Calvin Nobles, Ph.D. has been named Chair of the Department of Information Technology and Management starting August 16, 2021. College of Computing Dean Lance Fortnow announced his appointment on May 18th. Dr. Nobles holds Ph.D.s in Management & Engineering Technology, Human Factors, and Business Administration with a specialization in Management Information Systems. He most recently served as a Vice President enhancing the cybersecurity posture at Wells Fargo after a long and distinguished career in cybersecurity as an officer in the United States Navy. He has previously taught at Arizona State University, University of Maryland, Indiana Wesleyan University, and the Army Command & Staff College. See the full Illinois Tech announcement here.

The Information Technology and Management Faculty held their Spring 2018 faculty meeting at Lee Wing Wah in Chicago’s Chinatown on May 7, 2018. A highlight of the meeting was the awarding of the 2018 Jeffrey Kimont Memorial Teaching Award. Named in honor and memory of the first full-time ITM faculty member, the Jeffrey Kimont Memorial Teaching Award honors an outstanding adjunct faculty member. This year’s recipient is Vasilios “Billy” Pappademetriou. As the key instructor for ITM 301, Billy introduces every first-year ITM student into the fundamentals of not only hardware and operating systems but the IT profession as well.

Jeff Kimont was a founding faculty member in Information Technology and Management and shaped the application development curriculum of the program. A BSEE graduate of Midwest College of Engineering (now part of IIT and the foundation of the Rice Campus in Wheaton), Jeff earned his Master of Computer Science at North Central College and a Masters Certificate in Bioengineering and Bioinformatics at the University of Illinois at Chicago. After retiring from Bell Labs, he became the first full-time faculty member in Information Technology and Management but later left that role to pursue a full-time career as a lead software developer. A jazz musician as well as a talented coder and teacher, Jeff was the father of four. He passed away due to cancer at the age of 58 in 2013.

Previous winners of the Jeffrey Kimont Memorial Teaching Award include Jason Lambert, Dennis Hood, and Shawn Davis. (Photo by Angie Jarka.)

Frustrated with the same old questions, Professor David Lydic rips open his shirt in the middle of class…

Dr. Lisa Wade, writing in the Sociological Images blog, pretty much nails things college professors hate: Professors’ Pet Peeves. And of course, all of your faculty are tempted every term to follow the lead of David Lydic of Austin Community College as shown in the picture at the right… Anyway, if you take heed of Dr. Wade’s cogent advice, we can all have a more pleasant semester!

Dr. Carlson and Dr. Hasso receiving the Best Paper award

Dr. C. Robert Carlson, Dean of the School of Applied Technology, earned the best paper award at the 2nd Annual Conference on Research in Information Technology (RIIT) held in conjunction with the ACM 14th Annual Conference in Information Technology Education (SIGITE), October 10-12. Dr. Carlson, along with Dr. Sargon Hasso, a former PhD student of Dr. Carlson’s, presented the paper “Design Patterns as First-Class Connectors” in the Software Development track. Their approach is a compositional model based on design patterns by abstracting their behavioral model using role modeling constructs. They demonstrated their technique by presenting a simple case study complete with design and implementation code. Dr. Hasso is currently employed at Wolters Kluwer.

Dr. Carlson was accompanied to the conference by Industry Professor Ray Trygstad, Associate Chair of IIT’s Department of Information Technology and Management. Professor Trygstad also serves as the Chair of the National Board of Directors for Gamma Nu Eta, the National Information Technology Honor Society. He represented Gamma Nu Eta, who was a Silver Sponsor for the conference.

Dr. Carlson also served as Session Chair for the presentations of “Leveraging HCI in Teaching Mobile, ‘Anywhere and Everywhere’ IT” and “Flipping the Classroom – Is it for you?” as part of the Mobile IT Technology track of the conference.

IIT alumnus Fernando Seror Garcia at the Poster Session

As part of the Security 1 track, IIT alumnus Mikhail Zaturenskiy, who worked with Professor Bill Lidinsky, presented his paper “MP3 Files as a Steganography Medium.” This paper looks at ways to hide information inside MP3 files and proposes four largely unexplored techniques: unused header bit stuffing, unused side information bit stuffing, empty frame stuffing, and ancillary bit stuffing.

As part of the RIIT Poster Session, IIT 2013 ITM alumnus Fernando Seror Garcia, presented his project, “DNS (Do Not Suspect).” The purpose of this project is to see if it would be possible for an attacker to use the DNS protocol to communicate with a bot of his own in an infected host in order to avoid being detected.

ITM faculty members and students will not only attend, but will present and chair sessions at the 14th Annual Conference in Information Technology Education (SIGITE) and the 2nd Annual Conference on Research in Information Technology (RIIT) in Orlando, Florida, October 9-12, 2013. This dual conference, conducted by the Association for Computing Machinery’s (ACM) Special Interest Group in Information Technology Education (SIGITE), provides a forum for sharing and developing ideas relating to Information Technology research, education, applications, IT-industry-academia relationships and our roles as professionals, educators, and advocates for the effective use of Information Technology.

