Points of Pride
The Granger Cobb Institute for Senior Living was recognized by the Mather Institute with a Promising Practices Award in its Innovation at Work 2021 publication, which highlights innovative approaches to working with older adults. Nancy Swanger, the institute’s founding director, discussed the Carson College’s senior living major, minor, and certificate program, along with proposed research on aging by 23 faculty fellows across the WSU system.
The Business Growth Mentor & Analysis Program (MAP) recently received $10,000 from the U.S. Bank Foundation’s Community Possible Grant Program and $4,000 from the Umpqua Bank Charitable Foundation’s Community Grants Program. These two grants will help support and expand the reach of the MAP student consultancy, which pairs seniors majoring in business administration at WSU Vancouver with small businesses and nonprofit organizations in the region to help them recover from the pandemic, improve operations, and grow.
An interdisciplinary team from WSU is helping the city of Federal Way with a tourism project. Mark Beattie, associate vice chancellor for academic and student affairs and scholarly assistant professor (Everett); Byron Marlowe, scholarly associate professor (Tri-Cities); and Jenni Sandstrom, scholarly assistant professor (Vancouver) from the School of Hospitality Business Management have been working with WSU’s Metropolitan Center for Applied Research and Extension (Metro Center) in the College of Agricultural, Human, and Natural Resource Sciences (CAHNRS) on a project to help Federal Way assess the state of its tourism industry and recommend new opportunities for off-season tourism. The interdisciplinary project team also includes Gabriella Reznowski, business and economics librarian (Pullman) and hospitality business management doctoral student Shenrui (Demi) Deng (Pullman) along with Brad Gaolach, director, and Martha Aitken, assistant director of the Metro Center. The final report will help the city increase economic development through tourism.
Ravi Atreyapurapu, an executive MBA student, has a new job as senior vice president of finance accounting at Citibank.
Beta Alpha Psi hosted its inaugural Accounting Case Competition for accounting, finance, and management information systems majors in September. Employees from Starbucks and the accounting firms KPMG and BDO judged the seven teams that participated in the event. Christian Anderson, the former Beta Alpha Psi president, headed up the case competition committee. Zachary Sims, Mengdi Wei, and Ryan Smith comprised the first-place team. Two teams tied for second place:
- Yihui Fang, Gabrielle Isaak, Dominic Devengenzo, and Ayanna Onato
- Junghun (June) Lee, Nathan Blair, and Jace Lang
Five students earned the Student Engagement Scholarship of $3,000 each for earning the most points in the Carson Career Amplifier program for 2020–2021. The winners are: Vanessa Avdeyeva (Vancouver), Madelynn Cone (Everett), Flor Larios Ramos (Pullman), Larenze Rios (Tri-Cities), and Vinitha Vithayathil (Global).
Demi Deng, a doctoral student from the School of Hospitality Business Management, received first place in the 2021 WSU Academic Showcase and GPSA Research Exposition for the business, communication, and political science category. “What People TikTok about Influencer Endorsed Short Videos on Wine? An Exploration Study of Gender and Generational Difference” is the title of her winning project.
Jessica Aguilar (’19 Mgmt. Info. Sys., 21 MBA) was listed in Poets&Quants Best and Brightest Online MBA graduates. She works as a consultant for 3Cloud, where she is a Microsoft Power BI developer.
Micaela (Shelton) Banach (’00 Busi.) is a 2021 Super Lawyer in San Diego, a list cultivated by Super Lawyers Magazine. She is a partner of Noonan Lance Boyer & Banach and past president of the San Diego County Bar Foundation.
Troy Braga (’04 MBA) is the resident director of the Merrill Lynch office in Coeur d’Alene, Idaho. A wealth management adviser and senior vice president with the Baldwin-Braga Group, he has worked for Merrill Lynch for seven years and is a certified financial planner and a certified plan fiduciary adviser.
Bennie L. Harris, PhD, (’95 MBA) is the chancellor at the University of South Carolina Upstate. He is a former director for the Center of Human Rights at WSU and served in leadership positions at Morehouse School of Medicine, Lipscomb University, DePaul University, and the University of Alabama at Birmingham.
Marcus Lathan (’12 Busi.) was a contestant on the 2021 season of The Bachelorette. He is a real estate broker and operations manager at Affinity Property Management in Portland, Oregon.
Jason Lee (’00 Mgmt. Info. Sys.) is the chief information security officer at Zoom Video Communications in Woodinville, Washington, a position he has held since 2020. During Lee’s time in that role, his team won a CSO50 Award, which recognizes 50 organizations for security projects or initiatives that demonstrate outstanding business value and leadership. Winners were recognized at the 2021 CSO50 conference in November.
