Dividend
The official online magazine of the Carson College of Business
College
CEO Magazine ranked WSU’s online MBA and executive MBA programs as No. 27 and No. 26, respectively, in its 2023 rankings of global recognition, moving up in rankings from No. 34 and No. 55 the previous year. “The Carson College of Business strives to provide high-quality, affordable MBA programs that are 100% accessible online,” said Cheryl Oliver, associate dean for professional programs. “I appreciate the work of our faculty, staff and partners who ensure the quality of our programs and enable them to be recognized internationally.”
Students
Sasha Wood
Cameron Nielsen
Tyler Shaffer
Jagger Norris
Jordhen Wangchuk
Carson College of Business student Sasha Wood advanced to the quarter-final round at the National Collegiate Sales Competition March 3-6 in Kennesaw, Georgia. Cameron Nielsen, Tyler Shaffer, Jagger Norris, and Jordhen Wangchuk also competed. The competition featured contestants from 72 universities. Julie Nelsen, director of the WSU Center for Professional Sales, and Kevin Chase, the Pullman campus director, accompanied the students. While they were in Kennesaw, students toured the headquarters of TK Elevator Company, which is a partner company of the sales program.
Three Carson College doctoral students earned top prizes in the 2023 WSU Graduate and Professional Student Association Research Exposition and Academic Showcase in the business, communication, and political sciences category. From left: Ramin Sepehrirad, operations and management science, won first place and $800. Jennifer Han, hospitality and tourism management, won second place and $500. Shirin Shahsavand, operations and management science, won third place and $300. Shahsavand’s advisor Kevin Mayo, assistant professor of finance and management science, is on the right.
Dylan Harbo, a double major in accounting and management information systems, was named a WSU Top Ten Senior for 2023.
Jerrod Knight, a junior studying hospitality business management at WSU Vancouver, served as president of the WSU Vancouver Hospitality Business Management Club for 2022–23. During spring recognition ceremonies, he received the President’s Award for Leadership, and the club received Rookie Club of the Year Award.
Amirhossein Moadab, operations and management science doctoral student, is the lead author of “Designing a Sustainable-Resilient-Responsive Supply Chain Network Considering Uncertainty in the COVID-19 Era” published in Expert Systems with Applications. He was also selected as the college’s representative and chair of the awards and scholarship committee of the Graduate and Professional Student Organization.
Rylee Peterson, a Clarkston High School graduate majoring in accounting, is the recipient of the Delbert J. Hayes Scholarship in Accounting. Each year, this scholarship is awarded to one Clarkston High School graduate with at least a 3.0 GPA who is seeking an accounting degree.
Ramin Sepehrirad, a doctoral student in the Department of Finance and Management Sciences, presented a poster on a recent paper he coauthored titled “Supply Network Attributes and Diversion Risk in a Market for Hazardous Products.” The lead author is Paul Skilton, association professor of management, information systems, and entrepreneurship at WSU Tri-Cities. Ednilson Bernardes, professor of global supply chain management at West Virginia University, and Alan Mackelprang, professor of operations management at Georgia Southern University, are also coauthors.
Alumni
Catherine Budinger (’12 MA Accounting) is a principal with FBCPA Group PS Inc., in Auburn, Washington.
After a decade of service in the US Navy, Heather Bui (’20 MBA) has accepted her first civilian role as a customer health programs manager at Box, a cloud content management company.
Jack Costa (’22 Hosp. Busi. Mgmt.) has published “Wine Hiking in Oregon.” The full-color guidebook features Oregon’s best one- to six-hour wine hikes. Each description includes details on trail access, difficulty, duration, and points of interest. Included at the trail’s end are a recommended wine with tasting notes, a biography of the grapes used, and an inside look at the winery and craftspeople behind it. The book is available on Amazon and Barnes & Noble. Costa spent his childhood in the Umpqua Valley of southern Oregon and entered the wine trade at 17. He learned winemaking from Stephen Reustle, a pioneer of American Gruner Veltliner. Costa is a writer, wine judge, podcaster, and communicator who’s been featured in Wine Folly and the American Wine Society Journal.
Vicky Luo (’19 PhD) is the 2023 recipient of the Exemplary Faculty Award at the University of Hartford Barney School of Business.
Mike Mallahan (’02 Busi. Admin., Mgmt. Info. Sys.) is president of AIM Consulting Group in Bellevue. Before joining AIM in 2018, Mallahan was vice president of technology and communications at iSoftStone in Kirkland, Washington.
Saonee Sarker (’02 PhD) is the next dean of the Virginia Tech Pamplin College of Business. She is a professor in the Department of Informatics at Lund University in Sweden. Previously, Sarker was chair of the WSU Department of Management, Information Systems, and Entrepreneurship.
Mark Schuster (’95 Busi. Admin., Finance) is featured on the WSU Foundation website in an article recognizing his service and giving to WSU.
Faith (Allen) Zaslavsky (’99 Busi. Admin., Mgmt.) is president and chief operating officer at Theralink Technologies.
Faculty/Staff
Bitty Balducci, assistant professor of marketing, spent two weeks this summer at the Lucian Blaga University of Sibiu (LBSU) in Sibiu, Romania, pursuing teaching and research efforts. She collaborated with Simona Stan, professor of marketing and the Wilson Logistics Faculty Fellow at the University of Montana.
Chase Potter, assistant professor of accounting, presented “Disclosure Specificity: Evidence from Book-to-Bill Ratios” examining how precisely managers disclose their book-to-bill ratio, at the Journal of Business, Finance, and Accounting Capital Markets Conference in Liverpool, England. He also presented “Congress, Foreign Policy and Financial Reporting,” his dissertation examining the economic consequences of expanding the scope of financial disclosure to include a foreign policy objective—economically isolating Iran, at the Journal of Accounting and Public Policy Conference held at the London School of Economics. He will publish the papers in the respective conference editions in 2024.
