Just Some of the Very Cool Accomplishments of Isenberg Faculty This Summer

One of the best aspects of the Isenberg School of Management in addition to, of course, our great students, is the faculty, who are my colleagues.

This summer there have been so many accomplishments at a time when the public think that we are just "on vacation" that I thought they would merit a blogspot. Besides being intellectual leaders, my colleagues are terrific educators and also genuinely nice and very interesting people.

My readers know that in late June and July I was in Greece co-organizing the Dynamics of Disasters conference with Professor Pardalos of the University of Florida and Professor Kotsireas of Wilfrid University in Canada.

We were in Kalamata, Greece on June 29, 2015 (the first day of our conference) when the banks closed due to the Greek financial crisis and the lines at the ATM machines (which had financial funds left) were growing.

My Isenberg colleague, Professor Nikos Artavanis of the Finance Department, meanwhile,  had been researching the crisis and what to do about it. His study, co-authored with two colleagues from the Booth School at the University of Chicago,  "Tax Evasion Across Industries: Soft Credit Evidence from Greece," revealed  that tax evasion was most prevalent among Greece's highly educated professionals, that is, doctors, lawyers, engineers, accountants, and even journalists. Hence, what was needed, was a good tax collector in Greece! Nikos's paper received international attention and a writeup from CBS News can be found here. 

Professor Artavanis, by the way, is Greek, and he often brings me back some Greek coffee from his travels there, which I very much appreciate.

And, another Finance professor at Isenberg, Dr. Mila Getmansky Sherman, with whom last September, along with my Operations and Information Management colleague, Professor Senay Solak, and Engineering colleague, Professor Wayne Burleson, we organized a great (I am biased but it was terrific) cybersecurity workshop at the Sloan School of MIT, also had great media coverage of her latest research. It was conducted with Professor Andrew Lo of MIT (who was a keynote speaker at our workshop). The paper, "Hedge Funds: A Dynamic Industry in Transition," was also co-authored with Peter Lee. According to the study, "due to inherent biases in the way hedge-fund databases compile results, the industry's returns have been about half as strong as they appear," as reported by Bloomberg News. The interview and report can be accessed here. 

My Marketing Department colleagues, Professors Charles Schewe and George Milne (who is also Isenberg's PhD Program Director), completed, along with two of our doctoral students and a colleague from Australia,  a fascinating study on baby boomers and aging. Their findings, according to the University of Technology Sydney, in Australia:

• They found that what counts isn’t how many birthdays you’ve had but social, mental and biological factors.
• With the help of the subjective age index, you may be able to correct any of those factors so you can ‘manage’ your age.

My Sports Management colleague, Professor Todd Crosset, earlier this summer, delivered an invited talk in Geneva on racism in sports. He was invited by the United Nations to speak on his work. 

My Accounting Department colleague, Professor David Piercey, shook up the auditing world this summer with his paper, which, through behavioral experiments, showed that forcing companies to periodically change their auditing firms can prove counterproductive. His paper was published this summer in The Accounting Review.  This research received extensive coverage in the accounting press.

And, Professor Bradley Bennett, also of Accounting, recently, received a big honor, the Wildman Medal Award, for his co-authored paper, with Professor Hatfield of the University of Alabama, "The Effect of the Social Mismatch Between Staff Auditors and Client Management on the Collection of Audit Evidence."

There are many other achievements but the above, I believe, provide a wonderful snapshot of the kind of research and activities that faculty at a business school, and, especially the Isenberg School of Management, engage in.

Having such successful and very active faculty keeps one constantly striving and achieving but, then again, we certainly love what we do!

Endowed Professorships at the Isenberg School of Management

Today (yes, it is a Sunday of the Labor Day weekend), we heard the good news from our Dean, Dr. Mark Fuller, via en email message, that two of our faculty have been appointed to Endowed Chaired Professorships. Specifically, Hossein B. Kazemi, a professor of finance at Isenberg, is the new Michael and Cheryl Philipp Professor of Finance.  Kazemi is actually the second holder of the Philipp Professorship - Professor Tom Schneeweis, who recently retired, was the first and assumed it in 2000.

                                   Dr. Hossein Kazemi

Professor Chris Agoglia, who is the chair of our Accounting Department  is the inaugural Richard Simpson Endowed Professor in accounting. This chair honors the legendary Simpson, who taught at our school for 50 years retiring at about age 80. I wrote about Professor Simpson on this blog in a piece entitled, Business Profs Who Make a Difference.

Dr. Chris Agoglia

Kazemi received his PhD from the University of Michigan and is also the Director of CISDM. Agoglia received his PhD from UMass Amherst.  

