Skip to main content Skip to navigation
Dividend The official online magazine of the Carson College of Business

College

U.S. News and World Report ranks the WSU Carson College of Business online MBA and Executive MBA programs #12 nationally for best online MBA programs and #8 for best online MBA programs for veterans in 2018. Read more about the Carson College of Business Online MBA programs rankings.
The Carson College of Business graduate programs awarded their first degree in 1957 and are proud to celebrate the 60th anniversary of excellence in business education. In the past six decades, the college has seen its community of business alumni grow into a vast network of more than 30,000 accomplished professionals in more than 90 countries. Read more about Carson College of Business MBA accolades.

Students

David Vartanian, online MBA student, recently published a children’s book, “The Adventures of Mr. Murphy.” The book is based on the adventures he has with Murphy, an English bulldog he rescued from the SPCA in Fresno, California. The non-fiction book is available on Amazon.com.
A grant from the Society for Hospitality and Food Service Management Foundation supported 20 hospitality business management students at WSU Everett on an industry tour of Microsoft, the Washington State Convention Center (WSCC), and the Bell Harbor Conference Center and Columbia Hospitality. Mark Beattie, WSU Everett clinical assistant professor and associate vice chancellor, and Angie Senter, Carson College event coordinator, accompanied the students and facilitated networking. At Microsoft, students learned about urban farming initiatives and new technologies emerging through Compass. Mark Freeman, senior manager of global dining services, shared insights from a global perspective. At the WSCC, Matthew Shea (’85 HRA), Aramark director of sales; Kate Kurkjian (’03 HRA), Visit Seattle director of special events; and Rebecca Emmons, WSCC administrative projects specialist, described the economic impact Aramark and the WSCC bring to Seattle and the future expansion project. Linda Jones, (’94 Acc.), Columbia Hospitality manager, and her team hosted the students at the Bell Harbor Conference Center, which concluded the industry tour.

From left Alora Navarro, Allie Peterson, Bing Kwan Chan
Hospitality business management students Allie Peterson, Bing Kwan Chan, and Alora Navarro participated in the 3rd annual Smith Travel Research Student Market (STR) Study Competition held in New York and won the Merit Award in the undergraduate division. The competition featured 43 teams representing many of the leading hospitality and tourism schools from around the world. Each team selected a major metropolitan market to research and analyze using a comprehensive set of reports and data from the STR. The teams then presented their analysis at the New York Jacob K. Javits Convention Center in front of a panel of judges from hotel companies, tourism organizations, and consulting and/or investment firms. The team was advised by Christina Chi, assistant professor of hospitality business management.

Dr. Nancy Swanger with Madalyn Pearson (left) & Brittley Barrett (right)
Hospitality business management students received outstanding awards at the December commencement celebration. Brittley Barrett (’17 HBM) received the Outstanding Senior Award for her leadership and involvement, and Madalyn Pearson (’17 HBM) received the Outstanding Academic Award for having a GPA of 3.83.

Alumni

Lewis Lee (’88 Bus. Admin.), founding partner of Spokane-based Lee & Hayes PLLC intellectual-property law firm, was named to the Federal Reserve Bank of San Francisco’s Economic Advisory Council in January. The nine-member advisory council is part of the Twelfth Federal Reserve, the largest by geography and size of its economy.

Read more about Lewis’s appointment.

John Schoettler ( ’80 HRT), Amazon.com Inc. vice president of global real estate and facilities, was featured in “Executive of the Year John Schoettler is Amazon’s Connection to Seattle,” an article by Casey Coombs and Marc Stiles published in the December 15, 2017, issue of the Puget Sound Business Journal. Schoettler saw the potential to convert a collection of nondescript warehouses into a sprawling urban campus. He convinced Amazon.com CEO Jeff Bezos that South Lake Union was the right spot for the young company’s growing headquarters.

Read more about Schoettler in the PSBJ article.

Faculty/Staff

Mark Beattie, hospitality business management clinical assistant professor and program coordinator at Washington State University Everett, was appointed associate vice chancellor for academic affairs by Chancellor Paul Pitre. The vice chancellor for academic affairs provides leadership on academic matters and reports to the chancellor. Beattie is responsible for the development, implementation, and evaluation of an academic plan for new and existing academic programs and developing an infrastructure that supports quality teaching, research, and management of academic resources. Additionally, he is the key contact for maintaining and strengthening the connection between admissions, recruitment, scheduling, and student services. Beattie will continue his role within the Carson College of Business School of Hospitality Business Management part-time. “It is an honor to serve the students, staff, and faculty at WSU Everett as we work together fulfilling the promise to our community who have supported us in our land-grant mission to provide access to higher education,” says Beattie. Read more about Beattie’s new role.