Tim Mulligan (’90 Hosp. Busi. Mgmt.) wrote Witchland, a play, during the pandemic. The Backyard Renaissance Theatre Company in San Diego put on performances through December 11, 2021. According to Mulligan, Witchland is “based on my hometown (of Richland, Washington), semi-autobiographical, and created to scare the bejeezus out of you.” Mulligan is the chief human resources officer at the Allen Institute for Artificial Intelligence.
Hazelmae Overturf (’20 EMBA) has been named the Young Credit Union Leader of the Year by the Northwest Credit Union Association. She works for BECU, where she is senior manager, learning and development—human resources.
Yatin Singla (’21 Comp. Sci., Fin., Honors) has joined Google as a software engineer. During his time at WSU, Singla participated in the Business Plan Competition and the Harold Frank Engineering and Entrepreneurship Institute.
Jerry Burtenshaw (’56 Hotel & Rest. Admin.), a member the School of Hospitality Business Management’s Hall of Fame and advisory board and the namesake of the Burtenshaw Award, died September 2, 2021. Burtenshaw grew his company, Alpine-Burtco Company, into an internally diversified logistics and food company. He was a leader in the Washington Hospitality Association and a generous supporter of WSU. He and his wife Angelina established the Calvin Brett Burtenshaw Memorial Scholarship in honor of their son. They also created the Burtenshaw Lecture Series, which celebrated 40 years of existence in 2021.
Stacie Hamilton (’81 Busi. Admin.), an entrepreneur and supporter of WSU Tri-Cities and the Carson College of Business, died October 8, 2021. Hamilton served in the U.S. Army before graduating from WSU. She was a certified public accountant who built one of the Tri-Cities’ first women-owned accounting firms, according to her obituary. She later became a financial advisor, establishing Hamilton Fisher Wealth Management, and also established a winery, Hamilton Cellars, with her husband, Russ. Hamilton taught accounting courses for the wine and beverage business management program and served on advisory councils for the WSU Tri-Cities Carson College of Business and WSU Viticulture and Enology. She and her husband were generous financial supporters of wine education and business programs.
Sophia Gaither is chair of the WSU President’s Commission on the Status of Women for the 2021–2022 academic year. The commission advises the university president and executive vice president on all issues relevant to women, including career advancement, hiring practices, salary equity, safety, childcare, and anti-discrimination/harassment practices. Gaither is the associate director for the Carson Center for Student Success.
Joseph Scott Gladstone, assistant professor (career track) in the Department of Management, Information Systems, and Entrepreneurship at WSU Everett, coauthored “Indigenous Conversational Approach to History and Business Education.” The article was published in September 2021 in the Academy of Management Learning and Education as part of a special issue: “New Times, New Histories of The Business School.”
Dogan Gursoy, Taco Bell Distinguished Professor in the School of Hospitality Business Management, was included in the 2021 Highly Cited Researchers list from Clarivate recognizing the top 1% most cited researchers in the world. Gursoy is the primary or coauthor on 21 recently published or forthcoming journal articles related to the use of artificial intelligence devices in service delivery, COVID-19 research, carbon offsetting and sustainability research, and other topics.
- (Forthcoming) “Customer Acceptance of Autonomous Vehicles in Travel and Tourism,” Journal of Travel Research.(Forthcoming) “Antecedents of Trust and Adoption Intention toward Artificially Intelligent Recommendation Systems in Travel Planning: A Heuristic–Systematic Model,” Journal of Travel Research.
- (Forthcoming) “Tourists’ Attitudes towards the Use of Artificially Intelligent (AI) Devices in Tourism Service Delivery: Moderating Role of Service Value Seeking,” Journal of Travel Research.
- (Forthcoming) “A Look Back and a Leap Forward: A Review and Synthesis of Big Data and Artificial Intelligence Literature in Hospitality and Tourism,” Journal of Hospitality Marketing & Management, 1–31.
- “Artificially Intelligent Social Device Use Acceptance,” Encyclopedia of Tourism Management and Marketing.
- “Developing a Formative Scale to Measure Consumers’ Trust Toward Interaction with Artificially Intelligent (AI) Social Robots in Service Delivery,” Computers in Human Behavior, 118, 106700.
- “Impact of the COVID-19 Pandemic on Management-level Hotel Employees’ Work Behaviors: Moderating Effects of Working-From-Home,” International Journal of Hospitality Management, 98, 103020.
- “Effects of the New COVID-19 Normal on Customer Satisfaction: Can Facemasks Level off the Playing Field between Average-Looking and Attractive-Looking Employees?” International Journal of Hospitality Management, 97, 102996.