Christina Chi, professor of hospitality business management, was featured in the Spring 2023 issue of WSU Magazine for her work on sustainable tourism.
Mark Beattie
Joe Compeau
DJ Fairhurst
Kristine Kuhn
Jenni Sandstrom
Five Carson faculty members were recently inducted into the WSU Teaching Academy: Mark Beattie, scholarly assistant professor, WSU Everett; Joe Compeau, professor (career track) of management, information systems, and entrepreneurship; DJ Fairhurst, associate professor of finance and management science; Kristine Kuhn, associate professor of management, information systems, and entrepreneurship; and Jenni Sandstrom, associate professor (career track) of hospitality business management, WSU Vancouver.
Kunter Gunasti, assistant professor of marketing and international business, published two papers “Consumer Misestimations of Small Recurring Changes vs. a Single Large Lump Sum,” in Marketing Letters, and “Cumulative Impact Neglect in Processing Sequential Changes” in the Journal of Consumer Psychology.
A recent review article in the Journal of Business Research recognized a paper by Carson faculty Jeff Joireman and Tom Tripp as a central hub of knowledge on the dark side of customer behavior. Their paper “When Do Customers Offer Firms a ‘Second Chance’ Following a Double Deviation? The Impact of Inferred Firm Motives on Customer Revenge and Reconciliation” was published in the Journal of Retailing about ten years ago. The Journal of Business Research article recently praised the paper for its key analysis, insights, and impact in research on customer revenge and rage. It ranked first in the customer revenge and rage category and second overall in the dark side of customer behavior category based on normalized citations—a top indicator of overall research impact and influence. Joireman is a professor of marketing and international business, and Tripp is the senior associate dean for academic affairs.
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In July, Joireman gave an invited virtual research workshop highlighting “lessons learned over 30 years as an author, reviewer and editor” to graduate students and faculty as part of the Summer Expert Forum 2023, School of Management and Economics, Beijing Institute of Technology.
Hana Johnson, assistant professor of management, information systems, and entrepreneurship, was awarded a Smith Teaching and Learning grants for 2023–24. Smith awards are funded by the Samuel H. and Patricia W. Smith Teaching and Learning Endowment, established in honor of retired WSU President Sam Smith in 2000. Johnson and faculty co-applicants Chris Cooney, Mark Beattie, and Jenni Sandstrom, are pursuing “B-A 100: A Multi-section, Multi-campus Course Revision,” a project providing funding to incorporate a new text and simulation into case-based teaching. Instructors will create assignments, develop lecture/class discussion related to the simulation, explore new experiential learning activities, and determine how cases will illustrate and reinforce the textbook and simulation concepts.
Cheryl Oliver, associate dean for professional programs, was an invited panelist at the Share the Mic: Highlighting Women in Leadership event hosted by the WSU Pullman Chancellor’s Office. Share the Mic was a series of fireside chats in March celebrating Women’s History Month. Chancellor Elizabeth Chilton, Oliver, and Kim Christen, associate vice chancellor for research advancement and partnerships, comprised the panel moderated by Hannah Ziegler, a WSU student. The panelists spoke about experiences that shaped their individual leadership paths in their careers.
Jason Porter, associate professor (career track) of accounting, coauthored “Determining How to Classify Stock Investments: The Case of Unbekannt, Inc.,” a case study chosen for the 2024 Institute of Management Accountants Student Case Competition. The case will be published in Strategic Finance, the IMA’s flagship journal for professionals, and in the IMA Educational Case Journal after the case competition in June 2024. Porter and Teresa Stephenson, a long-term coauthor and professor of accounting and finance at the University of Alaska Anchorage, were named the IMA’s 2023 Distinguished Scholars for outstanding contributions over time to the applied management accounting literature. Porter also was named as an editor of Issues in Accounting Education, a top journal published by the American Accounting Association, the world’s largest academic organization for accountants. *The Caron College is sad to announce Jason, our esteemed faculty member, passed away unexpectedly on August 23. His legacy of work during his time with the college will always be honored and remembered.
Angie Senter, events manager, was re-elected as the Administrative Professional Advisory Council chair for another year. In June, she hosted “Creating Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion in Events: More than Words,” a webinar with MeetingsNet.
Ryan Sommerfeldt, assistant professor of accounting, was selected to serve as a director on the Institute of Management Accountant’s Research Foundation Committee. He’ll review research grant proposals, participate in discussions or deliberations within IRF and strengthen the transfer of management accounting knowledge between academic and practitioner communities. He is also coauthor of “The ChatGPT Artificial Intelligence Chatbot: How Well Does it Answer Accounting Assessment Questions?” a crowdsourced paper published in Issues in Accounting Education. Sommerfeldt also presented a virtual workshop at Deakin University on his research related to ethical decision making.
At the 5th Annual Vision Centre Symposium, Nancy Swanger, director and founder of the WSU Granger Cobb Institute for Senior Living, led a panel of senior living association professionals addressing critical leadership diversity issues in the industry. The symposium focused on building a bridge between academia and senior living providers.
Richard Toolson, professor of accounting, is the sole author of “The Unique Benefits of 529 College Savings Plans,” a paper featured as the cover story in the May 2023 issue of The Tax Adviser. The magazine is published by the Association of International Certified Professional Accountants, the global voice of the accounting and finance profession, founded by the American Institute of CPAs and The Chartered Institute of Management Accountants.
U.N. Umesh, professor of marketing and international business at WSU Vancouver, was recently honored for 40 years of service to WSU.