Nancy McDonald, Adjunct Faculty Member, College of Technology
In this issue, we are high-lighting Adjunct Faculty member Nancy McDonald. Nancy has an extensive professional background and is an integral part of the College of Technology Team. Nancy earned a Bachelor of Science degree in Math from Clarkson University and holds an MBA degree from Widener University, which she earned while working full time at DuPont.
During her 24 year career at DuPont, Nancy held a variety of Information Systems positions, starting as a programmer working on customer service, supply chain, accounting, and sales systems. It was during that time that she discovered that she liked teaching when she led a team that developed a standard programming environment for 600 programmers at DuPont, who had to be trained in the new technology.
Later, when DuPont built one of the largest data centers on the East Coast, Nancy was responsible for the data networking and telecommunications operations. After that, she worked on enterprise architecture as part of the Corporate Information Systems Planning group. She was also a manager in the Corporate Data Management organization when data warehousing was just beginning to become a hot topic. Her last two assignments at DuPont were as head of Information Systems for two different global business units: Printing and Publishing, a $1.5 billion business, and Engineering Polymers, a $2.2 billion business with 27 manufacturing locations in 19 countries. After DuPont, Nancy worked at Accenture for 8 years where she was a Senior Executive with global outsourcing responsi-bilities. At Accenture, she led the team that built DuPont’s largest eCommerce application, DuPont Direct. She also conducted 30 eBusiness strategy workshops for 380 business executives. Her last assignment involved the knowledge transfer of 375 applications from a Pharmaceuticals company to 200 Accenture systems support personnel in the US, Brazil, and the Philippines. At the time, it was one of the largest distance learning projects ever undertaken by Accenture.
When asked about on her passion for technology, Nancy commented, “What I like best is applying information systems to address business challenges. There is always something new to learn — a new technology or a new area of the business in which to apply information systems.”
In 2006, Nancy joined Wilmington University, sharing her considerable talents with College of Technology students. She teaches seven different courses in Information Resource Management, Web Information Systems, and Management Informa-tion Systems. She recently devel-oped the distance learning course for Advanced Database Design and is also a member of the team working on the develop-ment of the new Information Resource Management Program. College of Technology Dean Ed Guthrie selected Nancy for this term’s newsletter noting, “Nancy’s experience, insight, and focus on students, is an excellent example of the caliber of our faculty.
