Turner Business

TSYS School professor Shuangbao (Paul) Wang has been named the inaugural holder of the newly-established TSYS Endowed Chair in Cybersecurity.   The appointment of Wang to this prestigious position was announced by Turner College Dean Linda Hadley on October 30, 2017, during the “grand opening” of the Turner College’s TSYS Center for Cybersecurity.   Wang joined the Turner College in August of 2016 from the University of Maryland’s University College, where he assisted in delivering the institution’s graduate program in cybersecurity.   Wang earned a PhD in computer science in 2004 from George Mason University, and he was the 2004 recipient of the Link Foundation Advanced Simulation and Training Award.   The recipient of more than $2 million in grant funding, Wang’s recent research appears in the Journal of Learning Analytics , Journal for the Colloquium for Information Systems Security Education , and Sensors & Transducers .   Prior to joining the TSYS faculty, Wang’s research ap

Michael Barker has been named the inaugural holder of the newly-established TSYS Center for Cybersecurity.  Barker joins the TSYS School from Atlanta-based C4 Group, Inc., where he served as President and owner since 1995.  Barker, who has recently held an adjunct professorship with ITT Technical Institute, earned a bachelor’s degree in nuclear engineering from the Georgia Institute of Technology in 1983.  In 2012 he earned both a master’s degree in information security management and a graduate certificate in information security analysis from the University of Fairfax.  More recently, in 2017, he earned a master’s degree in divinity from Metro Atlanta Seminary.  Barker is a network, information and operations security professional with more than 25 years of experience.  His areas of specialization include continuity of operations planning, critical infrastructure protection, resilience planning, root cause analysis, audit information/network security and assurance, compliance, gove

The Turner College of Business’ new TSYS Center for Cybersecurity held its “grand opening” in Columbus State University’s Center for Commerce & Technology on October 30, 2017.  In welcoming the many guests in attendance, Turner College Dean Linda Hadley thanked TSYS for donating $2.5 million to CSU in order to support the new Center.  Hadley also thanked individual members of the Turner College’s Business Advisory Council.  Hadley remarked that the Center’s goals are twofold: to prepare a strong cybersecurity workforce, particularly in the area of financial security, and to support applied research by the TSYS faculty that will influence cybersecurity practice well into the future. Following Hadley at the podium was Patricia Wilson, TSYS Executive Vice President & Chief Information Officer, who spoke about the 30-year partnership in education between TSYS and Columbus State University, which includes the previous naming of the TSYS School of Computer Science.  CSU President

New research on price pass-through in U.S. retail gasoline markets indicates that regional differences in the response of gasoline prices to crude oil price changes exist in both the short and long run.  That finding appears in a 2017 study by the Turner College’s Sarah Turner Butler Distinguished University Chair of Business and Finance Ben Blair and colleagues Randall Campbell of Mississippi State University and Phillip Mixon of Troy University.  The study, which is published in Energy Economics , finds that, depending on the region, a $1 per barrel change in crude oil prices is correlated with a change in retail gasoline pump prices somewhere between 2.36¢ and 2.58¢.  Additionally, Blair and his colleagues find that statistical differences in the speed of adjustment of U.S. retail gasoline prices between regions disappear after two weeks, and that retail gasoline prices in most regions adjust faster to crude oil price increases than for price decreases.

Turner College management faculty Kevin Hurt and Neal Thomson recently teamed with Tobias Huning of the University of North Florida on research exploring how servant leadership is linked within organizations to job satisfaction and turnover intentions.   Their study, which was published in a 2017 issue of the Journal of Applied Management and Entrepreneurship , develops a model wherein these potential links are mediated through perceived organizational support and a relatively new theory about why people stick with an organization that is commonly referred to as “job embeddedness.”   As they explain, “[o]ur model proposes that organizational support and embeddedness theories are underlying theoretical foundations of servant leadership, and the mediators through which servant leadership behaviors impact follower behaviors and organizational outcomes.”   This new research may benefit organizational leaders by providing important explanations to the theoretical questions of how , when ,

The operational performance of manufacturing plants is the subject of a 2017 study by Turner College assistant professor of accounting Adam Maiga that appears in Advances in Management Accounting .  Maiga’s study uses survey data from a cross-section of 369 U.S. manufacturing plants in order to examine the roles played by activity-based costing, internal information systems integration, and external information systems integration in promoting higher operational performance of manufacturing facilities.   Hierarchical analysis presented by Maiga indicates positive and significant three-way interaction effects, suggesting that plant management should deploy all three resources, and not a subset of the three, in order boost operational performance.