School of Applied Technology Dean Dr. C. Robert “Bob” Carlson will chair Paper Session A2: Mobile and will present a paper, “Design Patterns as First-Class Connectors.” ITM graduate student Mikhail Zaturenskiy will present his paper “MP3 Files As A Steganography Medium” while graduate student Fernando Seror Garcia will conduct an RIIT Poster Session session entitled “DNS (Do Not Suspect).” ITM Associate Chair Ray Trygstad will also attend the conference.

The IIT School of Applied Technology new student breakfast kicked off the new school year on August 16th in the lobby of Perlstein Hall. All of the ITM full-time faculty as well as a substantial representation of our adjunct faculty were on on hand to meet and greet our new students. An extensive photo gallery of the event can be viewed on Facebook.

It is with great sadness that I inform all of you that Jeff Kimont, Adjunct Industry Associate Professor of Information Technology and Management, passed away over the weekend.

Jeff has a long history with IIT, dating back to his work as a student at Midwest College of Engineering. He began teaching with the Computer Science Department in 1994 and has worked with the Center of Professional Development, the School of Applied Technology, and the Information Technology and Management program from the inception of each. He was the first full-time faculty member in the Information Technology and Management degree programs.

Over his long career here, Jeff was beloved by students and admired by his peers. He has skillfully taught multiple generations of software programmers, and our program is stronger and the lives of his students are better due to him.

Further details for an upcoming memorial will be posted here as we receive them.

Bob
C. Robert Carlson
Dean, IIT School of Applied Technology

IIT’s Ray Trygstad is becoming a ROCKSTAR—ok, not really, just noted as an authority on information technology education. He was quoted in Network World in an article titled “Which tech degrees pay the most from day one?” This is his 3rd article in the last 2 months! The article was on the front page at NetworkWorld.com, and was also the featured article in Network World’s afternoon email newsletter today.

The article contains good news for ITM graduates. Read it at Network World: http://www.networkworld.com/news/2013/030513-tech-degrees-267324.html

Transactions on Information Technology Research (TITR) is a peer-reviewed publication that covers substantive additions, insights and challenges to the theory and practice of programming, networking, information management, web systems, user-centered design and their integration. It provides academic and industry researchers a new refereed venue to present original research methods and findings to the IT community of scholars and practitioners. TITR’s focus is on technological developments affecting growth and change in enterprise IT infrastructure, systems integration and implementation. For their inaugural issue, they are seeking papers that will contribute to defining “IT research” by bringing, in addition to defining position papers, current empirical, methodological and theoretical investigations of IT artifacts, the deployment of IT systems, as well as end user experience to the IT community.

The editors and reviewers of TITR encourage IT faculty, practitioners and students to contribute original scholarship, including deeper investigations and fuller descriptions of research presented at conferences and symposia. In order to bring new research findings to their readers, TITR is committed to keeping the publication process (receipt, review, revision and publication) to a bi-annual cycle. The ITM program is strongly committed to student research and we encourage all of our students (and faculty) to take advantage of this new opportunity.
Read more…

Newly added course sections for Fall 2012:

• ITM 302-02 Introduction to Contemporary Operating Systems II (Linux/UNIX & shell scripting) on Wednesday evenings, 6-9:30pm, in room 2033 (ITM computer lab) at 3424 South State St. The instructor is Professor Hajek and the CRN is 16459.
• ITMS 448-02 Cyber Security Technologies (Formerly ITM 448 System and Network Security) on Monday afternoons, 1:50-5:20pm, in room 250 Rice Campus. There is a bus from Main Campus. The course is team-taught by Professors Lidinsky and Vacarro, and the CRN is 16460.
• ITMS 548-02 Cyber Security Technologies (Formerly ITM 548 System and Network Security) on Monday afternoons, 1:50-5:20pm, in room 250 Rice Campus. There is a bus from Main Campus. The course is team-taught by Professors Lidinsky and Vacarro, and the CRN is 16461.

New Faculty Members for Fall 2012:

• Brian Bailey will be teaching IMTD 461, Internet Technologies and Web Design. Brian recently joined the staff of Marketing and Communications here at IIT as a Web Developer.
• Scott Bachmann will teach ITMO 557-01, Storage Technologies. Scott is a graduate of IIT and majored in Internet Communications; he completed his Master of Information Technology and Management at IIT in 2012. Scott is the Technology Infrastructure Manager of Operations for IIT’s Office of Technology Services.
• Louis McHugh will teach ITM 301, Introduction to Contemporary Operating Systems and Hardware I (CompTIA A+) at the Main Campus. Louis earned his B.S. in Computer Information Systems at Northern Michigan University, and has an M.S. in Information Systems and Technology from the University of Michigan. He will be joining the technical staff of the School of Applied Technology as the Computer Systems Manager at the Rice Campus in mid-August.