Dear friends:

We’re so thrilled to welcome our 14 new and 47 returning PhD students to campus. After working from home for 16 months, it’s great to be back in Todd Hall! Of course, it’s not so much the building itself as the students, faculty, and staff inside. While Zoom helped us maintain communication tremendously, it’s still not the same. Making an appointment to chat through the computer is not the same as knocking on a door or seeing someone in the hallway.

We’re fortunate in the Carson College of Business that a lot of our research can be conducted from an office (even the “good old days” of PhD students stuck in the library late into the night have been replaced with electronic versions of journals and books.) As a result, many of our students continued to make outstanding progress during the pandemic, culminating with the awarding of nine new doctoral degrees this past spring and summer. Nevertheless, the temporary closing of the Center for Behavioral Business Research lab caused significant disruption to student progress, and we are pleased that it is up and running again.

The other major missing piece during the pandemic was the myriad of informal conversations that occur during normal times. The importance of being able to share ideas with classmates or simply to converse with them cannot be overstated. Certainly, when I was a student, sharing joy and pain in real time was so important to my psyche. And when my advisor wanted to see me, he wanted to see me now. His every bit of advice, however painful at times, was invaluable to my progress.

Now that I’m on the other side of that relationship, I very much want to see my advisees regularly. I think it’s important to keep encouraging them to make progress, but I have also found that informal conversations over lunch or in the hallways often lead to breakthrough research ideas. From my experience, many little conversations lead to more creativity than one major brainstorming session.

Moving forward, an unintended consequence of COVID-19 is a plethora of ideas for business research focused on managing organizations during pandemics or other major disruptions. (I’m working on two such projects myself.) From supply chains, to working from home, to surviving in the hospitality industry when nobody is traveling, many new issues have arisen that are ripe for deep study. Ideally, several of our own PhD students will examine some of these issues so that during the next pandemic (perhaps in another 100 years?), organizations will be better able to adapt nimbly. Sometimes out of tragedy, opportunity emerges.

Chuck Munson,
PhD Program Director

Dear friends:

At many universities, 20 percent of a professor’s job is formally allocated to service activities. In other words, professors should be working the equivalent of one full day per week providing service for their department, college, university, and profession. Faculty perform many functions that keep the university moving forward, such as serving on hiring committees, curriculum committees, and student conduct committees.

At the professional level, the peer review process for getting research published only works because other researchers across the world volunteer their time to perform such reviews. Faculty sometimes also get involved with professional conference activities, and senior faculty may be invited to act as an external reviewer for another faculty member’s tenure and promotion case at another university.

We expose our Carson College PhD students to several service opportunities. In fact, our Research and Professional Development course devotes sessions to “The Service of Service,” “Paper Reviews,” and “Being a Good College Citizen.” We have also required students to provide service by assisting with the college’s annual Business Plan Competition or helping with the WSU graduation ceremony.

Current students have performed university service in a number of ways. Mycah Harrold created an undergraduate research assistant program in conjunction with the Center for Behavioral Business Research (CBBR). COVID-19 also presented the opportunity for her to create and run a virtual CBBR lab, as well as coordinate the Virtual Northwest Marketing Symposium for 50 West Coast scholars.

Meanwhile, Greg Denton helped undergraduate students receive their certification in hospitality industry analytics. Nasir Haghighibardineh has been serving both as a senator for the WSU Graduate and Professional Student Association (GPSA) and as president of the Iranian Students Association at WSU. Demi Deng has served as a GPSA senator as well.

Students have also reviewed papers submitted to academic journals or conferences, including Denton, Haghighibardineh, Shizhen Jia, and Kesha Wu. Others have either chaired sessions or led discussions of papers at professional meetings, including Sheng Bi, Haghighibardineh, Jia, and Yoonsoo Nam. Deng has assisted a WSU professor with journal editorial coordination.

More and more universities encourage and even reward community service. First-year student Oluseyi Elliott has volunteered as a high school teacher in Nigeria in the past. And two of my former students, Sadegh Kazemi and Aysajan Eziz, helped me coach fifth grade soccer here in Pullman while they were earning their degrees.

Service activities represent a crucial element of our jobs as professors. Our PhD students leave here well prepared to tackle those duties.

