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Faculty Member

Dr. Dan McDonald

Biography

I graduated from BYU in Accounting and worked 3 years in industry doing managerial accounting, manufacturing scheduling, and materials management. During this time I reported on labor and material variances and scheduled manufacturing for double hung, slider and vinyl windows. I also wrote an order-entry scheduling system. During the same time, I also worked installing Novel networks.

I returned to school and earned M.S. and Ph.D. degrees from the University of Arizona in Management Information Systems, graduating in 2006. I also worked in system architecture and web development.

I was an Assistant Professor (Lecturer) for four years at the University of Utah in the School of Business. In 2011, I joined Utah Valley University as an Assistant Professor. I achieved tenure on July 1, 2016. I became a Full Professor on July 1, 2022.

Education

PhD, University of Arizona, 2006

Major: Management Information Systems

MS, University of Arizona, 2001

Major: Management Information Systems

BS, Brigham Young University, 1995

Major: Accounting

Teaching

INFO 3300

Web Systems Development, Summer 2026

INFO 4300

Enterprise Web Development, Spring 2026

INFO 3300

Web Systems Development, Spring 2026

INFO 3300

Web Systems Development, Spring 2026

Presentations

McDonald, Dan (Co-Author), Anderson, John (Co-Author), Rocky Mountain Consortium for Computing Sciences in Colleges (CCSC), "Using LLMs for the Browse Task_ An Exploratory Document Clustering", Consortium for Computing Sciences in Colleges, Utah Valley University. (October 18, 2025)
McDonald, Dan , Chen, Hsinchun , Sheng, Olivia , Southwest Decision Sciences Institute Conference, "Using Hybrid Lexical Profiles to Find and Name Entities", SWDSI, Dallas, TX. (March 15, 2014)
McDonald, Dan , Religious Faith and Social and Applied Sciences Conference, "A Text Mining Analysis of Religious Texts", UVU, Orem. (October, 2013)
McDonald, Dan , Chen, Hsinchun , Sheng, Olivia , Utah Winter Business Intelligence Conference, "Using Hybrid Lexical Profiles to Find and Name Entities", Southwest Decision Sciences Institute Conference, Salt Lake City, UT. (December, 2006)
McDonald, Dan , Chen, Hsinchun , Schumaker, Robert , AAAI Spring Symposium on Homeland Security, "Transforming open-source documents to terror networks_ the Arizona TerrorNet", AAAI, Palo Alto, CA. (March, 2005)
McDonald, Dan , Su, Hua , Chen, Hsinchun , Tseng, C-L , Pacific Symposium on Biocomputing, "Extracting and Visualizing Gene Pathway Networks from Biomedical Texts", Kona, HI. ()

Scholarly/Creative Works

McDonald, Dan , Anderson, John , (2025) "Using LLMs for the Browse Task_ An Exploratory Document Clustering" (Issue: 2, vol. 41). USA: The Journal of Computing Sciences in Colleges . https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.5555/3778141.3778150
Anderson, John , McDonald, Dan , Ball, Nick , (2022) "Course Delivery Preferences of Students Post-COVID 2022" (Issue: 2, vol. 38). USA: The Journal of Computer Sciences in Colleges.
McDonald, Dan , McDonald, Karina , Johnson, Jace , (2021) "Text analysis of research topics from nursing journals" (Issue: 2, vol. 37). The Journal of Computer Sciences in Colleges. https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.5555/3503984.3503989
McDonald, Dan , (2020) "A System for Automatic Lexical Acquisition from PubMed" (Issue: 2, vol. 36). USA: The Journal of Computing Sciences in Colleges. https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.5555/3447065.3447074
McDonald, Dan , (2014) "A text mining analysis of religious texts" . Orem, UT: Journal of Business Inquiry .
McDonald, Dan , Boyle, Randall , Anderson, John , (2014) "Using an SOM to Visualize Deceptive Chat Content" . Las Vegas: International Association for Computer Information Systems.

Awards

Spot Service Award

Academic Programs, Assessment, and Accreditation - April 2, 2025

Your thoughtful contributions, collaborative spirit, and commitment to excellence have played an essential role in advancing the important work of the committee, especially the work connected with the university's new General Education program that begins in Fall 2025. In doing so, you have helped strengthen our academic community

Best Paper Award

SW Decision Sciences Institute Conference 2014 - March, 2014

An award given by the SW Decision Sciences arm of the Federated Business Disciplines.

Travel Award

Senate Faculty Development Committee at UVU - October, 2013

A travel grant issued by the University to cover the expenses incurred to present my research.

“A Most Influential Teacher” Award

OIS Department at University of Utah - May, 2011

Marvin J. Ashton Teaching Excellence Award

University of Utah - May, 2010

An award given by the School of Business with the primary input being the vote of the student body.