Lorie McMillin, PMP
Manager of IT Applications Development & Senior Project Manager
Missouri University of Science and Technology, Rolla, MO
Professional Resume

Lorie McMillin serves as the Manager of IT Applications Development at Missouri S&T in the combined role of Applications Technology Manager, Senior Project Manager and Documentum Program Manager. She's led several significant projects for the campus including the development of the university's Official Web Presence in Documentum, the Scholar's Mine Institutional Research Repository, and the Official Web Rebrand project for the institutional name change to Missouri S&T. McMillin was the principal author of the document resulting in the 2006 CIO 100 Award for Innovative Use of Technology awarded to UM-Rolla for the Official Web Presence.

Prior to joining Missouri S&T, McMillin was a Senior Systems Engineer and Project Manager for 10 years with Monsanto in St. Louis, Missouri where she held the lead developer position for the corporate intranet and portal from 1998 through 2004. Prior to joining Monsanto in 1994, she was employed for several years in the financial industry as a Corporate Financial Analyst, and as an NASD licensed Investment Analyst.

McMillin received dual B.S. degrees in Business Administration in Finance and in Economics from the University of Missouri, Columbia, and is currently enrolled in graduate studies with Missouri S&T.

2008 - Present, Project Manager, Senate Bill 389 Compliance

Missouri S&T is required to conform to Senate Bill 389, which requires that universities provide faculty credentials and student evaluations to prospective students. The SB389 project required a redesign of the student evaluation form used by students to include consumer evaluation questions related to the bill. In addition, the current campus and distance systems needed to be modified in order to accomodate the processing of the new questions, the category types, the feed into the Peoplesoft System, and presentation through the web presence. The project involves a cross campus group of individuals and multiple faculty committees to refine requirements and expectations. The project is currently on time and due to be delivered in time for fall evaluations.

2005 - Present, Documentum Program Manager

In the spring of 2004, the University of Missouri-Rolla (UMR) embarked on a web unification project to provide a foundational cornerstone for the delivery of the Official UMR Web Presence and accomplish UMR’s objectives for electronic communication on the web. University Advancement and IT teamed up with campus departments and organizations for a redesign of the Official Web Presence with a goal of advertising our strengths and capitalizing on our competitive advantage.

Documentum serves as the foundational technology for the official web presence and continues to expand in use with several delivered projects and more in the pipeline. In the coming year, we will be expanding further into the Documentum product lines with pilot projects for Document Management and Digital Asset Management with an eye toward continued integration with our web presence.

Documentum - Perspectives and Possibilities Slide Show, to be presented at EMC World 2008, Las Vegas (10M file)

2007 - Lead Project Manager, Manager of Applications Development

The University of Missouri-Rolla (UMR) was renamed to Missouri University of Science and Technology (Missouri S&T), effective January 1, 2008. For the Missouri S&T IT Department, this was a nearly year long effort, touching every web site, server, service, desktop and hundreds of applications. Our applications development team, in close collaboration with UMR marketing, took on the task of migrating nearly 200 websites into the Documentum web environment over the summer of 2007 in advance of the December 20th rebrand of the entire official web presence. The sites went live with changes to over 12,000 pages including brand new visuals, link updates while maintaining referential integrity, textual updates, and modifications to dozens of applications, scripts, and systems which interface with and/or feed the official web.

The applications team cloned the entire web environment in the early fall in order to accomplish the mammoth task of changing over 5,000 links and mailto references from .umr to .mst. We utilized our custom built Documentum search & replace utility to provide an automated interface to change over 20,000 textual references of UMR and its variants to Missouri S&T. Our custom built web application framework allowed the sites to be globally changed with a minimum of effort through consolidated xml, xsl and centralized global navigational files, while allowing the sites to maintain an individual look and feel through the use of localized style sheets.

The project was a categorical success, coming in on time, within budget projections, and meeting all the objectives set by the campus rebranding committee.

2006 - Present - Project Manager, Manager of Applications Development

In 2006, UMR implemented its first blog environment on Moveable Type, bringing additional Web 2.0 technology to the campus. Several blogs were initiated included the Miner Sports Blog, which has been integrated into the Missouri S&T sports web presence with RSS feeds. Currently, Missouri S&T is upgrading to the Enterprise level for Moveable Type, and will migrate the current News system into the new environment with increased functionality.