Chuck Munson,
PhD Program Director

Dear friends:

Carson College doctoral students play an integral role in helping the college reach its strategic goals. They provide vital teaching assistant services for undergraduate classes, and every semester several PhD students teach courses as the sole instructor. Many serve in similar capacities for our nationally ranked online programs. Simultaneously, they provide energy and results toward our research mission by participating in research seminars, presenting their own research locally and at international conferences, and publishing their work in quality journals. Full-time faculty enhance their own research productivity by working closely with, and often publishing with, our students.

In fact, the PhD program stands out as part of the college’s Disciplinary Research strategic goal: “Our top doctoral students earn placements at peer universities and go on to successful research careers.” We loosely define peer universities as the approximately 130 schools listed on the Carnegie Research 1 Universities list, which includes WSU. Among our 12–13 annual graduates, we have recently averaged two peer placements per year. Alex Paparas, a fifth-year student in operations and management science, has already accepted a peer position for 2021 with the University of Cincinnati.

Peer placements can be much more challenging to attain than they might seem because doctoral placements generally follow a “trickle-down” effect. The very top schools in the country produce more PhD graduates than they hire. Those who aren’t hired by the very top institutions take jobs at schools ranked slightly lower. Most graduates from those slightly lower-ranked institutions accept positions at schools ranked slightly lower than their own. So when a graduate bucks this trend and places at a peer or better university, she or he has made a remarkable impression.

How do they do that? Typically, peer placement results from one or more published research papers prior to hitting the job market, along with evidence of success in classroom teaching. Our program continues to search for ways to improve the profiles of our graduating students. On the research side, we have been pushing students to begin research projects earlier in their program, and we have allocated summer stipends to encourage early-stage students to work on research during the summer. Just last semester we instituted a peer presentation program, where students present their work to each other to receive feedback for improvement. On the teaching side, all students now take a full three-credit course on college teaching.

As described in my August 2020 e-Dividend message, our students transitioned quite seamlessly to the distance learning model, both as students themselves and as instructors. We commend them for remaining focused on their studies during these times. As the pandemic wears on, the college is doing everything possible to assist our new international students in attaining their student visas so that they can begin to study in the United States. We look forward to the day when we can all reconvene in person to experience the rich diversity they provide to our community.

Chuck Munson,
PhD Program Director

Dear friends:

COVID-19 hit our PhD students especially hard from a variety of angles. The spring break University transition to distance delivery impacted them as both teachers and students. As either teaching assistants or instructors, our PhD students converted their teaching roles to distance delivery with little time to prepare.

I commend their extraordinary efforts. Many attended emergency faculty training sessions, and they all helped us provide a quality end to the spring semester for our undergraduate students. They had to learn new technologies, innovate, and remain patient and flexible with the varying needs of the undergraduate population who were also flung into this new state of uncertainty.

At the same time all of this was happening, courses that our PhD students were taking themselves converted to distance learning, and they had to adjust to virtual interactions with both professors and classmates. Students involved in active research programs had to move those to isolation and suspend studies with live subjects. Fortunately, a lot of business research is conducted in a normal office space. Collaboration with faculty mentors continued online, and final dissertation defenses took place over Zoom with faculty providing support virtually.

Our PhD students had to tackle these unprecedented challenges while following “Stay Home, Stay Healthy” orders; many were far from friends and family. Through all of this, our students performed remarkably. They taught well, passed their courses, continued to make research progress, and 12 of them successfully defended their dissertations during this crisis.

None of the graduating students expected to complete their PhD journey that way. Their resilience in this time of crisis will prepare them well for future upheavals they encounter during their careers.

Chuck Munson,
PhD Program Director

Dear friends:

Business education truly spans the globe. Most business academic societies have worldwide membership, top conferences attract international attendees, and journal article authors regularly originate from six different continents. Reflecting most business PhD programs in the United States, more than 75 percent of our WSU PhD students arrive in Pullman from other countries.

Our global scholars introduce diversity, culture, and a global perspective to everyone in the college community. Our Next Carson Coug undergraduate students benefit greatly by taking classes from our international teaching assistants and instructors. While challenging at times, it’s very important for the future corporate workforce to listen to and understand foreign accents. Top U.S. companies employ foreign nationals and regularly work with firms from around the world. Our doctoral students can also share corporate practices from their home countries with our undergraduates. Knowledge of certain cultural differences, in particular, can be a huge asset when negotiating and working with foreign companies. In fact, lack of cultural knowledge can lead to tension, embarrassment, and even loss of business.

