This article first appeared in the UConn Business magazine, Volume 1, Issue 1 (Summer 2009)

The Stamford UConn Chapter of the National Association of Women MBA (NAWMBA) hosted the first meeting of the year on Wednesday, April 8 at the UConn Stamford campus.

The meeting’s theme was “Leadership: Today and Tomorrow” featuring Irina Tsikhelashvili Moore ‘04 MBA, UConn MBA graduate featured in the UConn 40 under 40 awards.

Moore participated in edgelab and received the GE Edison Award for her significant contributions to GE. Today, she is the vice president of risk management for GE Money, the corporation’s consumer and small financial services unit.

Moore discussed issues of women in leadership in corporate America and how she found success in overcoming obstacles. She reinforced that no matter if you are male or female, to be accepted as a true leader you must be an expert in the field you are leading and treat all employees with equal respect. She sets very high expectations for her team and works side by side with them to achieve the set goals.

The meeting also included discussions about women in leadership roles. The event was attended by business alums, current  undergraduate students, faculty, and MBA students.

This article first appeared in the UConn Business magazine, Volume 1, Issue 1 (Summer 2009)

On Friday, May 1, 2009, the UConn School of Business inducted five alumni with outstanding achievements in business into the 16th Annual Hall of Fame Celebration in Stamford, Connecticut. The School’s Hall of Fame was established in 1993 to recognize the outstanding business and community achievements of its alumni and students. Since then, over 100 alumni have been inducted.

Alumni Inductees

Jonathan “Jon” Beyman ’76 is Managing Director, and serves as the Global Head of Operations and Technology of
Citigroup’s Global Institutional Bank, since joining the Bank in August of 2008. Jon is a member of the board of DonorsChoose.org, an online non-profit that is dedicated to addressing the scarcity and inequitable distribution of learning
materials in our public schools through Citizen Philanthropy.

John Cutler ’66 is a founding partner of Beers + Cutler, a leading accounting and consulting firm located in Washington, DC. John has enjoyed and taken pride in serving in board and leadership roles at UConn. He served on the Board of Advisors for the UConn School of Business and is now a member of the UConn Foundation where he serves as a chairman of the audit committee.

Pat Friar ’80 recently retired from GE with over 26 years of Finance, Human Resources and Executive Development
experience. She was the Senior Vice President of Human Resources for GE’s Consumer Finance. Pat is an active member
of the School of Business Leadership Cabinet and presents in Executive MBA programs in both Hartford and Stamford.
She’s equally active in her community as an executive coach and a member of the National Charity League.

Tim Friar ’80, ’83 MBA was most recently the President and CEO of the Make-A-Wish Foundation of Connecticut, Inc.,
a not for profit organization that grants the wishes of children with life-threatening medical conditions to enrich the human experience with hope, strength and joy. Prior to joining the foundation, Tim had a long-standing relationship with Make-A-Wish originally as a volunteer and then subsequently as a two-term board member. Tim is an active member of the School of Business Leadership Cabinet.

Walter C. Richter ’81, ’88 MBA is a Vice Chairman of Deloitte LLP. In this role, Walt leads the Office of the CEO
program and oversees interaction with Deloitte’s largest asset clients. Walt is also the audit committee chairman and a
board member of the James Beard Foundation.

 

Emeritus Faculty Award

Dr. Herbert Spirer longed to become an educator after he learned and taught Morse code as an adolescent. After his service in the Pacific Theater in the U.S. Navy during World War II and after earning his Engineering degree, Herb worked for 14 years in industry, first at the General Electric Electronics Laboratory and later in positions of increasing breadth and responsibility at other research companies. Herb pursued his dream and came to UConn as a lecturer in 1966. In 1970, Herb was promoted to assistant professor, and in 1975 he rose to the rank of full professor and continued teaching at the UConn Stamford Campus for a total of 25 years of dedicated service. Herb’s tenure also included service as the director of the MBA Program.

