Turner Business

Turner Business recently visited with Turner College finance professor Joshua Brooks to discuss his consulting work.  As he explained, some of this work involves acting as a testifying expert, while at other times he acts as a consulting expert.  In both cases, Josh’s experiences serve as examples to his students of the practical applicability of concepts covered in his finance courses.    TB: What types of cases do you provide your professional opinion/work on? JB: I’ve worked on a wide variety of cases as both a testifying expert and as a consulting expert (non-testifying). These cases include investments, econometrics, and derivatives valuation.  Some of my earliest cases as a master’s degree s tudent were on derivatives valuation including credit default swaps and interest rate swaps.  These closely paralleled my work in the master’s program that was focused on derivatives and financial engineering.  Another line of work has been the evalua...

Slava Trofimov ’s educational and professional journey in the information systems space began in 1998, when he enrolled at Columbus State University and selected management information systems as his major.  Upon completion of the Turner College’s BBA program in MIS, Slava accepted the position of Information Technology Product Manager for the Greater Columbus Chamber of Commerce, just a short drive from the Synovus Center on the CSU’s main campus.  His professional experience in that position sparked an interest in the business side of things, and he made the move to Waco, Texas, to pursue an MBA in the Hankamer School of Business at Baylor University.  He completed that program in 2004 and dove into a new position as business analyst for Celebrating Home Direct, an online retailer offering a wide selection of high quality home décor products shipped to customers directly from the manufacturer.  Over the next 12 years with the company, which recently eclipsed $100 m...

What can small and medium size firms (SMFs) do to improve their export performance?   This is the research question posed in a new study by Turner College marketing professor Ed O’Donnell that appears in a recent issue of the International Journal of Business Management and Commerce .  O’Donnell’s study posits that SMFs that adapt the visible peripheral attributes of their products, such as brand name and packaging, to comply to host market norms will experience higher levels of export performance than those that adapt their physical product or that use some other strategy.  To test this theory, he examines data on exporters in the U.S., China and Romania.  The U.S. was used to represent developed markets because it is one of the largest global markets with an income per capita that is comparable to other developed markets.  O’Donnell chose Romania and China because they represent two distinct types of emerging markets with respect to market size and growth rat...

Turner College economist Frank Mixon was recently named Editor of the Journal of Financial Economic Policy (JFEP), with his term set to begin in January of 2023.  The JFEP, which is part of Emerald Publishing’s journal portfolio, publishes r esearch involving financial institutions, financial policy, control issues for firms, central bank policy, risk and uncertainty, and the economics and financial dimensions of market and non-market phenomena.  The JFEP’s editorial board currently includes scholars from Columbia University, University of California – Berkeley, New York University, Georgetown University, University of Florida, Ohio State University, University of Wisconsin, and American University.  The beginning of Mixon’s tenure at the helm of the JFEP will coincide with the journal’s fifteenth year of publication.

 Columbus State University continues to rise in the U.S. News & World Report rankings of U.S. colleges and universities. Among the best regional universities in the U.S. South, CSU ranks 67 th , and among public universities in this category, CSU ranks 30 th . Two of CSU’s individual programs are also included in the magazine’s national rankings for 2022-2023. These are the Turner College at 411 th amount undergraduate business schools in the U.S., and CSU’s School of Nursing, which ranks 413 th among U.S. nursing schools. In the national rankings of business schools, the Turner College is tied with business schools affiliated with Morehead State University and Western Illinois University, among others, while it is ranked ahead of business schools affiliated with Arkansas Tech University and Lamar University, among others.

With high inflation rates currently posing a problem in countries all around the globe, a new study by Turner College economics professor Frank Mixon and his colleague Puneet Vatsa of Lincoln University in New Zealand on business cycles and inflation is almost perfectly timed.   The study, which was recently accepted for publication by the International Journal of Monetary Economics and Finance , updates stylized facts about the cyclical associations between economic output and prices.   In it, Vatsa and Mixon apply the relatively new Hamilton filter, a statistical approach that lends itself well to extracting the cyclical components from non-stationary data series in small samples, to price and output series for 27 countries, including the U.S., from 1999 through 2020.   The study finds mixed evidence regarding the cyclicality of inflation (i.e., the relationship between business cycles and inflation).   For example, Vatsa and Mixon report that inflation is acyclic...

