Points of Pride
Poets & Quants ranked online MBA and executive MBA programs from Washington State University’s Carson College of Business as No. 19 in their 2023 rankings of The Best Online MBA Programs, moving up from No. 25 in 2022.
The School of Hospitality Business Management received a $1,250 grant from the Society for Hospitality and Foodservice Management Foundation to support student site tours in Seattle during November.
The 2021 issue of Dividend, the Carson College of Business alumni magazine, received a CASE Best of District VIII Award in the design/publications category. The award recognizes excellence in marketing, communications, and advancement among the 130-plus member institutions within DVIII.
Cleofa Vargas and Maccabee Werndorf are representing the Carson College in Pullman as senators for the Associated Students of Washington State University.
The WSU Pullman chapter of Beta Alpha Psi hosted a case competition in November—the second for the accounting, finance, and information systems honors society. Carson College faculty wrote the case used in the competition, and three business professionals judged the teams.
In other news, the chapter was awarded “Superior Chapter” status by the parent organization.
Vanessa Casillas (’22 Accounting) is a business development specialist at the Columbia River Economic Development Council in Vancouver, Washington. She helps recruit new organizations and expand the current business base to advance economic vitality for southwest Washington
Jacob Daving (’21 Busi. Mgmt.) is a project manager at NEW Health, a federally qualified community health center in Chewelah. He manages teams working on projects to improve efficiency, security, and to reach overall organizational goals for NEW Health, which serves Stevens, Ferry, and Pend Oreille counties. Before joining NEW Health, Daving was part of the startup team for Farmhouse Froyo in Deer Park.
Andy LaFrazia (’99 MBA) received WSU Vancouver’s 2022 Notable Alumni Award. He was recognized for his extensive service to the Business Growth Mentor and Analysis Program, where he volunteers as a mentor to student teams who provide consulting for small businesses and nonprofits. LaFrazia is president of ControlTek.
Jerry Martinez (’20 Fin.) is the new executive director of the Downtown Pasco Development Authority, which focuses on revitalizing the downtown Pasco neighborhood. The authority operates a commercial kitchen for start-up restaurants and food vendors, runs the Pasco Farmer’s Market, and host events to bring people to downtown Pasco.
Michael Novakovich (’10 Busi. Admin., ’16 MBA) is president and chief executive officer of Columbia Industries. He was previously the president and chief executive of Visit Tri-Cities. The nonprofit serves people with developmental disabilities and other barriers to employment and social inclusion. Columbia Industries owns four businesses that fund the organization’s five nonprofit mission services: job and life skills training; job placement; wrap around services that include housing, food, transportation, benefits assistance; and connectivity to community resources.
Jeremy Beus, associate professor in the Department of Management, Information Systems, and Entrepreneurship, coauthored “Organizational Climate Profiles: Identifying Meaningful Combinations of Climate Level and Strength,” published in the Journal of Applied Psychology.
Ken Butterfield, associate professor in the Department of Management, Information Systems, and Entrepreneurship, was recently honored for 25 years of service to WSU.
Ruiying Cai’s paper, “Virtual Kitchen or Physical Restaurant: Consumer’s Choice Based on Causal Attribution and Power,” received the Best Conference Paper Award at the 2022 Annual International Council on Hotel, Restaurant, and Institutional Education’s summer conference in Washington D.C. Cai is an assistant professor in the School of Hospitality Business Management.
Michelle Carter, an associate professor in the Department of Management, Information Systems, and Entrepreneurship, is the lead author of “IT Use and Identity: A Review and a Research Agenda,” published in Foundations and Trends in Information Systems. Coauthors include Victoria Reibenspiess, assistant professor of information systems, and former doctoral student Yafang Li (’22 PhD).
Robert Crossler is the coauthor of a forthcoming article, “The Valued Coexistence of Protection Motivation and Stewardship in Information Security Behaviors,” published in Computers & Security. Crossler is an associate professor of information systems and chair of the Department of Management Information Systems, and Entrepreneurship. In addition, Crossler is a mentor for the McNair Scholars Program, which prepares undergraduates from underrepresented backgrounds for their future doctoral studies.
Joseph Scott Gladstone was featured in The PhD Project: Tribal Expertise with Deanna Kennedy, a faculty member at the University of Washington-Bothell. In the video, they discuss their goals of increasing the number of Native American business professors. Gladstone and Kennedy also coauthored a recent article published in Tribal College Journal, “Shared Governance of Wisdom: How Tribal Colleges and Native Communities Can Build the Business Professorate.” Gladstone is a scholarly assistant professor of management at WSU Everett.