Tonya and Jamie Callison
While Executive Chef Jamie Callison’s culinary talents, teaching, and leadership are gifts in themselves to the School of Hospitality Business Management, his contributions to WSU go far beyond the kitchen. He donates hundreds of personal hours supporting students studying in the Food Wine and Culture program in Italy and in delivering Carson College fundraising auction packages that include multi-course meals and travel. Callison wrote the Crimson Spoon cookbook and personally contributed to its production. He and his wife Tonya also support Carson College fundraising campaigns and an endowed scholarship. Most recently he and Tonya donated their Cougar Seasonings, a spice blends retail business, to the WSU Department of Animal Sciences. Sales of the spice blends now benefit WSU students. Every shaker sold helps students gain valuable career experience at Cougar Quality Meats and enhances training programs at the WSU Meats Lab. “Doing something that benefits our students—that’s where my heart is,” Callison says. Read more about the impact of the Callison’s Cougar Seasonings donation.
  Deborah Compeau, management information systems professor, presented “Do We Manage Technology, or Does Technology Manage Us?” for the WSU Common Reading Program. Compeau’s presentation is part of the spring semester lineup of faculty and guest experts who will discuss topics related to those in students’ common reading book for this year, Ready Player One. The WSU-wide program focuses this year on the theme of frontiers of technology, health, and society. The Common Reading Program began in 2006–07 in Pullman. It helps students, their teachers, and the community better engage in academically centered critical thinking, communication, research, and learning around a body of shared information, as presented in a single, specially selected book.
  Rob Crossler, assistant professor of management, information systems, and entrepreneurship, is ranked as the seventh most prolific accounting information systems (AIS) researcher and the second most prolific research in experimental AIS research in the world over the last six years. WSU ranks as number 26 internationally in AIS research output over the last six years. Accounting rankings are reported by Brigham Young University, who keeps track of accounting researchers in overall accounting journals and in accounting specialty areas.
From left, Numan Kurtulus, minister of Tourism of Turkey, and Dr. Dogan Gursoy
Dogan Gursoy, Taco Bell Distinguished Professor in hospitality business management at the Carson College of Business, has been named a Yangtze River (Changjiang) Scholar—the highest academic award issued to an individual in higher education by the Ministry of Education of the People’s Republic of China. Read more about Gursoy’s award in the WSU Insider.

Gursoy also was one of five invited scholars to attend the National Turkish Tourism Summit in Ankara, Turkey, last November, where he served on a committee focusing on the role of local governments in tourism development and management. He was also a keynote or invited speaker at several international conferences and universities, including the Ninth International Conference: Measure, Manage and Facilitate Change to Harness Organizational Potential, Gwalior, India; Hong Kong Baptist University; the Third Forum on China-Africa Economic and Trade Relations, Jinhua, China; the University of Massachusetts Amherst; and Zhejiang Normal University, Jinhua, China. He also published a new book “Routledge Handbook of Hospitality Marketing,” available on Amazon.com.

Kim Houser presents at SXSW

Debbe Sanders
Kimberly Houser, associate professor of business law, was invited to speak on her big data and predictive analysis research at the South by Southwest (SXSW) Conference in Austin, Texas. Houser discussed the dangers of the IRS’s use of predictive analytics at the all-day Ignite® technology event. Her presentation was based on her article, “The Use of Big Data Analytics by the IRS: Efficient Solution or the End of Privacy as We Know it?” published in the Vanderbilt Journal of Entertainment and Technology Law. Houser and coauthor Debbe Sanders published a new article, “The Use of Big Data Analytics by the IRS: What Tax Practitioners Need to Know,” in the February, 2018, Journal of Taxation.
Byron Marlowe
Doug Charles
Byron Marlowe, clinical assistant professor and wine and beverage business management program coordinator at WSU Tri-Cities, was featured in a video segment “100 Percent Chance of Wine” published by KVEW-TV. Marlowe also collaborated with Doug Charles (’93 H&RA), Compass Wines owner, on the 2017 WSU School of Hospitality Business Management 85th Anniversary Wine Tasting Event at the International Council on Hotel, Restaurant, and Institutional Education annual conference. The event was attended by deans, directors, and food and beverage faculty of the world’s leading hospitality and tourism programs. Twenty-four different wine varieties from across the state of Washington were tasted to celebrate the wines of Washington.
Terence Saldanha, assistant professor of management, information systems, and entrepreneurship, received the Best General Topics Track Paper Award at the 2017 International Conference on Information Systems.

Previous Editions’ Points of Pride