Turner Business

Turner Business occasionally examines Google Scholar data for faculty in the Turner College of Business at CSU.  There are currently 37 faculty in the TCOB’s corps of instruction, and this group has collectively garnered 18,798 Google Scholar citations to date.  These figures produce an average of 508 Google Scholar citations.  Leading the TCOB is the Department of Management and Marketing, which includes faculty in management information systems.  The 15 faculty in this group have together produced 9,240 Google Scholar citations, for an average of 616 Google Scholar citations.  Next, the 10 faculty in the Department of Accounting and Finance, which includes economics faculty, have garnered a total of 5,596 Google Scholar citations.  These totals produce an average of 560 Google Scholar citations.  Lastly, the 12 faculty in the TSYS School of Computer Science have collected 3,962 Google Scholar citations, for an average of 330 Google Scholar citations...

Turner College assistant professor of finance Joshua Brooks recently published a study on carry arbitrage in the U.S. China.  Carry arbitrage involves buying an instrument or commodity with borrowed funds and selling short a futures market position to hedge price risk.  The study, titled “The Samuelson Hypothesis in Futures Markets: An Analysis using Intraday Data,” is set to appear in a November 2022 issue of the Journal of International Money and Finance .  As indicated by the paper’s title, Brooks and his co-author Robert Brooks of the University of Alabama, also investigate the validity of the Samuelson hypothesis, which argues that the futures price volatility increases as the futures contract approaches its expiration.  To do so, they examine 15 matched pairs of futures markets between October 31, 2015 and October 31, 2021.   Although the study reports that evidence of carry arbitrage activities is extremely limited in most Chinese futures markets, it doe...

In their September 2022 publication titled “Against ‘Flexibility’: Tightening the Cage of Academic Rigor with Instructors’ Responsibility and Rationality,” Turner College management information systems faculty Yaojie Li and Jennifer Pitts examine challenges that the COVID-19 pandemic has brought to academia.   They explain that the pandemic required additional work from instructors, as the transition from face-to-face instruction to online teaching meant that they had to reorganize learning resources, record videos, deliver virtual lectures, and set up virtual office hours.   At the same time, instructors were faced with infection issues for themselves, and domestic distractions and interruptions, all of which led some instructors to reduce student workloads and offer grade leniency.   In their paper published in Information Systems Education Journal , Li and Pitts refer to this phenomenon as “instructor laxity,” and note that it tends to undermine teaching quality whil...

The second edition of Turner College economics professor Frank Mixon ’s textbook, Economics and Finance for Leaders , hit shelves in August of 2022.   Beginning with Chapter 1, “The Economic Way of Thinking,” the first several chapters provide students with the basic concepts applied later in the book.   Mixon explained to Turner Business that in doing so the book presents many historical vignettes that the students find interesting.   These include, but are not limited to, a lesson on how the Alchian-Allen theorem helped the Union win the Civil War, and the story of how the Pope’s 1966 decree, Paenitemini , which relaxed the rules on fasting and abstinence outside of Lent, affected at least four major markets.   In addition to coverage of the time value of money, disequilibrium in the pricing of certain goods and services, the present value concept and the determination of bond yields and market interest rates, and how a market for human organs (for transplantation...

T he entire Beta Gamma Sigma chapter of the Turner College of Business at Columbus State University has once again earned recognition as a High Honors chapter.  Christina Allrich, Executive Director of Beta Gamma Sigma, notified Turner College chapter advisor, Danielle Navarrete , of the distinction on August 30, 2022, stating that the Turner College chapter’s distinction “is indicative of a campus where academic excellence is highly valued, and where your chapter officers work diligently to enhance Beta Gamma Sigma’s stature on campus.”  High Honors   status means that the Turner College’s chapter of Beta Gamma Sigma is eligible and encouraged to nominate candidates for some of the international honor society’s most prestigious global awards.  To celebrate this achievement, Board Chair, Dean Mary Gowan, sent her congratulations and added that the Turner College’s chapter “will be recognized as a High Honors Chapter on [the organization’s] website...