Turner College Center for Economic Education As indicated on the Georgia Council on Economic Education (GCEE) website, a basic understanding of economics and personal finance is essential to making informed decisions as workers, consumers, citizens, savers and investors. It is for this reason that students in Georgia are required to pass an economics course to graduate from high school – yet the majority of teachers who teach economics and personal finance have no formal training in these disciplines.  Each year the GCEE, which is headquartered in downtown Atlanta, delivers more than 100 workshops to thousands of K-12 teachers in an effort to prepare them to teach economics and personal finance creatively and effectively.  For example, in 2021 the GCEE delivered 122 workshops across 141 (of 181) Georgia public school systems.  In all, 4,890 Georgia educators were served by the GCEE in 2021, while 14,692 Georgia educators have been served by the GCEE over the past five yea...

The Turner College will be hosting a Career Fair on Tuesday, September 27, 2022, from 10:00 am through 2:00 pm.   Among those companies seeking business school graduates are Aflac, Global Payments, Goodwill, Group1 Automotive, Marriott, Robinson, Grimes & Company, Synovus, and several others.   This is a good opportunity for Turner College students to network with representatives from these companies, as well as with their peers.   

If you have ever travelled from Columbus to Panama City Beach, you have passed through Pittsview, Alabama.  Just south of Seale, Alabama, on U.S. Highway 431, Pittsview is home to Pitts Trailers, the world’s largest and only complete line forestry manufacturer.  The company moves the forestry transportation market forward with its log trailers, open and closed top chip vans, moving floor vans, and hydraulic elevating trailers with crawler suspension for knuckle boom loaders.  Pitts Trailers is also an industry leading construction trailer manufacturer.  At the helm of the company’s day-t0-day operations is Justin “J.P.” Pierson .  After earning a bachelor’s degree in business administration from CSU’s Turner College in 2006, Pierson began working for Pitts Enterprises.  Twelve years later, in 2018, he was named President of one its divisions, Dorsey Intermodal.  Pierson was subsequently named President of Pitts Trailers, and now oversees both Pitt...

TSYS Center for Cybersecurity Cyber Range Turner Business recently visited with the TSYS Center for Cybersecurity’s Ehab Bedir to discuss the Center’s cyber range.  The highlights of that visit are presented below. TB: What is a cyber range, and how did the TSYS Center for Cybersecurity acquire one? EB: Cyberbit’s cyber range provides hyper-realistic simulated attack experiences to TSYS School students and IT professionals.  Through delivering experiential hands-on training, the range acts as a ‘live-fire’ range.  That is, it allows students to experience and practice in hyper-realistic environments, which include enterprise-grade networks and commercial security tools.  It also allows students to get immersed in simulations of real-world cyber-attacks that they can encounter on the job, such as ransomware, supply chain, web defacement attacks, and many others.  The cost of the Cyberbit’s cyber range was $1.3 million, built with the help of a $5 million gi...

When it comes to careers in human resource management, Turner College graduate Kelvin Scott has had one of the more interesting.  After graduating from CSU with a BBA in marketing in 2002, Scott began his career as an assistant manager with Kenneth Cole Productions.  Working out of the company’s Atlanta and Orlando offices, Kelvin managed the interviewing, hiring, orientation, and training of all new-hires. He also assisted with strategic analysis of store performance in both sales and market share.  After four years with KCP (2003-2006), Kelvin took on the role of human resources manager for Six Flags over Georgia, where he managed all staffing events, recruitment efforts and hiring procedures.  In this position, Kelvin created, maintained, and balanced a yearly HR budget totaling $450,000.  During his time working for Six Flags over Georgia (2007-2012), he added to his education credentials by earning an MBA from the University of Phoenix.  This work pre...

