Spears School’s MSIS faculty will assume leadership roles for national organizations

Monday, September 22, 2014

Oklahoma State University’s Spears School of Business has long been known for its academic excellence in the field of information assurance education and research. Two faculty members in the Department of Management Science and Information Systems were recently named to prestigious leadership positions for national organizations. Spears School professors Mark Weiser and David Biros will serve as presidents of the AIS Special Interest Group in Security for the next two years. Weiser, Regents Service professor and the director of the Center for Telecommunications and Network Security in the Spears School, and Biros, associate professor and former Chief Information Assurance Officer for the Air Force CIO, have a proven track record of teaching and researching in the information assurance field. “Mark and Dave have led our Information Assurance faculty team for many years, and it is one of the reasons we are a national leader in the area,” said Rick Wilson, head of Department of Management Science and Information Systems, the home department at OSU for the information assurance programs. Also, Weiser and assistant professor Jason Nichols have been selected to serve on the DFC Senior Advisory Board headed by Jim Christy, a renown cyber security expert profiled in the classic book “Cuckoo’s Egg.” The MSIS Department continues to serve as the interdisciplinary nexus of state-of-the-art security education and research at OSU, offering an undergraduate major in management information systems (MIS) with an option in information assurance (IA), and a master’s of science in telecommunications management (MSTM). “We plan more expanded programs in the future, including a rebranded graduate degree and the ability to earn two degrees in five years,” Wilson said. “We are positioned well to lead the information assurance and security field for years to come. OSU is a designated Center for Academic Excellence in Information Assurance Education and Research. The information assurance curriculum is recognized and approved by the National Security Agency and the Department of Homeland Security.