Rate My Professor James Locke

James M. Locke is a Visiting Professor in the Department of Information Systems at Auburn University at Montgomery, serving since Fall 2021. He has also acted as Department Chair in the same department for a period from July 1 to July 30. Locke obtained his Ph.D. in Management Information Systems from Auburn University in 2021, with a dissertation entitled "Activation Functions as Parameters for Improved Deep Learning." Prior degrees include an M.S. in Management Information Systems from Auburn University in 2016, a B.A. in Economics from Auburn University in 1989, and an Owner/President Management program certificate from the Harvard Graduate School of Business Administration in 2001.

Locke's research specializations and academic interests include deep learning, activation functions, machine learning, artificial intelligence, neural networks, fraud detection, augmented reality, mobile apps, eCommerce, and agile methods in education. Key publications encompass the journal article "Mitigating bias through random activation function selection" published in Neural Computing and Applications in 2024 (co-authors: David Paradice, R. Kelly Rainer), conference paper "Using Agile Methods for Course and Curriculum Development in Higher Education" at ISCAP 2024 (co-authors: Benjamin Larson, Jeffrey Bohler, Cali M. Davis, Anand Krishnamoorthy), and "Teaching Artificial Intelligence and Machine Learning to Everyone Else" at HICSS 2024 (co-author: R. Kelly Rainer). He mentored the publication "Real-time Object Detection: Achieving High Accuracy in Detecting Intruders in Video Streams using YOLO v7 and Convolutional Neural Networks" in 2023 (co-author: Duc Minh Tran). Locke has presented at major conferences including ICIS in 2019 and 2020, HICSS in 2024, and Pre-ICIS SIGDSA Symposia.

In his teaching role, Locke instructs a diverse set of courses at Auburn University at Montgomery, such as INFO 2030 Introduction to Artificial Intelligence, INFO 3850 Machine Learning and AI, INFO 6500 Machine Learning, INFO 6550 Deep Learning, QMTD 2740 Business Statistics I, QMTD 2750 Business Statistics II, MNGT 3380 Management Organizational Behavior, and others including Information Security, Data Communications, and Innovation Strategy. He has contributed a chapter on Artificial Intelligence to the 9th edition of "Introduction to Information Systems" by R. Kelly Rainer and is collaborating on a forthcoming textbook "Machine Learning and AI" for Wiley publication.