Bret R. Swan

Contact Information:

Office: 265 CTB
Brigham Young University
Provo, UT 84602
Phone: (801) 422-6307
Email: bswan@byu.edu

Areas of Interest:

Cross-cultural Human Computer Interaction (HCI), IT Usability, and Scientific Visualization in the context of enterprise-level IT services, processes, and systems. Enterprise IT systems and services support and coordinate individual, group, and enterprise-level users and their work processes across organizational units as well as temporal, cultural, and national demographic and geographic boundaries. In recent years, even small and medium-sized organizations use enterprise IT systems and services to support their value-adding business processes. As a result, the usability and development of this IT offer important and fruitful areas of research.

Background:

Bret R. Swan, Assistant Professor of Information Technology in the Ira A. Fulton College of Engineering & Technology, earned a Ph.D degree in Management Systems Engineering (a specialty in the Grado Department of Industrial & Systems Engineering) at Virginia Tech in 2007. He received both a Bachelor of Science in Mechanical Engineering (1992), a Master of Science in Manufacturing Systems Engineering (1995), and a minor in Statistics from Brigham Young University.

He has been an industry consultant, facilitator, and trainer in the areas of knowledge management, process engineering, quality improvement, IT system development, and information visualization since 1990. Selected clients have included AT&T Consumer Billing Operations, StorageTek, the Pacific Islands Private Sector Organization, Morton-Thiokol Research Division, Virginia Tech, and BYU-Hawaii. Dr. Swan is a member of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints. He served a mission in the Colorado Denver Mission from 1984 to 1986.

Education:

• Ph.D., Management Systems Engineering from Virginia Polytechnic Institute & State University - 2007
• M.S., Manufacturing Systems Engineering: Brigham Young University - 1995
  • Minor in Statistics - Quality Science
• B.S., Mechanical Engineering: Brigham Young University - 1992

Selected Publications

• "The Effects of Business Process Management Cognitive Resources and Individual Cognitive Differences on Outcomes of User Comprehension," PhD Dissertation in Management Systems Engineering, Dept. of Industrial and Systems Engineering, 2007      
• "Toward a multi-level organizational theory for telecommuting," Accepted at the JAIS Workshop at the International Conference on Information Systems Volume Special, 2007  
• "A multi-level inquiry and elaboration: Continuous learning within and across organizations, groups, and individuals," Multi-level Issues in Social Systems, 2006  
• "Theoretical Foundations in Distributed Work Literature: An Application of Multilevel Incentive Theories," Proceedings of the 2004 Hawaii International Conference on System Sciences (HICSS-37), 2004   
• "A Multilevel Analysis of Virtual Teams: Is NetMeeting Really Useful?," Proceedings of the 2002 Decision Science Institute National Conference (DSI), 2002  
• "Towards an Integrated Model for the Study of Enterprise Process Management," Proceedings of the 2001 Southeast Decision Science Institute (DSI) Regional Conference, 2001  
• "Quality Management and the Emerging Network Organization," Proceedings of the 1998 American Quality Congress (AQC) Annual Conference Volume Session M102, 1998  
• "Factors Affecting Engineering Design Team Performance," Proceedings of the 1996 Industrial Engineering Research Conference (IERC) Annual Conference, 1996  
• "Senior project or Capstone-type courses have existed at engineering schools for many years. Capstone courses provide student engineers the opportunity to solve real-world engineering projects, and have been highly regarded as important learning activities," Journal of Engineering Education, 1995  
• "Factors Affecting the Successful Implementation and Performance of Engineering Design Teams," M.S. Thesis, Dept. of Manufacturing Systems Engineering, 1995  
• "A Survey of Senior Design Capstone Engineering Courses in North America," Proceedings of the Advances in Capstone Engineering Education (ACEE) Conference, 1994 
• "A Preliminary Analysis of Factors Affecting Engineering Design Team Performance," Proceedings of the 1994 American Society for Engineering Education Conference (ASEE), 1994