Jeff Joireman’s article, “Differential Response to Corporate Political Advocacy and Corporate Social Responsibility: Implications for Political Polarization and Radicalization,” was accepted for publication in a special issue of the Journal of Public Policy & Marketing focusing on marketing and political polarization. The article was coauthored by T. J. Weber (’17 PhD) and David Sprott, dean of the Drucker School of Management at Claremont Graduate University. Joireman is a professor and chair of the Department of Marketing and International Business.
Based on his book, How to Publish High-Quality Research, Joireman was also invited to deliver research and writing workshops to graduate students from six Latin American countries in conjunction with the Instituto de Investigaciones Biológicas Clemente Estable in Montevideo, Uruguay.
Muzi Liu, a marketing doctoral student, presented her research at the 2022 Institute for the Study of Business Academic Conference in Chicago. Coauthored with Uchila Umesh and Jeff Joireman, the research is titled “Holding Salespeople Responsible for Late-Paying Accounts Predicts Lower Role Clarity, Higher Job Stress, and Customer-Directed Deviance.”
Chuck Munson, director of the college’s doctoral program, was recently honored for 25 years of service at WSU. In addition, he was one of several presenters at the 18th and final Meir Rosenblatt Memorial Lecture at the John M. Olin School of Business at Washington University in St. Louis. Rosenblatt was Munson’s PhD advisor.
Jason Porter was a featured speaker at a September training session hosted by the Philippines Institute of Certified Public Accountants. His session focused on writing cases for teaching and training in accounting. Porter is an associate editor for the Institute of Management Accountants’ Educational Case Journal and a scholarly associate professor in the Department of Accounting.
Kahlil Philander received a $35,000 grant through the Entain Group for a gambling addiction study. His research will use Entain’s player database of online sports bettors to test how differences in gamblers’ payment methods can be used as a behavioral marker for gambling addiction. The grant funding was awarded by Harvard Medical School’s Division on Addictions. Philander is an assistant professor in the School of Hospitality Business Management at WSU Everett.
Arvin Sahaym, professor in the Department of Management, Information Systems, and Entrepreneurship, is the coauthor of “Do CIOs Matter in the Face of Exogenous Shocks? An Examination Through Upper Echelon Theory,” published in the International Journal of Innovation and Technology Management.
Jenni Sandstrom has been named the Tod and Maxine McClaskey Foundation Endowed Chair in Hospitality Business Management, which is the first endowed chair at WSU Vancouver. Tod McClaskey was the cofounder of the Red Lion hotel chain in the western United States.
Angie Senter was a session presenter for the Academic Event Planner conference in October in Boston. Senter, the college’s events manager, presented “Digital Equity in Events.”
Paul Skilton, associate professor of management at WSU Tri-Cities, presented his recent research, “Normal Misconduct in the Prescription Opioid Supply Chain,” published in the Journal of Supply Chain Management, at three universities: in a doctoral workshop in the Center for Industrial Production at Aalborg University in Denmark; the College of Business at Oregon State University; and as part of a healthcare supply chain conference at Wayne State University.
Soobin Seo is the principal investigator on a $500,000 project to research and develop virtual reality marketing experiences to increase brand awareness of Washington state wines. The project is funded by a $250,000 grant from the US Department of Agriculture and a match from the Carson College of Business. Seo is an associate professor of hospitality business management at WSU Everett.
Ryan Sommerfeldt was recently appointed as the western region director for the management accounting section of the American Accounting Association. He is an assistant professor in the Department of Accounting.
Nancy Swanger, founder and director of the Granger Cobb Institute for Senior Living and associate professor in the School of Hospitality Business Management, was recognized by the United Nations among the top 50 leaders in the world whose work is transforming health and wellbeing for aging populations. Her award is from the UN Decade of Healthy Ageing 50, an initiative to improve the lives of older people, their families, and their communities.
Terry Umbreit (’84 PhD), professor emeritus of hospitality, was inducted into the State of Washington Tourism Hall of Leadership for his significant, positive, and long-lasting contributions to the state’s tourism industry. He joined the WSU hospitality business management faculty in 1975 and was consistently ranked among the most cited hospitality faculty in the world for his research. In 1984, he was appointed director of the School of Hospitality Business Management and served until his 2008 retirement.
Xinchang Wang was awarded a $118,578 National Science Foundation grant. This project will develop modern revenue management strategies for port terminal operations that involve both berthing and loading/unloading stages and examine pricing policies for multistage service systems. The results of this project will advance the modernization of operations in the port industry and promote the digitalization of the industry. Wang is an assistant professor in the Department of Finance and Management Science.
David Whidbee, chair of the college’s Department of Finance and Management Science, was recently honored for 25 years of service to WSU.
Lily Zhu is the author of a forthcoming article, “Unlocking Creative Potential: Reappraising Emotional Events Facilitates Creativity for Conventional Thinkers,” published in Organizational Behavior and Human Decision Processes. Zhu is an assistant professor of entrepreneurship.