Two Turner College graduates are among the winners of 2022 Alumni Recognition Awards.  Cortney Wilson , a 2012 graduate of the Turner College’s master’s degree program in organizational leadership, won the 2022 Alumni Service Award.  Cortney has been volunteering for Columbus State University since the day she stepped foot on campus.  She recently wrapped up her term as president of the CSU Alumni Association and currently serves as the chair of the CSU Athletics Fund Board.  Cortney is currently the director of the William B. Turner Center for Servant Leadership at CSU, where she holds the Frank D. Brown Distinguished Chair in Servant Leadership.  Cortney is currently working on a doctorate degree in education from the University of Georgia.  Joining Wilson on the list of winners is David Coburn , a 1982 graduate of the Turner College’s bachelor’s degree program in accounting, who won the 2022 Distinguished Alumnus in Military/Public Service Award.  D...

A new study by Turner College faculty Fady Mansour and Uma Sridharan examine a sports betting model wherein betting firms attempt to increase their overall return rather than to win individual games, and in doing so they set prices to protect themselves against bettors with inside information. The conceptual approach taken by Mansour and Sridharan assumes two types of gamblers – the “subjective gambler” who bets equally on the favorites, and the “objective gambler” who makes an effort to analyze the particulars of sports contests before placing bets.   Using betting data from an online gambling company on 113 Major League Baseball games and 207 NCAA Football games, the study finds evidence (supporting prior studies) that betting firms, using their knowledge of common bettor biases, set biased prices in order to maximize profits.   More specifically, the study reports that, in the case of a subjective gambler, the company adjusts the betting odds by five and four percentage poi...

The TSYS School’s cybersecurity nexus students were visited recently by Lee Himes, Senior Director of Cyber Threat Management and Security Operations at Synovus.  In addition to providing career advice to students, Himes discussed his own career in IT and career opportunities for nexus program graduates at Synovus.  Following Himes on the stage was Shannon Krantz, Senior Campus Recruiter for Tricentis, a global leader in automated testing to accelerate software delivery and digital transformation.  She spoke with nexus students about Tricentis, and offered them tips for interviewing successfully.  Krantz was joined by John Walker , a Cloud Software Engineer at Tricentis who earned a bachelor’s degree in computer science and a master’s degree in applied computer science – cybersecurity, both from the TSYS School.  According to Patrick Aiken , Director of the TSYS Center for Cybersecurity, “It was a big day for our Cybersecurity Nexus Program. To top it off, our c...

You might say that 2022 Columbus State University Turner College of Business graduate  David Meadows  is still “going bananas” over baseball. Not only is the former CSU third baseman playing for the fun-filled Savannah Bananas, but a recent outfield diving catch garnered the attention of baseball fans around the world. Meadows wasn’t supposed to start playing for the Bananas until the fall for the Banana Ball World Series, but Berry Aldridge, the Bananas’ baseball operations coordinator, called up Meadows for the second half of the team’s College Professional League season during the summer. Meadows enjoys playing with the Bananas because of the team’s ever-growing fan base and the overall entertaining atmosphere that is present at every game in Savannah. “My favorite part of playing with the Bananas is definitely their fan base and the opportunity to just be myself as a player,” Meadows stated. “We have a lot of different players from around the country who are unique an...

Leading up to the Turner College Career fair at the end of September 2022, the week of September 12 through September 16 is a big one for Turner College students.   Referred to as “Career Fair Prep Week,” CSU business students are being offered a number of helpful career preparation sessions.   A Career Fair preparation session kicks off the week on Tuesday, September 13.   From 12:30pm through 1:30pm, Turner students will be provided tips for interviewing and helpful information on other soft skills.   This session is followed by a resume workshop from 2:00pm through 3:00pm.   Closing out the first day is a LinkedIn session which begins at 3:30pm and ends at 4:30pm.   On the second day, Wednesday, September 14, the Career Fair preparation will be offered again from 12:30pm through 1:30pm.   Then, from 2:00pm through 4:00pm, a photographer will be available to provide free professional headshots to interested Turner Business students.   Career Fai...