2006 - Present - Project Manager, Manager of Applications Development

In late 2006, UMR purchased and implemented the Google Mini Appliance for the campus. Previously, the open source search engine was ineffiecent and difficult to configure, which resulted in ineffective search returns prompting a look at a new solution. The Google appliance was purchased and configured first and foremost to improve our web search results, and our campus has been extremely happy with the results.

In addition, our programming staff has now extended the appliance utilizing Google's API to integrate the Google as a custom search interface. Results of this effort can best be viewed by performing a search on Missouri S&T's Scholar's Mine Digital Research Repository. The search returns a custom integrated interface, formatted specifically to the Scholar's Mine, which follows a standard search interface for digital scholarly repositories.

Projects are currently underway to utilize Google for an Advanced Search for the Scholar's Mine, and for automated faculty pages, a project which is currently underway.

2006 - Present - Lead Project Manager, Manager of Applications Development

The Scholars' Mine Digital Institutional Research Repository was launched in the spring of 2007. This multi-year project included participation from leading campus research faculty, the office of sponsored programs, campus leadership, the UMR Library and the IT Applications Development team. The goals of the project included an official web presence which encompasses all research and scholarly activities by campus faculty. The site includes a java front end application to Documentum, which allows students to contribute theses and dissertations on-line.

Also incorporated is a custom built WDK cataloging application internal to Documentum to allow the library catalogers to apply Dublin Core Qualified meta-data as an xml file associated with each research document. The system includes a workflow for the library staff to convert content from MARC records to Dublin Core along with the ability to approve and publish the content to the Scholars' Mine web presence. The current site search incorporates a customized interface integrated into the Google Mini campus appliance.

Population of the repository is underway and will remain a continual effort. Future enhancements include an advanced search and feeds to Open Archives and Google Scholar.

The 5 year project budget was $1.75M and to date, has been on time and under budget. The budget includes the permanent staffing of a Digital Collections Librarian within the Missouri S&T Library who is now on staff and directing a team currently working on the population of the repository.

2006 CIO 100 Award for “Innovative Use of Technology”, awarded to the University of Missouri, Rolla in 2006 for the Official Web Presence - Lorie McMillin, Principal Author

The CIO 100 award is presented annually by CIO magazine to recognize organizations that use innovative information technology management and practices. The 2006 award recipients were recognized for unique practices and innovative results in information technology.

The CIO 100 award is in recognition of UMR’s “web unification project,” a three-year effort to unify the campus web presence through a consistent visual identity and the use of syndication to publish relevant news, feature stories and other information to various subsections of the UMR web.

2004 - 2008 - Lead Project Manager, Manager of Applications Development

The Official Web project successfully met its goal to implement an official, unified web presence within an overall electronic communications strategy. Specifically, the project team developed processes that support a consistent web presence, roles and responsibilities, the syndication of content, security to ensure content integrity, and the ability to sustain web content authors. In addition to the original goals, a collaborative partnership between the university marketing roles and the IT technical roles was established, thus insuring continued support and improvement of the web environment.

Accomplishments include an enterprise class infrastructure and system architecture, identity, branding and unification, reusable content and syndication, and a centralized navigation and information architecture. A deep technical foundation in Documentum has been established by the core development team. We have heavily extended the product line by producing a repeatable process for web site creation including web site wizards, which have been studied by EMC's Documentum Web Engineering and Product Management team. We have extended the base DFC Java library to provide additional functionality to the system including a highly functional global search and replace utility toolset.

To date, Missouri S&T hosts over 150 web sites within the Documentum web framework. We have integrated Documentum with our Peoplesoft data warehouse, our Google Mini Appliance, our Web Form Utility, and with feeds from our Moveable Type Blog environment. Doucmentum serves as a host to external IT applications that are able to make use of the unified navigation and control files, to expand the brand and identity of the official web beyond sites physically stored in the Documentum system.

