decision making skills in approaching practical and important social and business issues. Students will derive solutions or conclusions that require critical thinking, creativity, quantitative analysis, and common sense. Cover topics in decision traps, quantitative decision models, statistical reasoning, computer tools, data-analysis techniques, etc. and, more importantly, how these decision analysis concepts and tools can be applied in a broad set of social and business problems.

The course will focus on how business organizations should create and sustain value for different stakeholders in the society by designing, optimizing, and improving the operations. Successful businesses have demonstrated their sustainable competitiveness by maintaining a balanced view of economic prosperity, environmental stewardship, and social responsibility. This course will also examine how the changing perspectives of stakeholders (like government and consumers) affect the business decisions and operations.

Information systems (IS) is about managing the applications of IT to create business values. Topics include fundamental concepts of IS, e-commerce, digital and internet economy, web 2.0 and social networks, online advertising, personalization and privacy, digital rights management and piracy, business intelligence and decision-making, how organizations harness IS for innovative business strategies, and the socio-economic impact of IS on organizations and societies. The labs cover business problem-solving skills.

This course addresses the problems and challenges related to regulatory and business protections for business and scientific innovations, product innovations, service innovations, software licenses, encryption, innovation reengineering, trademark, copyright, music downloading, digital entertainment, data mining and personal privacy.

This course reviews the economic, social and technological trends in commerce enabled by the Internet. It also examines the impacts of technological development from the industrial revolution to those in the Internet era (e.g. search engine, etc.) Emphasis is placed on the uniqueness of the Internet as a platform for commerce. Other topics include the social consequences of Internet commerce, including piracy and privacy.

This course provides a panorama review of the global information infrastructure from technology, policy, social and business perspectives. Key issues include next generation information infrastructure, Internet of things, anti-spamming legislation, universal service, digital convergence, network interconnection, the WTO’s agreement on telecommunications, cloud computing, green ICT, and regulatory environment of multimedia services. It will also address the increasing importance of Web 2.0-enabled information infrastructure in business innovation.

Collection, tabulation and presentation of numerical data; concepts of probability and probability distributions; sampling; statistical estimation and hypothesis testing; correlation and regression analysis.

For SB&M students, and programs that designate the course as a required/recommended elective course. Production and service operations viewed from the strategic, tactical and operational levels; capacity planning, process selection, impact of technology location and layout, material and resource requirements, scheduling and quality control.

Current developments in information technology. Topics selected by instructors.

This course covers the essential project management knowledge to ensure a successful IS/IT project. Topics include the methods, tools and techniques for planning, budgeting, scheduling, tracking, and evaluating IS projects; PMBOK Guide; project risk assessment; IT investment decisions.

This course combines a case study discussion approach to illustrate strategic decision making in business with an integrated hands-on business simulation exercise as part of the learning process. Topics include making strategic choices and evaluating options and tradeoffs in a competitive business simulated industry environment. The objective of the course is to develop a broad perspective in managerial decisions and an appreciation of economic and social factors that drive modern global organizations.

Essential elements of telecommunications in support of business activities. Topics include OSI Model and TCP/IP Protocol Suite, LAN and WAN technology, voice and data communication technologies, communication architectures, networking and security, protocols and standards.

The process by which large software systems are built by teams of developers. Techniques for modeling data and process requirements are surveyed and illustrated using computer-aided software engineering (CASE) tools. Topics include information systems development life cycle and object-oriented systems analysis and design using UML.

An introduction to business applications programming will be covered in this course. Students will learn and understand programming concepts and gain programming experiences for business applications development through a business programming language.

Fundamental concepts of database management systems and their usage for managing the information resources of an organization; methodologies for designing and managing a database system to support business applications.

This course introduces the fundamental concepts and technologies of e-commerce and e-business management. Topics include e-business models, e-business infrastructure, e-security, e-marketing, e-payment methods, web development, web analytics, and social media analytics.

This course intends to cover Internet applications development through programming. Major topics include object-oriented development approaches, advanced GUI building blocks, networking and database connectivity and so on. Students will learn and practice a high-level programming language for the implementation of practical Internet applications.

This course covers the fundamental concepts, technologies, and applications of business analytics to help firms gain a competitive advantage in the era of Big Data. Topics include text mining, predictive analytics, search engine strategy, social network analysis, cloud computing, etc. Students will gain hands-on experience with popular data analytical tools.

In the era of "Big Data", organizations need a new infrastructure/platform to manage the storage and processing of large volume of data. This course introduces the emerging technological paradigm of big data management, as well as some common approaches that are used to gain insights from big data for business decision-making. In particular, it covers a range of big data technologies, including HDFS, MapReduce, Spark, Hive, Pig, etc., that allow for performing data-intensive analysis.

Combining extensive lab work with lectures and WWW self-paced learning materials provided by the Cisco Networking Academy Program, this course helps students develop practical network administration and management skills. This course is designed to prepare students to take (and pass) the Cisco Certified Network Administrator (CCNA) certification examination.

This course provides an introduction to business programming using R. Students will learn the programming concepts and syntax of R and develop R scripts for business applications. This course will cover practical issues for programming in R and provide working examples of emerging business applications, including Web crawling, text analytics, social network analysis, online advertising, and implementations of data mining algorithms.

Practical application of statistics with emphasis on regression. Analysis of business data using a statistical package. Topics include: simple and multiple regression, residual diagnostics and model selection, experimental design and the analysis of variance.

Probabilities, random variables, distribution functions, densities, expected values, conditional distributions and densities, conditional expectations, moment generating functions, Chebyshev's inequality, central limit theorem, and Poisson processes.