Whether it’s one’s family, school, town, state, or country, humans tend to congregate toward a tribal mentality. A lack of interaction with other groups and cultures can lead to misperceptions about the other group. College can be a great place for young people to discover that, and I think that our Next Carson Cougs are privileged to get so much exposure to international educators. Their lives and careers will benefit greatly.

Chuck Munson,

PhD Program Director

Dear friends:

The mission statement of the Carson College speaks about creating insight, value, and opportunity though the power of our community. The first thing that I think about when I hear the term “community” is local public school systems and the impact that our K-12 teachers have on our future.

Great teachers contribute to great communities. At the college level, our pipeline of future professors lies in our PhD programs. Universities rely on other universities to supply them with new college teachers. I’m proud that the Carson College plays a key role in that system by sending about ten new professors into the workforce every fall.

While university rivalries play out on the sports field, in attracting great students, and sometimes in the research lab, more often than not universities rely much more on cooperation than competition. The vast majority of research papers are written jointly by scholars from different institutions. Researchers rely on their own research community to review articles for journals, conduct research conferences, and jointly determine the state-of-the-art in business education. “Research for one” doesn’t help anyone. We need each other to fund, evaluate, and disseminate the knowledge that we create.

In the Carson College, we try to immerse our PhD students in their academic community as early as possible by sending them to conferences to present papers, network, and attend research and teaching sessions. I attended the annual conference of the Institute for Operations Research and the Management Sciences (INFORMS). A record 7,200 scholars descended on Seattle from around the world to share the knowledge they have created with their community and to learn from others. The career fair represents a crucial element of the conference. Over 100 schools and corporations have interview tables, and several hundred graduating PhD students eagerly seek out these positions. Three of our own graduating students were involved in the melee, and several of our faculty interviewed candidates from other schools. Sometimes, it seems like a speed-dating event, but when all is said and done, students receive great opportunities to begin their academic careers, which will ultimately impact thousands of future college students.

Carson PhD students join several communities during their journey. They begin with their classmates who help them survive the five-year struggle. As they start to work on research, they build their own community of coauthors that will ultimately lead to journal publications. They enter the broader research community in their field through conferences and other activities. After becoming a professor, they join their new university community and begin to contribute to society by educating the future workforce and producing knowledge that adds insight, value, and opportunity to their region and the world.

The social nature of academia represents the epitome of community.

Chuck Munson,

PhD Program Director

Dear friends:

From medical school to law school to veterinary school to an MBA program, Americans pursue post-baccalaureate education in large numbers. Surprisingly, though, not many dream of earning a doctorate, and this lack of U.S. representation in PhD programs is particularly notable in business schools. In fact, without our international professors, higher education as we know it would cease to exist in the United States.

The Carson College’s PhD program is typical of many. Foreign applicants dominate the application pool. Last year, 4 out of 18 new students were domestic and this fall, 4 out of 10 domestic students are joining us. My field of operations management represents an extreme case. We received only 3 domestic applications out of approximately 130 last year for a professor position at WSU. I am frequently one of few Americans in the room at conference research sessions.

The Carson College is a member of the PhD Project, an organization devoted to increasing the number of African-American, Hispanic-American, and Native-American business professors. The project’s efforts have helped quintuple the number of those individuals over the last 25 years. Nevertheless, the overall interest of Americans in becoming college professors remains stagnant, and it’s not clear to me why.

A business professor’s life has many features that are seemingly attractive to Americans: a good salary, vacation time, flexible work hours, an office rather than a cubicle, scholarly independence, and an opportunity to help others through teaching and research. It doesn’t take any longer to earn a PhD than a medical degree, and in most cases, PhD students leave the program with no student loans.

As I wrote about last year, the career of a faculty member becomes very entrepreneurial in nature. A professor’s opportunities are often only limited by imagination and creativity. We have tremendous flexibility regarding what courses we teach and how we engage and assess students. We typically choose our own research topics, which allows us to explore our passions in great depth.

So if you know any bright individuals with a bit of an entrepreneurial spirit who are still wondering “what to do when they grow up,” ask them if they have considered a PhD in business. (Applications for our fall 2020 admission class are due January 10.) It’s a challenge, but the resulting lifestyle after earning the degree is hard to beat!

Chuck Munson,

PhD Program Director

Dear friends:

I’m a native U.S. citizen. When I attend professional conferences held in the United States and attended primarily by faculty from U.S. universities, more often than not I am a “minority” in the room. Without exaggeration—if there was not a hefty level of international participation, business education in the United States would crumble.

