MIS and College of Business students tackled the biggest real-world project in memory in creating a sophisticated application for use by UCA’s Political Science Department to manage their Arkansas Model United Nations (AMUN), which UCA hosts annually for high school students across several states. The current process is all paper and spreadsheet based, making updating and maintenance extremely time consuming. The new process is completely streamlined, using database technology with a front-end Java application.
The new application was carried out by three separate teams, from semester-long projects in three separate courses. The project was managed by a team of four from MIS 4355 (Project Management), who coordinated the entire process and effort; this included one MBA student. All of the data for the Model UN (students, schools, meetings, awards, invoices, etc.) are now stored and managed using database technology. A team of four from MIS 4329 (Database Management Systems) developed and implemented the database using two systems for versatility, Oracle and Microsoft Access. An application manages the entire system, providing student and management access, with a convenient interface that users find easy. This application was designed and coded by a team of four from MIS 4339 Programming in Java II. The project consisted of over twenty thousand lines of code.
The entire project was supervised by Dr. Jeff Hill, the instructor for the advanced database course and Java II, as well as Dr. Kaye McKinzie, who is the instructor in Project Management. Dr. Mark Mullenbach, the AMUN coordinator, provided the requirements and specifications. The only student who was a member of all three of the student teams was Adam Davis, who described the entire effort as the “hardest project of my academic career”. Two other students were members of two teams; Brian Wan was on the database and Java team, while Bobby Yost was a part of the Project Management and database team.
This project won first place for team projects in the first annual College of Business Research Days, held March 28, 2017. The application was delivered to Dr. Mullenbach on April 19.