 

Outstanding Strategic Partner Award

Northeast Utilities’ vision for “energy, growth and leadership” and “the energy to make a difference” dovetails with the School of Business’ goals to provide world-class training to the next generation of business leaders as well as groundbreaking research and innovative solutions for industry, while continuing to grow and raise the bar for excellence. The UConn School of Business salutes Northeast Utilities for its dedication to improving communities in our greater Connecticut, Massachusetts and New Hampshire region and its generous support of the School of Business and the University of Connecticut. Jean Lavecchia ’81 MBA accepted the Outstanding Strategic Partner Award on behalf of Northeast Utilities.

 

Student Fellows

Gregory Carbonella, Marisa Coords, David Macionus, Kyle McLaughlin, and Mona Mitri from the Undergraduate Program; Katherine Avery, Full-Time MBA Program; Marisol Maull, Hartford EMBA Program; Nicholas Macsata, Hartford Part-Time MBA Program, Anthony Cannella, Stamford Part-Time MBA Program;Sungmee Choi, Ph.D., Waterbury Part-Time MBA Program; Ann Kummer,MS in Accounting Program; and Ciaran Heavey, Ph.D. Program.

This article first appeared in the UConn Business magazine, Volume 1, Issue 1 (Summer 2009)

Ackerman Scholars:

The Ackerman Scholar award recognizes significant and continuing all round academic productivity among the faculty of
the School. It is awarded to faculty who are not already supported by Chair or Professorship appointments.

The award is supported by the Ackerman Fund, the School and the departments. The purpose of the Ackerman Fund is to “grant a monetary reward to faculty members who have excelled in classroom teaching, curriculum development, research, outreach to business and state agencies.”

Appointed for the next two years (2000-10 and 2010-11):

Sudip Bhattacharjee, OPIM 

John Knopf, Finance 

Manuel Nunez, OPIM 

Zeki Simsek, Management

Mike Willenborg, Accounting

 

Continuing in their second year:

Robert Bird, Business Law

Robert Day, OPIM

Lucy Gilson, Management

Girish Punj, Marketing

 

Annual Faculty Awards:

Best Paper:

Sulin Ba, Jan Stallaert, Zhongju Zhang, “Online Price Dispersion: A Game Theoretic Perspective and Empirical Evidence,” Information Systems Research.

 

Best Paper Honorable Mentions:

Joseph Golec, Shantaram Hegde, “Pharmaceutical R&D Spending and Threats of Price Regulation, Journal of Financial and Quantitative Analysis (John A.Vernon, co-author).

Manuel Nunez, Robert Garfinkel, “Efficient Short Term Allocation and Reallocation of Patients to Floors of a Hospital During Demand Surges, Operations Research (Steven Thompson and Matthew D. Dean, co-authors).

Michael Willenborg, “Does Auditor Reputation Matter? The Case of KPMG Germany and ComROAD AG, Journal of Accounting Research (Joseph Weber and Jieying Zhang, co-authors).

Dmitry Zhdanov, “Designing Intelligent Software Agents for Auctions with Limited Information Feedback,” Information Systems Research (Gediminas Adomavicius and Alok Gupta, co-authors).

 

Research Excellence:

Co-winners Jim Marsden and Jack Veiga

 

Graduate Teaching:

Tri-winners Mike Willenborg, Gene Salorio and Gary Powell

 

Undergraduate Teaching:

Co-winners Gene Salorio and Zeki Simsek

 

Teaching Innovation:

Co-winners Girish Punj and Mary Caravella

 

On May 5, Dr. Kathleen Dechant, Management Department, delivered a keynote address at the Female  Entrepreneurship Program sponsored by the United Emirates Center for Innovation and Entrepreneurship. Dr. Dechant’s participation in the program was the first initiative undertaken between the business schools of United Arab Emirates University and the University of Connecticut under its recently signed Memorandum of Understanding encouraging joint projects, research and teaching among faculty.