For whatever reasons, U.S. citizens are not pursuing PhD’s in business at anywhere near the rate needed to fill business faculty positions at U.S. colleges and universities. As a stark example, this year the Carson College advertised for a new faculty position in my field of operations management. We received approximately 130 applications, and exactly 3 of those were from native U.S. citizens.

While PhD programs train students from all around the world, the majority are coming from Asia, especially China and India. These scholars produce a tremendous amount of quality research, and they teach thousands of U.S. citizens from coast-to-coast.

In line with most of the rest of the country, fewer than 25 percent of current students in the Carson College PhD program are from the United States. We currently welcome scholars from four continents. The diversity of experiences and cultures benefits everyone. As difficult as a PhD program is to begin with, these international scholars should be commended for navigating those waters while studying in another culture—many times using a language that is not their own.

WSU offers support services as well as several international student organizations to try to help the foreign students assimilate and share time with other students in the same position. Some of our international students return home after their studies have completed, but most find faculty positions in the United States. Most eventually obtain permanent residency status, and many become U.S. citizens. As fully integrated members of society, they mold future generations of college students. They introduce diversity, culture, and a global perspective to everyone in the college community. It all starts with a dream and an application to study in a little town in America surrounded by wheat fields.

We can’t wait for next year’s class of new international scholars to arrive!

Chuck Munson,

PhD Program Director

Dear friends:

Recruiting season is upon us. In the PhD program, this is the time of year when we are dealing with both ends of the recruiting spectrum. The deadline for applications for admittance to the PhD program for fall 2019 is January 10. We bring in 10–20 new students across our seven programs in a typical year. Admission decisions are critical, and the process is challenging. Every accepted offer represents more than a $70,000 commitment on our part over the ensuing half-decade, so we need to make great choices. We’re trying to attract the very best students we can, but competition from other universities is fierce. Thanks to Dean Hunter’s commitment, last spring we were able to raise stipend levels and offer summer research awards, which helped us have a higher than usual “hit rate” (percentage of students that actually enrolled after receiving an offer of admission). We employ several recruiting tools to attract great students, and we are continuing to develop more. The WSU Graduate School has produced a very attractive video that certainly presents the University in a great light.

The PhD program is also heavily involved with the other end of “recruiting” this time of year. Many of our fourth-and fifth-year students are entering the job market to become college professors. Fortunately, our disciplines have very well-defined “markets,” which all follow a similar path. Universities post jobs, students apply, interviews are held at international conferences or via Skype, 2–3 candidates are brought to campus for presentations and full-day interviews, and offers are made. This year we are working on strategies to increase the research publications of current students so they will be even more attractive in these academic job markets. Once a student lands that great academic job, all the years of struggles finally seem worth it.

Go Cougs!

Chuck Munson,

PhD Program Director

As this issue of eDividend is focusing on entrepreneurship, I am reminded how the career of a PhD student and ultimately, a faculty member, becomes very entrepreneurial in nature. A professor’s opportunities are often only limited by imagination and creativity. We have tremendous flexibility in our courses regarding what we teach, how we present the information, and how we engage and assess students. We typically choose our own research topics, which allows us to explore our passions in great depth. Coinciding with all of this freedom and flexibility is the responsibility to treat our students well, achieve our research goals, and act professionally and ethically. Very much like a successful entrepreneur, the student who decides to pursue a PhD represents a rare breed of individual that has enough self-discipline to work on unstructured projects and achieve goals without being managed.

Entrepreneurship itself is a theoretical subfield within the broader academic discipline of management. Several of our PhD students have either focused on or minored in the entrepreneurship area. We have several faculty who specialize in this area, and several of our students have assisted the WSU Center for Entrepreneurship with the WSU Business Plan Competition and other events. WSU and other quality schools offer entrepreneurship majors at the undergraduate level, and several of our PhD students have pursued faculty positions at those schools.

Finally, I’d like to mention that I had the pleasure of participating in this summer’s WESKA program led by Arvin Sahaym, coordinator for the PhD Program in management. We taught business concepts to graduate students from non-business fields, with the goal of helping them learn how to commercialize their ideas and inventions. This was a wonderful outreach opportunity for the Carson College to work with graduate students from other disciplines. And, who knows?—perhaps some joint research projects will percolate from this effort.

Go Cougs!





Chuck Munson,


PhD Program Director