- “Evolving Impacts of COVID-19 Vaccination Intentions on Travel Intentions,” The Service Industries Journal, 41(11–12), 719-733.
- “Effects of COVID 19 Pandemic on Restaurant and Hotel Customers’ Sentiments Towards Dining Out, Traveling to a Destination and Staying at Hotels,” Journal of Hospitality, 3(1), 1–17.
- “Celebrating 30 years of Excellence Amid the COVID-19 pandemic—An Update on the Effects of COVID-19 Pandemic and COVID-19 Vaccines on Hospitality Industry: Overview of the Current Situation and a Research Agenda,” Journal of Hospitality Marketing & Management, 30 (3), 277–281.
- “Interactivity in Online Chat: Conversational Cues and Visual Cues in the Service Recovery Process,” International Journal of Information Management, 60, 102360.
- (Forthcoming) “Effects of Tourist-to-Tourist Interactions on Experience Cocreation: A Self-Determination Theory Perspective,” Journal of Travel Research.
- “Effects of Social Interaction Flow on Experiential Quality, Service Quality and Satisfaction: Moderating Effects of Self-Service Technologies to Reduce Employee Interruptions,” Journal of Hospitality Marketing & Management, 30 (5), 571–591.
- “Effects of Customer-to-Customer Social Interactions in Virtual Travel Communities on Brand Attachment: The Mediating Role of Social Well-Being,” Tourism Management Perspectives, 38, 100790.
- “STHRSCAPE: Developing and Validating a Collaborative Economy Based Short-Term Hospitality Rental Servicescape Scale,” International Journal of Hospitality Management, 94, 102833.
- “The Bright Side of Work-related Deviant Behavior for Hotel Employees Themselves: Impacts on Recovery Level and Work Engagement,” Tourism Management, 87, 104375.
- (Forthcoming) “Impact of Social Media Posts on Travelers’ Attitudes and Behaviors Towards a Destination after a Natural Disaster: Moderating Role of the Source of the Post,” Journal of Sustainable Tourism, 1–19.
- (Forthcoming) “An Examination of Critical Determinants of Carbon Offsetting Attitudes: the Role of Gender,” Journal of Sustainable Tourism, 1–23.
- (Forthcoming) “Hotels’ Sustainability Practices and Guests’ Familiarity, Attitudes and Behaviours,” Journal of Sustainable Tourism, 1-19.
- “Interactive Effects of Message Framing and Information Content on Carbon Offsetting Behaviors,” Tourism Management, 83, 104244.
Elizabeth Howlett, professor in the Department of Marketing and International Business, coauthored a paper that won the American Marketing Association-EBSCO Annual Award for Responsible Research in Marketing. “Understanding the Calorie Labeling Paradox in Chain Restaurants: Why Menu Calorie Labeling Alone May Not Affect Average Calories Ordered” was published in 2019 in the Journal of Public Policy & Marketing.
Alex Kier, assistant professor of entrepreneurship at WSU Vancouver, was recently honored with the 2021 Emerging Scholar Award by the Entrepreneurship Division of the Academy of Management. The award recognizes excellence in the field of entrepreneurship research.
Kahlil Philander, assistant professor in the School of Hospitality Business Management, is the lead on a research grant funded by the Washington State Gambling Commission to study the impact of legal sports betting on the state economy. The research is designed to provide policy makers with a framework for regulation, develop a forecast of market size, survey Washington residents, and discuss issues such as responsible gambling programming. Philander also received a Research of the Year award from the National Council on Problem Gaming, one of the most coveted research awards in the field of gambling studies. He is a two-time winner of the award. The award was for “An Examination of the Validity and Reliability of the Positive Play Scale: Findings from a Canadian National Study,” published by International Gambling Studies.
Angie Senter, Mark Beattie, and Demi Deng published “Large Event Security—A Case Study of Spokane Events, WA” in the June 2021 issue of Events and Tourism Review. Senter is the college’s event manager. Beattie is associate vice chancellor for academic and student affairs and scholarly assistant professor in the School of Hospitality Business Management at WSU Everett. Deng is a doctoral student in the School of Hospitality Business Management.
Ryan Sommerfeldt, assistant professor in the Department of Accounting, is the coauthor of “Cheating for the Cause, the Effects of Performance-Based Pay on Socially Oriented Misreporting” in the September 2021 issue of The Accounting Review. He also is the coauthor of a forthcoming paper in Contemporary Accounting Research, “Auditing Non-GAAP Measures: Signaling More than Intended.”
Tom Tripp was presented with a 30-year service award from Washington State University. Tripp is a professor of management, Rom Markin Endowed Leadership Chair in Business, and senior associate dean for academic affairs at the Carson College of Business.