Nearly 15 years ago, the PhD Project was established to help increase the diversity of corporate America by increasing the diversity of business school faculty. Annually, the PhD Project holds a conference for prospective doctoral students to help them prepare for success in academia. This past November, the event was hosted in Chicago, and Information Systems & Decision Sciences PhD student David Murungi was afforded the opportunity to attend.
Murungi accompanied ISDS Assistant Professor Sonja Wiley-Patton to the three-day event and provided potential peers with a student’s perspective. The PhD Project attracts African American, Hispanic American and Native Americans to business PhD programs and provides a network of peer support on students’ journey to becoming professors. In many ways, according to Murungi, the ISDS PhD program at LSU fulfills those aims.
“The faculty at LSU has been very supportive of me,” Murungi said. “This is especially true of Dr. Wiley-Patton, Dr. (James) Van Scotter, Professor (Rudy) Hirschheim, and Professor (Helmut) Schneider. I was able to meet with faculty members before coming into the program and found commonalities. Professor Hirschheim’s research was similar to what I wanted to do, and he is well known in the field.
“I wanted to be able to do something with relative importance, not just theoretical research.”
While at the conference, Murungi manned a booth where he interacted with students and presented to them a prerecorded video of E. J. Ourso College of Business Dean Eli Jones, speaking about the desire for diversity in the college’s graduate programs. For Murungi, who plans to go into academia, having the backing of administrators is crucial.
“I don’t want to do research at a university in an ivory tower that won’t impact business,” Murungi said. “Professor Hirschheim’s work is practice friendly, and that is what I want to do. The ability to perform scholarly research that is practice relevant was the main draw for me coming to LSU.”
Already two years into the program, Murungi conservatively estimates he has three years remaining as a doctoral student. At this point, he is considering focusing his attention on something like the healthcare industry. He is also trying to find an institution who shares his approach to research.
“I want to be able to say that my research helped “xyz company” improve its performance, not just that I was published,” Murungi said.
Murungi noted that the pursuit of a PhD is a “commitment to learning,” and that “you have to have a passion for knowledge.”
“It cannot just be a practical goal or done for a monetary reason,” Murungi said. “Hopefully students put themselves into a position where they are provided with the tools to do quality research. The other things will work out with an intrinsic desire to learn.”
Last Wednesday, Murungi headed to Paris to take part in the International Conference on Information Systems titled “Ethics, Design, and Consequences of IT.” During his time there, he will presented a paper at a pre-conference seminar. Ultimately, this is part of the journey to finalizing research.
“Being in the PhD program gives you a chance to think about what you are doing,” Murungi said. “When you are on the job daily, turning a screw, you don’t necessarily have the ability to step back and contemplate whether it’s the ideal way to perform the task.”
For information about any of the E. J. Ourso College’s PhD programs, visit www.bus.lsu.edu/academics/phd.