In an analysis of 26 core finance journals covering 17,601 authors and 28,158 papers published over 1959-2008, Shantaram Hegde, Professor of Finance and Associate Dean of Graduate Studies, was ranked at #162 (with 24 appearances in those journals); the other two Finance colleagues ranked are: Tom O’Brien at #267 (19 appearances) and Chinmoy Ghosh at #628 (13 appearances). In another analysis of seven leading finance journals covering 8,975 authors and 13,305 papers published over 1959-2008, Shantaram Hegde was ranked at #375 (with 10 appearances in those journals); the other Finance Department colleague ranked is Tom O’Brien at #900 (6 appearances).

Kevin McEvoy, Instructor-in-Residence in the UConn School of Business Marketing Department, Stamford Campus, has been awarded the 2009- 2010 University of Connecticut Teaching Scholar Award. This is the first year that the Institute for Teaching and Learning has given a Teaching Scholar Award for exemplary teaching by an in-residence or non-tenured faculty member. Also, on Friday, December 12, 2008, Kevin McEvoy was awarded the Delta Pi Epsilon Best Conference Presentation for 2008. His paper, entitled “First-Year Workplace Learning Experiences of New MBA Marketing Graduates”, was presented at the American Educational Research Association Annual Conference, 2008. The paper considers experiential learning in the profession by Marketing MBAs. All award nominations were peer reviewed.

School of Business Dean P. Christopher Earley was recently elected as a Fellow of the Association for Psychological Science (APS). Fellow status is awarded to APS members who have made sustained outstanding contributions to the science of psychology in the areas of research, teaching, and/or application. Previously known as the American Psychological Society, the APS is a nonprofit organization dedicated to the advancement of scientific psychology and its representation at the national and international level. The Association’s mission is to promote, protect, and advance the interests of scientifically oriented psychology in research, application, teaching, and the improvement of human welfare. APS has over 20,000 members and includes the nation’s leading psychological scientists and academics, clinicians, researchers, teachers, and administrators. APS membership includes all fields of Psychology as well as collateral fields such as Business, Sociology, and Communications. There are approximately 2,000 APS Fellows out of the total membership.

Dr. Katharine Pancak, Professor in Residence of Finance and Real Estate, and Dr. Richard Watnick, Associate Professor of Mathematics, will receive the the 2009 UConn Stamford Campus Faculty Recognition award. This faculty award

recognizes the “sustained outstanding achievements in teaching, research and/or services benefiting the Stamford Campus.” The 2009 UConn Stamford Campus Faculty Recognition Award, Staff Recognition Award and Town and Gown Award will be presented on Wednesday, August 26th, at the Town Hall Meeting, in the Gen Re Auditorium, at 11 a.m. to 12:00 noon.

Professor Wayne Bragg was selected as the 2009 Executive MBA Outstanding Professor by the Executive MBA Class of 2009. This annual award, voted by the graduating EMBA class, recognizes EMBA professors who have outstanding teaching skills and concern for students’ learning. This is the second year in a row, and fourth overall, that Wayne has been voted the Outstanding Professor by the EMBA students.

High school seniors were awarded merit scholarships recognizing academic excellence, contributions to school and community, and potential for continued achievement at the Day of Pride and Nutmeg Scholars Spring Banquet, held

on Tuesday, March 3. Seanice Austin, Director of the Office of Diversity Initiatives, and Dr. Richard Kochanek, Emeritus Professor in the Accounting Department, were recognized by the students as mentors.

Stanley F. Biggs, Professor of Accounting, received the Outstanding Educator Award in the Auditing section of the American Accounting Association. This award recognizes outstanding contributions to audit education in form of exemplary contributions in research or teaching over a sustained period of time.

Dr. Murphy Sewall, Professor of Marketing, has been elected to the University Senate for a three-year term beginning July 1, 2009.