There are now 7 faculty holding endowed chairs at the Isenberg School of Management so this page will have to be updated!  Our Dean holds the Thomas O'Brien Endowed Chair, named after our long-serving former dean, who because of his outstanding efforts, we have the "Isenberg" School of Management. The Management department has 3 endowed chairs:  Professor Steven Floyd is the Eugene M. Isenberg Professor of Innovation and Entrepreneurship; Professor Charles Manz is the Nirenberg Professor of Leadership, and James Theroux  is the Flavin Family Chair in Entrepreneurshi.

I hold the John F. Smith Memorial Professorship of Operations Management and have held this chaired professorship since 1998. It is in honor of the father of Jack Smith Jr., '60, the former CEO of General Motors, who endowed this chair, and is one of our alums. Just last week, I wrote a long letter to Jack Smith thanking him for his support and telling him of the fabulous year at the Isenberg School - especially of the happenings in our new Operations & Information Management department and the Virtual Center for Supernetworks that I founded in 2001 and direct. 

Named professorships come in all "shapes and sizes." There are endowed professorships, which, typically, last until one leaves, retires, or gets carried out. There are even what are sometimes called "folding chairs." These tend to be short-term honorific professorships and may have a set lifetime or be renewable with other holders. Some named professorships may be for only Assistant Professors but, typically, these are for Full Professors, the highest strata of the academic food pyramid.

In any event, please join me in congratulating both Professors Kazemi and Agoglia!

Our Dean in his message stated that:  Our most valuable resources are those individuals that can do it all at a high level: research, teach, serve, and lead; and who are firmly committed to all aspects of our mission including undergraduate and graduate education as well as scholarship.

Business Profs that Make a Difference

I recently finished reading "Tuesdays with Morrie," by Mitch Albom, a book that I very much enjoyed. The book is filled with numerous memorable quotes attributed to Professor Morrie Schwartz, a former Professor at Brandeis University, on life, on living, and on education. Mitch Albom, who was a former student of his, captured in this wonderful book not only his deep affection and caring for this very special professor, but also the wisdom and love of life of this exceptional educator.

There was one part in the book, though, that I strongly disagreed with. Albom writes in the chapter, "The Professor, Part Two," that Morrie's classes at Brandeis were light on what you'd call "career skills" and heavy on "personal development."

And because of this, business and law students today might look at Morrie as foolishly naive about his contributions. How much money did the students go on to make? How many big-time cases did they win?

Then again, how many business or law students ever visit their old professors once they leave? Morrie's students did that all the time.

Albom, in his book, captured the essence of what makes a great teacher, and the book is a testament also to an exceptional writer as he takes the "final class" with his beloved professor through the final stages of his serious illness until his death.

As debates rage on regarding student evaluations of teachers at the college level, with Dr. Stanley Fish's provocative recent piece in The New York Times, as well as his followup with links to many thoughtful comments and responses, it is clear that the impact of a great teacher cannot be measured simply after the class and semester are over with a short questionnaire and evaluation form. Such a myopic but prevalent perspective may be convenient from an administrative point of view but does not measure true greatness in terms of instruction and lasting impact.

Those who were once students and who come back years and even decades after graduation to see a professor realize this, for sure.

In our local paper, the Daily Hampshire Gazette, there is a front page article today on one of my colleagues, Professor Richard "Dick" Simpson, who is an accounting professor at the Isenberg School at UMass Amherst. Professor Simpson has been teaching for 42 years and his former students keep their accounting class notes for as long as thirty years. His remarkable influence on business education and on individual students has been recognized with numerous teaching awards.

One of Professor Simpson's present students, Carmelina Romano, who is a mother of two children (and who instead of bedtime stories read Professor Simpson's accounting class notes to her two young children) and was formerly homeless, was also featured in the article. She would bring her children to class, with his permission, studied about 20 hours a week for his class alone, and her 4 year old son would sometimes answer questions posed by Simpson in class to the fascination of the college students.

Ms. Romano wrote a letter nominating Simpson for the Mass Society of CPAs educator of the year and then hounded everyone who could possibly be involved with that decision to make sure that he received this honor.

Professor Simpson ended up receiving the Society's Career Achievement Award for Excellence in Accounting Education and stood with Romano when he got it.

So, business professors can make a difference!

When I returned from the ALIO-INFORMS conference, which took place in Argentina, 2 weeks ago, I found a business card under my office door. A former student of mine in the first class that I ever taught as a professor had left his business card under my door. He had been a student in my MBA class and was working very hard at a menial job to advance his education. To that class I brought my Brown University PhD diploma to show some students, who were mid-level managers, who doubted that I was a professor since I reminded them of their granddaughters.

The message on the business card said:

Dr. Nagurney:

It's been 25 years so I thought I would stop by and say hello!

Call me sometime.

This former student now has a top executive-level position with a major automobile company and his daughter will be matriculating at UMass in the Fall. I remember him just like yesterday. We will see each other in September.