The inaugural Faculty Awards Reception for the College of Business Administration (CBA) at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln was held, Thursday, April 28 at the Visitor’s Center. Dr. Donde Plowman, the James, Jr. and Susan Stuart Endowed Dean of CBA, honored six retiring faculty members and presented 10 faculty awards.
Retirees include: Tom Zorn, George B. Cook/Ameritas College Professor of Finance, department of finance; Kung Chen, Steinhart Foundation Professor, school of accountancy; Sandy Grossbart, W.W. Marshall Professor of Marketing, department of marketing; Ron Hampton, associate professor of marketing, department of marketing; Sang Lee, University Eminent Scholar Firstier Bank and Regents Distinguished Professor, department of management; and Les Digman, Harold J. Laipply College Professor of Management, department of management.
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Dean Plowman and Tom Zorn
Tom Zorn
Zorn has been in the UNL Finance Department for 30 years. He has taught the required large-lecture finance course almost every semester since joining the faculty. He has served as the Ph.D. coordinator for most of that time and also served on the Interdepartmental Graduate Business Committee.
He has served as the college representative to the University Graduate Committee and has also contributed many years of service on the Faculty Senate. He continues to be an active researcher working with both graduate students and faculty colleagues. It is estimated that he has impacted the lives of more than 11,000 students while at UNL.
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Kung Chen
Kung Chen
Chen came to UNL in 1973 after completing his Ph.D. degree at the University of Texas – Austin. His entire career was devoted to UNL where he has been active in research and graduate education. He chaired or served on numerous doctoral committees and he was the Ph.D. Director for 15-plus years.
Even with retirement looming, he remained research-active, publishing recently in top journals including The Accounting Review, Journal of Accounting and Public Policy, and Review of Quantitative Finance and Accounting. Kung also coauthored an accounting textbook titled Cost Management, A Strategic Emphasis, now in its fifth edition.
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Dean Plowman and Sandy Grossbart
Sandy Grossbart
Grossbart, joined the marketing department in January 1972, as an assistant professor soon after receiving his Ph.D. from the University of Florida. Sandy has been at UNL for 39 years and during that time, has influenced the lives of many undergraduate and graduate students. Many of his former doctoral students have gone on to become recognized leaders in their fields.
For more than 18 years, Sandy provided leadership to the marketing department as the department chair. He also served for some time as the director of the agribusiness program. Sandy is an internationally recognized macromarketing scholar and a former editor of the Journal of Macromarketing.
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Ron Hampton
Ron Hampton
Associate Professor Ron Hampton joined the Marketing Department in August 1984 as an Assistant Professor after receiving his Ph.D. from the University of Arkansas. In the 27 years that Ron has been at UNL, he has influenced the lives of many students from around the world. He served as associate dean for nine years and marketing department chair for five years. During Ron’s tenure in CBA, he has won numerous awards, including CBA Advisory Board Award for Faculty of the Year, Phi Beta Delta International Faculty Award of the Year, Contributions to Students Award from the UNL Parents Association and CBA Distinguished Teaching Award.
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Dean Plowman and Sang Lee
Sang Lee
Lee has served as chair of the management department for 35 years. His scholarly interests have been broad and he has published widely, including authoring or co-authoring 57 books, more than 260 journal articles and 750 original papers. He has presented over 2,000 speeches and visited more than 160 universities around the globe as a distinguished visiting scholar.
He has received numerous honors for his professional work including NU’s Outstanding Research and Creativity Activity Award, and Distinguished Teaching Awards at both Virginia Polytechnic Institute and the University of Nebraska. He has been awarded four honorary doctorates.
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Dean Plowman and Les Digman
Les Digman
Digman’s specialties are strategic management, strategic decision making, international management and management of technology. He has written 14 books, made contributions to 13 others, and published 34 articles in journals such as the Harvard Business Review and Operations Research.
He has been named Fellow of the Decision Sciences Institute and has also been a long-time and wonderful contributor to the instructional programs of the management department, enriching the department’s graduate students with his challenging, patient and caring attention to his students.
Seven faculty and two graduate students were also presented awards for teaching, research and service. They include:
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Dean Plowman and Aaron Crabtree
Aaron Crabtree, Associate Professor, School of Accountancy
Crabtree joined UNL in 2004 and teaches courses in tax accounting and auditing. He has been praised for his teaching methods, which include writing his notes by hand on the board, so he doesn’t present faster than his students can write and process the information, using case studies and related problems to better illustrate a lecture and engaging his class in discussion. He also believes that communication is a critical component of business, thus, requires outside research and analysis for a written project or presentation. He believes a good instructor is able to motivate students while providing mentoring to allow them to succeed.
