For the Record provides information about recent professional activities and achievements of University of Delaware faculty, students and alumni.

Recent presentations, honors and grants include the following:

Presentations

At Lerner College’s first annual Teaching and Research Showcase on April 27, select faculty from all five Lerner departments exchanged information and scholarship with their colleagues on best practices in teaching and innovative research in progress. Deputy Dean Sheryl Kline, who initiated this event, said, “It was a great format to share ideas, support colleagues and strengthen our community around research and teaching.” Teaching presentations were givein by Chris Lynch, instructor in finance, on “How Clickers Make Teaching Easier and More Engaging”; Julia Bayuk, assistant professor of business administration, on “Encouraging and Evaluating Classroom Participation in a Live Classroom: Keeping it Fair”; Mark Serva, associate professor of MIS, on “Team- Based Learning (TBL)”; and Ali Poorani, associate professor of HSBM, on “Crowdsourcing Technologies and Triple-Loop Learning.” Research poster presentations were made by Yi-Lin Tsai, assistant professor of marketing, on “Non-Informational Advertising Informing Consumers: How Advertising Affects Consumers' Decision-Making in the U.S. Auto Insurance Industry”; John D'Arcy, associate professor of MIS, on “Seeing the Forest and the Trees: A Meta-Analysis of the Antecedents to Information Security Policy Compliance”; Kyle Emich, assistant professor of management, on “A New Way of Seeing Teams: Using an Attribute Alignment Framework to Understand Individual Team Member Complexity”; Mandi Bullough, assistant professor of management, on “What Kind of Research Might a CT Do?”; Xiaoxia Lou, associate professor of finance, on “Media Reinforcement in International Financial Markets”; Derron Bishop, assistant professor of management, on “Rapid Media Image Transformation: Media Sensemaking and Sensegiving During Scandal”; Ji Kyung Park, assistant professor of marketing, on “Role of Mindsets on Consumption Behavior”; Amanda Convery, assistant professor of accounting, on “Stakeholder-Standard-Setter Interaction and the Scope of Standard Setting Authority”; Dustin Sleesman, assistant professor of management, on “Phantom of the BATNA: The Power of Possible Alternatives in Negotiation”; Shubha Patvardhan, assistant professor of management, on “Imagination and Strategy”; Zvi Schwartz, professor of HSBM, “When Best Isn’t Really Best: On the Sub-Optimality of the BAR Based Room Rate Fencing”; and Jeremy Tobacman, assistant professor of economics, on “Unsecured Credit and Local Employment Shocks.”

Honors

Christopher Nichols, assistant professor of clarinet, has been elected secretary of the executive board of the International Clarinet Association (ICA), effective Sept. 1 through August 2020. ICA is the professional organization for clarinetists. International in scope with nearly 4,000 members, it hosts the annual clarinet conference (ClarinetFest) and publishes the scholarly journal The Clarinet.

Three student teams took the honors at the 19th edition of the Carol A. Ammon competition, presented by the Lerner College of Business and Economics on March 18. This year’s case, titled “Danger on the Horizon: Blue Horizon Dive Center,” focused on a dive center in nearby Glen Mills, Pennsylvania. Open to UD graduate students, this yearly event is made possible by the generous support of Endo Pharmaceuticals and named for the company’s founder, Carol A. Ammon. This year’s competition attracted 13 teams including 47 students, representing nearly every Lerner graduate program. Over the last several years, the case competition has been providing strategic recommendations to statewide nonprofit organizations or local businesses. “This event gives our students a unique opportunity to use the knowledge and skills they’ve acquired in the MBA and graduate business programs in a setting that is much broader than any particular class,” said Amy Becker, MBA program manager and case competition coordinator. Competitors were tasked with finding an ideal IT solution to handle both point of sale (POS) and customer relationship management (CRM) functions on a small-business budget for Blue Horizon Dive Center owners Chris and Kelly Donnelly. The Blue Horizon Dive Center is a busy operation that includes retail, rental, repair, education and travel to regional and international scuba diving locales. After three weeks of preparation, teams presented their business solutions to a panel of judges made up of Lerner MBA alumni and the Blue Horizon owners. “The teams who make the final round are presenting their recommendations to the decision-makers who could actually implement those recommendations,” Becker said. The top three winning teams were “Upgrade that POS, LLc.,” Bruce Wayne, Will Cottrell and Tim Huffman; “Pied Piper Consulting,” Theofilos Christodoulou, Suprotim Mukherjee, Queen Agboye and Haoyung Hu; and “Trilogy One,”Xiang Li, Tanish George, Chenqiaozhi Zhou and Yichang Liu. “The benefits to participating are learning how to hone in on real life presentation and research skills with ultimatums and deadlines,” said Wayne, a current MBA student and a member of the first-place team. He encouraged other graduate students to participate saying, “It can be fun if you approach it correctly and the monetary incentivized part of it is unlike anything I have experienced in academia.”

Susan Luchey, associate director of University Student Centers, was named to the Inter-association Leadership Education Collaborative (ILEC) to represent the Association of Leadership Educators on April 10. The ILEC represents eight professional organizations committed to the advancement of leadership education teaching, research and professional practice within higher education institutions. It supports the advancement of the academic discipline of leadership studies, with a specific emphasis on leadership education research and practice within higher education. It also advocates for the intentional design, development and integration of leadership theory and practice into courses, programs and educational experiences across all institutional and organizational functions.

A UD graduate student team of Antony Rossi, Lerner MBA student, and Duanyi Wei, mechanical engineering doctoral student, placed third among 19 invited entrants in the Southeastern Hedge Fund Competition at Georgia State University’s J. Mack Robinson College of Business on April 19. The team, Lyapunov Technologies, presented a business model based on the application of control theory to the financial markets. At the competition, teams presented their investment strategies to a panel of expert judges from asset management firms and hedge funds. The competition was “blinded”, and initial submissions and final presentations could not make any hint as to presenters’ names or universities. Names and affiliations were only disclosed at the awards ceremony. The Blue Hens defeated teams from MIT, Duke, Chicago-Booth School of Business, Université de Lausanne and University of St. Gallen (Switzerland), University of Oregon, Auburn University, University of South Carolina, Georgia Tech, Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, and Stony Brook. UD faculty members Rich Jakotowicz (finance) and Vince DiFelice (Horn Program) helped Rossi and Wei refine their business model and enhance their presentation.

Grants

Lerner’s American Hotel and Lodging Association (AHLA), a registered student organization, received the UD Career Services Career Innovation Grant. The grant enabled the group to visit with fellow Blue Hens at the Marriot Headquarters as well as the Summer House, W Hotel and the Marriot Marquis on May 1. “This trip served as an incredible opportunity for our students to gain new networks as that is the name of the game: It’s not what you know, but who you know,” said Harry Chen, a senior honors student with a double major in finance and hospitality management. Additionally, the students will engage a full day of learning and exploring of different opportunities and roles available to them after graduation.

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