Turner Business

Communications, mental health services, cybersecurity operations, governmental affairs, medicine, clinical research, data visualization, fine and performing arts, and public health are only some of the disciplines represented by the inaugural group of 27 Thayer Scholars at CSU. Thanks to a new scholarship fund established by John P. Thayer and his wife, Pamela, of Columbus, undergraduate students now have access to additional resources through the university’s Center for Career Coaching to gain invaluable, hands-on field experience as they apply classroom learning in real-world settings. Those internships, research, and service-learning experiences are poised to set them apart from their peers as they pursue postgraduate jobs or continue their studies at the graduate level. A lifelong career construction executive, Thayer recognizes the importance of professional experience to long-term career readiness and success. In 1965, the Columbus native founded what is now Thayer-Bray Construct...

In February of each calendar year, Turner College and TSYS School faculty submit electronic portfolios describing their accomplishments over the previous calendar year in the areas of teaching, research, service and student success to their respective department chairs. The four areas of these portfolios are rated by the respective department chairs using the categories of "exceptional," "exceeds expectations," "meets expectations" or "satisfactory," "needs improvement," etc. Once completed, each department chair holds an in-person meeting with each faculty member to explain the assigned ratings and answer any questions. Most recently, under former Turner College Dean Deborah Kidder , the department chairs' ratings were considered final, and the Dean had no input. As a consequence, there was no standardization of ratings across departments, meaning that what it took to receive an "exceeds expectations" in one department wa...

The Turner College's February 2026 faculty and staff meeting was held yesterday afternoon and there are quite a few items that were covered. At the top of the meeting Acting Turner College Dean Tesa Leonce provided an update regarding construction work on the Synovus Center. Phase 4 of the project has commenced, meaning that work on the front of the building is now taking place. The target date for completion of that work is May 19, 2026. This project to replace the Synovus Center's envelope has operated under a $10 million budget and is being undertaken by Sheridan Construction. Since the beginning of Phase 4, the street in front of the Synovus Center has been converted to one-way traffic. Next, Leonce updated faculty and staff on the process of searching for a permanent dean of the Turner College. CSU is currently vetting search firms, having recently moved from four to three candidates for the job. Once a search firm is selected, it will work with a CSU search comm...

A series of posts here at Turner Business celebrates various Google Scholar citation milestones reached by business faculty. As indicated in the most recent of these, highlighting marketing professor  Ed O'Donnell reaching the 500 total Google Scholar citations milestone, various metrics provided by Google Scholar, such as the i10-index and the h-index, are reported. For this post, Turner Business created a metric, the i50-index, which is the number of a scholar's publications that have each garnered at least 50 Google Scholar citations. The i50-index for each Turner College business faculty is provided, using the ranges shown, in the table below. As indicated in the table above, 17 Turner College business faculty have thus far produced an i50-index value of at least one, with six scoring an i50-index above five. In the top category, with an i50-index above 15, are management professor Deborah Kidder and economics professor Frank Mixon . Turner College management professor ...

The Federal Reserve Bank of New York has released the newest data on the labor market outcomes for college graduates by major. The data for disciplines in the typical business school, plus computer science are shown in the table below, with the highlighted entries representing majors offered by the Turner College. As indicated there, accounting majors experience the lowest rate of unemployment, which, at 2.6%, is 4.4 percentage points below the unemployment rate of computer science majors. The unemployment rates of 6% for information systems management and 7% for computer science comport with the latest news reports about the struggles of graduates in these areas to secure employment in recent months. The data in the table above also indicate that underemployment is a problem, particularly for general business and management majors. In both cases, the underemployment rate exceeds 50%, with marketing in a close third at 49.3%. Computer science and information systems management majors e...

CSU faculty and staff recently heard from the Georgia chapter of the American Association of University Professors (AAUP) about the new accreditation group founded in part by the University System of Georgia and known as the Commission for Public Higher Education (CPHE). According to Georgia AAUP President Matthew Boedy, a professor of rhetoric and composition at the University of North Georgia, the CPHE  is seeking feedback on the evidentiary guidance for its standards . This guidance will help peer reviewers as they visit campuses to evaluate institutions, and the institutions themselves as they aim to meet the standards. Two USG institutions, CSU and Georgia Southern University, are part of the first cohort of institutions to be evaluated by the CPHE. According to Boedy, the Georgia  AAUP holds the view that the CPHE, as a “state run” accreditation group, is a threat to the long-standing traditions of independent accreditation and shared governance. The Georgia AAUP also be...