For Shawn Janzen, an interdisciplinary approach is the only way to effectively solve complex business problems. The new MS analytics professor melds sociotechnical cybersecurity—a field that views cybersecurity through social, economic, and technical lenses—with IT and innovation policy to create his unique methodology for viewing management.
Janzen hopes to use this interdisciplinary perspective to help cybersecurity leaders optimize their decision-making and better protect their organizations.
“Even more than cybersecurity, I’m interested in how individuals behave and make choices,” says Janzen. “How do cybersecurity managers make decisions, and how can we empower them with the information they need to protect their companies?”
A forthcoming graduate of the University of Maryland College of Information Studies (UMD iSchool), a school that gathers researchers of different disciplines to help innovate information technology, Janzen officially joined the Kogod faculty this July and will begin teaching his in-person analytics coursework this fall semester.
Read on to learn more about his research, how he’s applying it to his teaching at Kogod, and how he envisions creating a more sustainable world through business.
Shawn Janzen: When I first came to Kogod, I didn't see myself as a classic business school professor. UMD’s iSchool was a melting pot of disciplines with faculty from across the subject matter spectrum. My area of sociotechnical cybersecurity is largely about organizational and managerial information behaviors, which situates well in both iSchool and business school settings. Ultimately, the difference between the iSchool and Kogod is a mission shift, more of a nudge. At the iSchool, the business community was often part of the research and teaching fabric; joining Kogod just makes my focus on business a bit more explicit than it already was.
Data analytics is perfect for interdisciplinary work because data itself isn’t discipline-specific. Analytics becomes disciplinary when we frame data with its metadata—where it came from, how it was collected, was it collected for a specific purpose…and so on—and apply questions, analytical techniques, and other methods of inquiry. So, when I teach data analysis, I encourage students to share multiple points of view and bring their previous experiences to the discussion. A student studying or working in economics will likely bring a different lens than someone studying business communications or ethics.
Just as we find value in individual diversity within our teams and organizations, there is also value in approaching the data analysis process from different disciplinary perspectives.