Turner College associate professor of management Phil Bryant recently surpassed 2,000 career Google Scholar citations.   His top-cited publication is a 2010 study on retaining talent that appears in the Academy of Management Perspectives .   Another piece on the same subject – this one appearing in a 2013 issue of Compensation and Benefits Review – has garnered the second-most citations over Bryant’s career.   Each of these studies was co-authored with David Allen of the University of Memphis, while the first of the two was also written with James Vardaman of Mississippi State University.   Bryant joined the Turner College in 2010, coming from a faculty position at Christian Brothers University.   Prior to that he earned a bachelor’s degree in psychology from Baylor University, an MBA from Belhaven University and a PhD in management from the University of Memphis.         

In working with the Turner College’s social media platforms – Facebook, Twitter and Turner Business , Turner College marketing intern Grace Davin is gaining valuable experience for a future career in marketing.   Scheduled for graduation from CSU in December of 2022 with a bachelor’s degree in marketing, the list of Davin’s educational credentials is already growing.   She currently holds seven certifications, including both SEO and E-mail Marketing Certificates from HubSpot, Social Marketing and Hootsuite Platform Certificates from Hootsuite, Mimic Digital Marketing Analytics and Mimic Social Certificates from Stukent, and a Google Analytics Qualification.   Inducted into Beta Gamma Sigma, the business school honor society, in January of 2022, she currently serves as Communications Chair for the CSU Marketing Organization. After such a great start, Turner Business is excited to follow Grace’s future journey in marketing.

When she was a senior majoring in finance in CSU’s Turner College of Business a few years ago, Julissa Santoyo sat down for an interview with Turner Business .   The story that emanated from that interview featured her accomplishments in the Turner College, which were many, including induction into Beta Gamma Sigma (including serving as president of the Turner College’s chapter), service as Ambassador for the Center for Global Engagement, service as president of the Turner College’s finance club, and working as a tutor in the College’s Tutoring Lab.   Since graduating Suma Cum Laude (with a 3.98 GPA) in 2019, Santoyo began her career with Synovus as Accelerated Banker.   After only one year in that position, Julissa moved to Synovus’ Atlanta offices where she began her work as Lead Relationship Specialist.   Again after only one year she rose to Retail Market Manager, and then, after another year, to Credit Risk Manager, a position she holds for Synovus today. ...

Turner Business recently sat down with Katie Cummings , a senior in the Turner College, to discuss her experiences and plans for the future.   TB: What is your major?  When do you graduate?   KC:  I am an accounting major in the Turner College of Business and I will graduate in December of 2022.   TB: How has your experience in the Turner College of Business been?   KC: My experience at CSU has looked a lot different than that of traditional college students.   I went to high school here in Columbus, and I participated in the dual enrollment program on campus at CSU during my senior year of high school.   So, I started as a part-time student with the Turner College of Business as a senior in high school in the fall of 2019.   During my second semester, COVID-19 was declared a worldwide pandemic, which sent all of us home for the remainder of the semester.   Because of that I really feel like my experience...

CSU’s Jill Carroll joins the growing ranks of students who have published research during, or shortly after completing, coursework in the Turner College’s Master of Science in Organizational Leadership (MSOL) program.  Carroll’s study, published in a recent issue of Servant Leadership: Theory & Practice , conceptually examines whether leader communication frequency and goal clarity strengthen a servant leader’s impact on team performance, and whether team potency, which is defined as members’ shared confidence in a team’s general capabilities across tasks and contexts, mediates the leader’s influence on performance.  Carroll’s work also examines the importance of leaders communicating frequently and sharing clear team goals in fundraising settings.  As she explains, these leader behaviors are imperative for fundraising teams to successfully strategize and execute their action plans in order to deepen relationships with constituents and increase donations.  The f...

Columbus State University’s Cybersecurity nexus program is all about providing its students with real-world industry experiences fending off network attacks seated behind state-of-the-art technology.  Recently, however, its students sat in the hot seat of a different sort as they participated in mock job interviews with actual industry cybersecurity, information security, and recruiting professionals representing local and international companies.  Patrick Aiken , Director of the TSYS Center for Cybersecurity , created this immersive beneficial exercise so students can get a feel for what they will experience when they interview for jobs post-graduation. All interviews were conducted in CSU’s Synovus Center, which also houses the cyber range, a training facility for industry professionals to practice live-fire exercises.  “I thought the event was spectacular,” Aiken said. “We had a great outpouring of support from our partners out in the industry.  There were a ...