UConn management professor John Mathieu has received the Academy of Management’s RMD Distinguished Career Award, recognizing his high-quality research and methodology expertise.

Additionally, one of his former students, UConn alumna Margaret Luciano ’15 Ph.D., now an associate professor of management at Pennsylvania State University, won a similar academy award as an early-career researcher.

“These awards are a testament to the highly respected research we do at UConn,” Mathieu said. “Scientific research has to be done well or it is of no value at all. We set a very high standard.”

Mathieu is a Board of Trustees Distinguished Professor at UConn, the highest honor that the university bestows on faculty. He has repeatedly been recognized with lifetime achievement awards for his work in the field of leadership and organizational management. His groundbreaking research on team dynamics, for example, has been used by NASA to prepare astronauts to reduce conflict during long trips, such as a future journey to Mars.

As a UConn doctoral candidate, Luciano’s dissertation addressed the dynamics of cross-unit coordination of patient “handoffs” in a busy hospital setting. She won multiple awards while she was a student, was inducted into the School of Business Hall of Fame in 2015. Subsequently, she has also collaborated and mentored other UConn Ph.D. students in the organizational behavior field.

In addition to the Academy of Management award, Luciano also recently received an INGRoup (Interdisciplinary Network for Group Research) early career award, which is presented to a researcher whose work makes a distinguished contribution to the study of team behavior, dynamics, and outcomes.

“Margaret’s success in winning these early career awards is a reflection of how hard she works and the quality of her research,” Mathieu said. “Our doctoral students have won all sorts of awards involving big, ambitious, creative research studies. Margaret’s recognitions, along with those of other management Ph.D. graduates, is also evidence of the quality of training and preparation that our students receive here at UConn, not only from me, but from the entire program. It does take a village.”