A grant from the National Security Agency (NSA) will position the TSYS School of Computer Science to increase awareness of career opportunities in cybersecurity and STEM fields among sixth through eighth-grade girls. The funds through the NSA’s GenCyber Grant program will benefit students in Columbus and neighboring communities while enhancing female underrepresentation in these scientific fields. The project, “Broadening Cybersecurity Awareness for Middle School Girls via GenCyber Outreach, Games and Storytelling,” focuses on increasing cybersecurity awareness among middle and junior high students with little to no cyber knowledge. The program seeks to expand their interests in cybersecurity careers and knowledge, as well as foster their leadership skills as cybersecurity ambassadors. The Turner College’s TSYS Center for Cybersecurity faculty members Jianhua Yang , Linqiang Ge and Patrick Aiken , Director of the TSYS Center for Cybersecurity, as well as Chris Lovelock, a...

TSYS School faculty received an important addition this academic year with the arrival of Armando Fernandez , who will assist in the delivery of the Turner College’s growing cybersecurity nexus programs.   Fernandez earned an associate’s degree in business administration and management from Georgia Military College, and a bachelor’s degree in Spanish language and literature from Columbus State University.   At the graduate level, he c ompleted an MBA and a master’s degree in cybersecurity management, both from the Turner College.   After private sector employment with Paschall Truck Lines and J.B. Hunt Transportation Services, Fernandez spent 14 years as a member of the U.S. Marine Corps.   Prior to joining the TSYS School faculty, he served six years in the U.S. Army, first as a cavalry scout and later as a doctrine writer.   Fernandez will hold the position of Lecturer of Cybersecurity in the Turner College.

Ussery Lecture Hall The Ussery Lecture Hall is the first classroom that students encounter upon entering the front door of the Synovus Center of Commerce and Technology, home to the Turner College of Business.  Named in recognition of a generous gift from CSU alumni Richard W. and Janet P. Ussery , the Ussery Lecture Hall is a medium-sized, tiered classroom space that accommodates about 75 students and houses two large screens and various multi-media options for teaching and learning.  Beginning with their years as students at Columbus College, Rick and Jan Ussery demonstrated their interest in the institution in many ways, including Rick’s service as a trustee of the CSU Foundation.  During his 21-year tenure as CEO of TSYS, Rick forged an important partnership with CSU which was pivotal in meeting the technology training needs TSYS and the region.  As Rick stated at the dedication ceremony for the lecture hall, “The quality of life in Columbus will be directly ti...

The Turner College of Business is pleased to welcome Charles Boster , an assistant professor of accounting who joins CSU from a position on the faculty of accounting at Salisbury University.   Boster, a Certified Public Accountant, earned a PhD in business and a master’s degree in accounting, both from the University of South Carolina, and an undergraduate degree in textile engineering technology from Southern Polytechnic State University.   His academic career began in 2015, as a visiting assistant professor of accounting at Claflin University.   Charles’ research focuses on auditing and managerial reporting, and has been published in Contemporary Accounting Research , Managerial Auditing Journal and Accounting Research Journal .

Sticking the Landing A new study by Turner College economics professor Frank Mixon and Richard Cebula of George Mason University investigates the pattern of innovations in women’s artistic gymnastics that have led to eponymous gymnastics skills like that developed by, and attributed to, Romanian gymnast Nadia Com ă neci.  In her gold medal-winning performance at the 1976 Olympic Games in Montreal, Com ă neci’s flawless performance of the “Com ă neci salto” was a crucial element in scoring a perfect 10 on the uneven bars.  In their 2022 paper appearing in the Journal of Sports Economics , Mixon and Cebula investigate the impact of appropriability on the supply of innovation by examining the frequency of eponymous skills in women’s gymnastics before and during the transition to a new market-based economic order in Eastern Europe.  The study posits that following the early 1990s dissolution the communist governments of the Soviet Bloc and its satellites, the supply of inn...