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Dean Plowman and Emre Unlu
Emre Unlu, Assistant Professor, Finance Department
Emre, who expertise is in corporate finance, started at the College of Business in August 2007. This award is selected by students and the following statements are what the students had to say about Emre:
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“Dr. Unlu did a fantastic job getting students to not only learn information, but also critically think through why financial principles work and how they are interconnected. This is challenging to do through an online course, but by asking the right questions, the learning became much deeper to me. Thank you Emre Unlu!”
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“This Professor has done an excellent job of getting students interested in the subject being taught, demonstrating strong class leadership, and taking ownership of the products being presented to the students.”
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“He went out of his way to ensure he gave us every opportunity to learn!”
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Dean Plowman and Shannon Cummins
Shannon Cummins, Graduate Student, Marketing Department
Cummins has taught many marketing courses and introduced many innovative learning techniques to her students, including Maple TA online quizzes for the Marketing Communication Strategy course and a simulation game in her International Marketing Courses. Students have said that Cummins is a demanding teacher who puts a lot of effort into her classes and expects students to do the same. They appreciate her teaching style, effort and the unique perspective she brings to the classroom, especially to the International Marketing class. She has traveled internationally and spent a year in Poland as a Fulbright Scholar.
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Dean Plowman and DonHee Lee
DonHee Lee, Graduate Student, Department of Management
When Lee joined the UNL doctoral program two-and-half years ago, she had a Ph.D. in Production and Operations Management from Korea and had published two research books and four journal articles in Korea. She wanted to reinforce her English skills and strengthen her analytical skills to become a global stage school. As a research assistant, she was a full partner and team member when exploring some of the leading-edge strategic issues in Service Operations and Supply Chain Management areas, including innovation in health care system, medical error reduction, and web 2.0 and user-generated content. Her dissertation research deals with “The Impact of Supply Chain Innovation on Organizational Performance in the Medial Service Industry.” Because of the real-world implications, she already has five articles published or accepted for publication with five others submitted and currently under review.
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Dean Plowman and Peter Harms
Peter Harms, Assistant Professor, Department of Management
Peter joined UNL in July 2007 and has an exceptional record of publications and research grant success. His high-quality research has been published in notable business journals, such as the Journal of Applied Psychology and Leadership Quarterly. He was nominated this year at the Society for Industrial and Organizational Psychology for the Raymond A. Katzell Award. This award recognizes a researcher who has demonstrated to the public an importance of organizational research for addressing social issues. He was also invited to present his research at institutions in Switzerland, Singapore and Japan and his research has been featured on CNN, the BBC and numerous other national and international media outlets.
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Dean Plowman and Amit Saini
Amit Saini, Marketing
Amit joined the college in 2003. His paper, “Governance Mechanisms in Business-to-Business Electronic Markets” was co-authored by Rajdeep Grewal of Penn State and Anindita Chakravarty of the University of Georgia. The paper presents innovative thinking in business-to-business electronic markets. Published in the Journal of Marketing in the July 2010, the paper was nominated for the prestigious Harold H. Maynardaward, which is given annually for an article in the journal that has made a significant contribution to marketing theory and thought. The article was named runner-up by the Journal Editorial Review Board.
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Dean Plowman and Emre Unlu
Emre Unlu (also received the Distance MBA Teaching award above)
Unlu co-authored the paper, “Executive Compensation and the Maturity Structure of Corporate Debt” with Paul Brockman and Tina Martin. The paper was published in the Journal of Finance in the June 2010 and the journal has an influence score of 7.57. In the paper, Emre and co-authors study what creditors do when the borrowing firm’s CEO has risk-seeking incentives induced by a compensation package. They used a sample of U.S.-based 6,825 firm-year observations during the 14-year period from 1992 to 2005. Thus far, the paper has been cited in 17 published and working papers.
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Dean Plowman and Donna Dudney
Donna Dudney, Associate Professor of Finance, Department of Finance
Dudney’s expertise includes financial markets and investing, managerial economics and financial institutions. She also served for several years as assistant dean. In 2010, she took on an additional leadership role when she agreed to lead the completion of the maintenance of accreditation report for the Association to Advance Collegiate Schools of Business International (AACSB). This task resulted in a 50-page report along with a 150-page appendix. In March, the AACSB International Board of Directors ratified the Peer Review Team's recommendation for maintenance of accreditation of the business degree programs. She also served as the chair of the CBA Undergraduate Task Force that was created during strategic planning. She is currently serving on the Undergraduate Implementation Work Group this spring to help determine how to prioritize, operationalize and implement the recommendations from the task force report.
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Dean Plowman and Tom Zorn
Tom Zorn
Zorn has a unique record of accomplishments during his 30 years at UNL. He has been instrumental in revising the curriculum of both the MBA program and the Ph.D. program in finance. He has served on 27 Ph.D. dissertation committees in finance, chairing or co-chairing 16 of them. He also served on several other Ph.D. dissertation committees in accounting and economics. Of the 28 refereed journal articles, Zorn has published during this time period, 21 have been co-authored with former Ph.D. students.
Published: May 4, 2011