The applications team continues to expand the technology for the official web presence. Currently under development are a menu tool to simplify menus for distributed content authors. We are further integrating our Peoplesoft data into Documentum with the inclusion of auto generated courses within all the department web sites, and later this year, automated faculty pages, which will include HR data and course data plus feeds from the Research Repository. The team will be expanding into Documentum 6 this year, and will look to Page Builder for the next generation web content management interface.

2005 - Lead Project Manager, Manager of Applications Development

The Web Presence for the UMR Public Relations Office includes feature articles, research, people profiles and events with searchable archives and RSS feeds. The application allows the PR staff to selectively publish out news content to other UMR web site locations. The News application is built on Documentum technology, but will be moving to a blog in the near future. The applications team has integrated the blog and Documentum environments, which enables us to feed our blog content into our web sites.

2004 - Business Analyst, Technical Project Manager

Web Presence for the Distance & Continuing Education school includes nightly feeds from Oracle Peoplesoft for the Distance course listings. The site is built on Documentum technology.

2003 - 2004 - Lead System Architect & Developer, Technical Project Manager

2004 ushered in a complete redesign of the Monsanto corporate intranet. The site was completely re-architected on the .NET Framework and hosted with Microsoft's Digital Dashboard. New features included a globalized news system, improved search technologies, new navigation features, a "quick links" application for personalized and corporate group links, new Global People Data, and access to Team Collaboration Tools, all within a personalized dashboard framework. In addition, the site offered several optional web parts, such as weather, traffic cams, Outlook mail box, stock news & stock quotes.

In addition to the Corporate Portal, users groups or world areas could have their own portal, personalized for their region. Customizations included personalized quick links specific to their site, and profile options, which allowed their chosen site to come up first, rather than the corporate portal.

My role in the project was multi-faceted, including technical system designs and specifications utilizing RUP for the applications that were sent off-shore to India, day to day coordination with the off-shore team on questions and clarifications, daily code reviews, code integration and unit testing, and development of an extensive formalized test plan for system verification and acceptance of the off-shore code.

Additional responsibilities included development of additional in-house components of the system, integration of the .NET applications into the Digital Dashboard portal, “web part” development for integrating the portal into already existing systems at Monsanto, and customization of the system for user self service. Following the initial corporate portal launch, we expanded the system to accommodate customized versions of the portal for various Monsanto entities.

2003 - Project Manager, Lead Developer

A facelift redesign of the corporate intranet, in advance of starting our Next Generation Portal design which featured Digital Dashboard and .NET technologies.

2003 - Lead Developer

Site to launch the 2003 Imagine Campaign for Monsanto's new corporate branded identity. System featured presentations, biographies, Question & Answer Section, and the Imagine Campaign digital asset portfolio.

2003 - Lead Developer, Recognition Team Member

Site covers the entire IT Recognition program, featuring award types, the full awards program, current and past winners, and forms for submission of nominees.

2002 - Project Manager, System Engineer, Lead Developer

Complete, self managed site for the Adminstrative staff at Monsanto. Contains one stop location for information and document sharing, shared links, a bulletin board, polling and global communications.

2002 - Project Manager, Lead Developer

TEAMmap is a team organization tool to assist users in undertanding the hierarchical team structure for Monsanto as defined by both functional and virtual teams. Users can see the team structure within the corporate hierarchy on the left, and selectively navigate through the various teams to display the team description and charter, and team members. The information is stored in Oracle, and utilizes ASP, SQL, data access components, and dhtml. A secured authenticated user interface allows for creation and modification of virtual team information within the structure.

2001 - 2002 - Lead System Architect, Developer, Technical Project Manager

Monsanto launched a Sharepoint Portal to service the entire Manufacturing organziation. Features of Sharepoint include content management and the Digital Dashboard portal interface. Utilizing CDO, ASP, DDSC, and Sharepoint's own special brand of SQL, we were able to sucessfully interface with the exchange storage sytem which houses Sharepoint data, to deliver a hierachical portal framework including dashboards for separate vertical manufacturing areas such as corn and soybeans. Each portal featured a manufacturing location picker which generated information relevant to that location within that dashboard. Items included site photo, location information, a hierarchy of documents, locsation calendar and announcements. The launch proved successful for the Manufacturing group, utilizing Sharepoint for ISO compliance.

2000 - 2001 - Lead Developer

With the emergence of a new Monsanto with new direction and new initiatives, Monsanto launched the M2 site which is focused on the new Monsanto for the new millenium. This site serves as a virtual attendence venue for all employees to accompany global and regional meetings on new company direction. Featured are presentations, news desk, conversations, Q&A, polling and featured articles.

2000 - Project Manager, Lead Developer

In May of 2000, we launched our new corporate human resources web site, named "PeopleExpress". We designed a complete new interface for people services encompassing on-line transactions such as updating personal profiles in Peoplesoft. Additional services includes Employee Tools, Manager Tools, Benefits, Policies & Guidelines and global sources of information. We also included portals for HR department managers to present focused stories or information on a regular basis.

2000 - Project Manager, Lead System Architect, Lead Developer

With the merger of Monsanto with Pharmacia&Upjohn, a mission critical application was undertaken and completed in just a little over a month to bring PeopleSoft Personal Profile updating on-line in time for the close of the merger. To facilitate the process of employee selection into the newly formed company, it was important to gather the latest information about all employees in a timely fashion. Utilizing PeopleSoft's "HTMLAccess" tools, our team brought on-line a secured, NTLM authenticated site featuring several PeopleSoft panels, including education, work history, languages, licenses & certifications, memberships and key accomplishments. The site also includes a profile overview page, which provides the employee and the managers with a printed, resume style, formatted report. My responsibilites encompassed Technical and overall Project Management as well as lead developer on the sytem.

2000 - Project Manager, Lead System Architect, Lead Developer

As a follow-on to the launch of the Peoplesoft Personal Profile site, we launched a site for Monsanto Managers, which gave them full access to their departmental information, including employee personal profiles, employee personal and professional details, cost center details and open position details. A manager also had the ability to drill down to all department levels in their management heirarchy to review reporting structures, and staff details.

2000 - Lead Developer, Technical Project Manager

Monsanto launched the IT Career Roadmap as an informational vehicle for employees choosing a managerial career path or a technical career path. Explanations and benefits of both paths were outlined.

1997 - 1999 - Lead System Architect, Lead Developer, Technical Project Manager

TeamSpace is designed to provide a collaborative “space” where teams may easily and securely share news, issues, and project documents. The site is designed to provide common tools that have been found to be key for most teams. Functionality unique to some teams may be “linked” to accommodate differences while still allowing all teams to benefit from enhancements added to the common tools. Each team is assigned their own TeamSpace and then becomes responsible for managing its own content and membership.

A TeamSpace Registry displays a list of all TeamSpaces created within the company. This list provides a convenient way for the “public” aspect of the team’s work to be shared across the enterprise. For those TeamSpaces created for “open” access, any user may follow a link to the team’s shared content. If the TeamSpace is “private” (accessable only by team membership), this public information allows interested employees with team contacts to pursue sharing or membership.

MyTeams from the main menu will display a summary page that provides a listing of all TeamSpaces for which a user is a member along with “notifications” of recent additions/activity for each TeamSpace. A quick review of this summary page will let an individual determine if they need to visit a specific TeamSpace for more detailed information. An abstract of these notifications is also distributed to all team members via email, thus providing a team maintained “distribution list”.

1997 - 2004 - Lead Developer, Technical Project Manager, Webmaster

Monsanto revised the Corporate Intranet in January of 1998, coinciding with the launch of our new corporate image of Food, Health & Hope. Efforts began in early June of 1997 with a meeting of 30 of the top Information Technology Professionals, gathering to formulate a plan for the new site. Intense efforts resulted in an intuitive, efficient and informative site, with major focus features including corporate news content published on a daily basis, up to the minute stock feeds, people & location directories, team collaboration tools, library services, business services, human resources and corporate learning. On-going efforts to improve the site have included the introduction of individual authentication and personalization.

1996 - Lead Developer

The WheatStreet site was developed for Monsanto in 1997 to provide information to farmers on seeds, technology, and growing information. On WheatStreet, you’ll find information on HybriTech U.S. – the hybrid wheat seed company dedicated to developing and providing new technologies that help wheat growers maximize yield, increase profitability and deliver quality grain.