Stuart Towns

Dr. Stuart G. Towns has been an instructor at Walden since 2003. He has taught several courses in the MBA (Master of Business Administration), MSPM (Master of Project Management), and ITEC (Bachelor in Information Technology) programs.

Before teaching at Walden, Dr. Towns was a Project/Product Manager at an Internet consulting firm in San Francisco. The firm's claim to fame (before the infamous dot-com crash back in 2000–2001) was being involved with the creation and launch of the travel website Orbitz, where they were responsible for not only the engineering back-end but also the user experience on the front-end.

In the past few years, in addition to instructing courses at Walden, Dr. Towns has returned to the business world by starting his own company, with the mission of creating intelligent e-Learning websites.

Courses Taught

MMBA 6020 - Fostering a Culture of Innovation

MSPM 6180 - Business Process Management and Systems

MSPM 6140 - Enterprise Risk Management

Education

BS, Washington and Lee University

MS, North Carolina State University

PhD, King Mongkut's University of Technology Thonburi

Awards / Honors

William Kenan Fellowship, North Carolina State University, 1987

Publications

Lester, J. C., Towns, S., Fitzgerald, P. J., others (1998). Achieving affective impact: Visual emotive communication in lifelike pedagogical agents. International Journal of Artificial Intelligence in Education (IJAIED)

Lester, J. C., Callaway, C., Gregoire, . P., Stelling, G. D., Towns, S., Zettlemoyer, L. S. (2001). Animated pedagogical agents in knowledge-based learning environments.

Towns, S., Watson Todd, R. (2014). Blueprints or conduits? Using an automated tool for text analysis.

Towns, S., Voerman, J. L., Callaway, C. B., Lester, J. C. (1998). Coherent gestures, locomotion, and speech in life-like pedagogical agents.

Lester, J. C., Voerman, J. L., Towns, S., Callaway, C. B. (1997). Cosmo: A life-like animated pedagogical agent with deictic believability.

Towns, S., Loo, D. B. (2011). Current Issues In The Development Of Multimedia Language Learning Software For Mobile Devices: Platforms To Reach Thai University Students.

Lester, J. C., Towns, S., Callaway, C. B., Voerman, J. L., FitzGerald, P. J. (2000). Deictic and emotive communication in animated pedagogical agents.

Lester, J. C., Voerman, J. L., Towns, S., Callaway, C. B. (1999). Deictic believability: Coordinated gesture, locomotion, and speech in lifelike pedagogical agents. Applied Artificial Intelligence

Towns, S., Watson Todd, R. (2014). Disunity in Cohesion: How Purpose Affects Methods and Results When Analyzing Lexical Cohesion..

Callaway, C. B., Towns, S., Lester, J. C. (1998). Generating Coordinated Natural Language and 3D Animations for Complex Spatial Explanations.

Towns, S., Watson Todd, R. (2017). Methods for identifying relations and associations in text.

Lester, J. C., Callaway, C. B., Stone, B., Towns, S. (1997). Mixed initiative problem solving with animated pedagogical agents.

Towns, S. (1998). Multi-model Explanation Generation for 3D Learning Environments.

Towns, S. (2012). Text Adaptation in Support Adaptive Tests: New Challenges and Innovations in Language Assessment.

Towns, S., FitzGerald, P. J., Lester, J. C. (1998). Visual Emotive Communication in Lifelike Pedagogical Agents.