Introduction to scientific approaches to informed decision making and technical methods for managerial problem solving; spreadsheet modeling in Excel is used throughout; two important frames: constrained optimization and decisions under risk; emphases on model formulation and solution interpretation; applications to a wide variety of management situations.

Concepts and strategic importance of quality, organizational aspects, total quality control, quality and productivity improvement programs, quality costs and economics. Applications in industrial and service sectors. Second or third year standing preferred.

Design and implementation of service strategies, service products and delivery systems; concepts and tools for effective management of service organizations.

Management of purchasing and distribution of goods and services; supply management; material handling; pricing; transportation and warehousing; customer service standards. Second or third year standing preferred.

This course helps the students develop better analytical skills in approaching strategic and tactical business decisions. Students will learn to derive solutions or conclusions that require critical thinking, quantitative analysis, and statistical reasoning skills. These skills are essential and indispensable for major business decisions.

Current developments in information technology. Topics selected by instructors.

The course focuses on innovation strategies and entrepreneurship skills that provide an intellectual structure for understanding the issues of how entrepreneurial firms recognize potential of an innovation on time, how they implement the right strategies to exploit the innovation, and how to protect their profits from competitors. The course also explores the increasingly global character of entrepreneurial firms, and how successful technology companies compete across cultures, markets and nations.

The course provides a comprehensive approach for auditing information systems including specific procedures and illustrative case studies useful for auditors and information security professionals. It provides the tools required for audits and covers physical, logical and environmental security; security certifications; computer forensics; e-commerce and Internet security; information privacy laws and regulations; and project management controls.

This course introduces the fundamental concepts and tools to perform information systems (IS) control and assurance. Topics include IS control standards, guidelines and best practices to protect and control business systems, IT governance frameworks (e.g., COBIT), as well as the latest development in IS management practice.

Development of an information system with substantial complexity through the use of methodologies and technologies. May be graded PP. Student enrollment in this course requires the approval of the course instructor. Credit load will be spread over the year.

Faculty directed independent study on selected topics in information systems.

This course provides an introduction to financial risk management. Topics include how to measure market risks, statistical properties of returns and volatility, volatility modeling, Value at Risk (VaR), Risk Metrics, historical simulation, assessing VaR methods and stress testing. Theories will be illustrated by practical examples in financial markets.

This course intends to introduce the students to modern data analysis with an emphasis on financial applications. In this course, students will study the data exploration methods, applications of regression and time series, gain experience in analyzing financial data; and become proficient in using statistical software (R or S-Plus) to do estimation, modeling, and forecasting.

Review of regression and its application to forecasting problems; moving averages, exponential smoothing, Box-Jenkins, ARIMA models and transfer function models; forecasts of economic, financial and business time series.

Probabilities and conditional probabilities; distributions and conditional distributions; prior and posterior distributions; conjugate families of prior distributions; interval estimations and testing hypotheses; approximate posterior inference. Second and third year standing preferred.

Simple random sampling, stratified random sampling, ratio and regression estimates, cluster sampling, estimation of sample size, systematic sampling, designing a questionnaire, emphasizing the practical aspects of a sample survey.

Current topics in statistics.

Faculty directed independent study on selected topics in Business Statistics.

Introduction to probabilistic models of operations management; generating random numbers; simulating random variables and discrete event systems; variance reduction techniques; application to risk management, option pricing and other financial problems; application to inventory, queuing, and manufacturing systems.

Basic concepts and practices of enterprise resource management; popular enterprise resource planning software packages, such as SAP R/3 for discussing and building integrated business solutions.

This course covers basic principles and practices of business project management. Special emphases are on project planning, scheduling, and control while addressing both the technical and the social aspects of managing business projects.

Single node inventory control, supply chain network, demand management, manufacturing and replenishment in supply chains, information and coordination in supply chains, product variety management. For students in their third year (under three-year curriculum) or fourth year (under four-year curriculum) of study only. Other students should seek instructor’s approval for enrollment in the course.

This course will introduce students in the design and implementation of operations strategy to create competitive advantages for a company to compete in the market place. The balanced scorecard will be used as the strategic management system to monitor and measure the strategy implementation. Students will learn to integrate and align the operations decisions in different business units of a company with the company's strategy through a strategy simulation game. For students in their fourth year of study only.

Current developments in the field of production and operations management.

In this course, students shall study 12 applications in OM that have been judged by peers as being amongst the best in recent years. Students shall try to understand what the problem was, how it was addressed, how it worked out and attempt to learn what marked it as a success and how portable the practice can be. The principle purpose is to expose students to a wide range of good case histories in order to enhance their repertoire and experience in OM.

This course focuses on how a firm should set and update pricing and product availability decisions across its various selling channels in order to maximize its profitability. Through a combination of case studies, lectures and class activities, the course will review the main methodologies and different pricing strategies used in different industries. The goal is for students to learn to identify and exploit opportunities for revenue optimization in different business contexts.

This course focuses on the products, processes and delivery channels in the financial industries. It analyzes and evaluates the designs and performances of the internal operations and the different distribution channels of the financial institutions, and identifies opportunities for continuous improvement in productivity, efficiency and service quality. Issues like operational risk management, application of IT, automation, outsourcing and new trends in the financial service operations for both financial institutions and non-financial institutions will be explored.

This course is offered to those students who are interested in applying what they have learned in other OM courses to solve real business problems for a sponsoring corporation. Recommendation and/or implementation of solutions will be made through the use of operations management concepts, techniques, and tools. Students will work as a group and be supervised by faculty members. Enrollment in this course requires the approval of course instructor.

Faculty directed independent study on selected topics in operations management.