Suggestions
Zach Steelman
Associate Professor at University of Arkansas
Zach Steelman is an Associate Professor at the University of Arkansas, specializing in Information Systems at the Sam M. Walton College of Business.12 He has been in this role since June 2022, following his previous position as an Assistant Professor at the same institution from 2017 to 2022.1
Career Path
Steelman's academic journey began at the University of Arkansas, where he completed his Ph.D. from August 2010 to December 2014.1 After earning his doctorate, he started his teaching career as an Assistant Professor at Oklahoma State University from August 2014 to May 2017.1
Professional Experience
Prior to his academic career, Steelman gained industry experience through:
- A GIT internship at Colgate Palmolive (October 2009 - August 2010)
- Working as a Customer Service Manager at Wal-Mart (October 2006 - August 2009)1
Research and Recognition
Dr. Steelman's research focuses on information systems, with particular interest in areas such as blockchain governance models.4 His work has garnered international recognition, as evidenced by an honor he received from the Association for Information Systems in 2020.6
Current Role and Location
Currently, Zach Steelman is based in Siloam Springs, Arkansas, where he continues his work as an Associate Professor at the University of Arkansas.15 In this role, he contributes to the Department of Information Systems within the Walton College of Business, teaching and conducting research in his field of expertise.23
Highlights
The final "graduate" project from this semester involves an evolution of a use-case that my students have worked on in various formats in prior years. Voting and transparency of our voting system has been a key focus for many individuals in the US and across the globe, in prior semesters students have designed digital drivers licenses to eliminate lack of access to drivers licenses (and even got to present their solutions directly to Asa Hutchinson). Other groups have focused on creating a simple blockchain-enabled voting system. This year, my students took another approach and took it up a notch to focus on the user-side of voting to not only provide a way to register and track voting, but to see your entire profile of voting at local, state, and national elections to have an indication of your "involvement" in each level.
Tobias Lathrop, Christine Mondragon, Michael Chapman, and Zach A. Hall created "Your Vote", a blockchain-enabled voting dashboard for political and local elections in Arkansas. Not only does it provide the ability to vote, but the addition of a dashboard and calendar to track your other voting opportunities is great! How many of us actually KNOW that different votes are coming up besides the general elections? Get out there and be more involved with Your Vote!
As a side-note, a big thank you to Bildr (Mark Magnuson, Tim Magnuson, and their entire team on Discord) for supporting my class this semester with an amazing #nocode / #lowcode web app platform to enable easy #web3 integration! This project was built entirely in Bildr!
Presentation Link:
Another student I've had the pleasure to work with this past year, Chance Farrell, Daniel Merino, and Isaiah Nies focused not only on the business-solution for solving their use-case, but built out an entire ecosystem with full functionality and open-source code! This project focuses on creating a #tokengate VR experience for creators to share with their guests, the ability to design #NFT t-shirts for avatars in #Decentraland, and then utilize those NFT t-shirts as the access pass to a variety of VR rooms on their platform.
Take a chance to check out the video presentation, they have some QR codes for you to test the application and also get your free NFT t-shirt from the #hackathon!
If you're really interesting in how it works, reach out to the team, Chance Farrell has had a really "interesting" experience with this project after sharing the code on GitHub...I'll let him describe the wonderful world of blockchain-related webscraping...
Link:
