Turner Business

Turner College assistant professor of management Hyeran Choi is departing from the Turner College of Business and returning to the higher education system in South Korea.  Choi earned a BBA from Yonsei University, a master’s degree in human resources and industrial relations from the Carlson School of Management at the University of Minnesota, and a doctorate in management from the Gies College of Business at the University of Illinois.  She joined the Turner College management faculty in August of 2017.  She recently co-authored a study with Daisung Jang of the University of Queensland (Australia) and Jeffrey Lowenstein of the University of Illinois on how effective negotiation rests in part on generating integrative agreements, or agreements advancing parties’ interests through generating joint gains.  This study appears in a recent issue of Group Decision and Negotiation .  Turner Business wishes Choi the best with this move, which allows her to be closer to her family.     

Turner College of Business Advisory Council On December 8, 2022, Turner College Dean Deborah Kidder will be hosting a luncheon for the Turner College Business Advisory Council, a group consisting mainly of private sector supporters of the Turner College who advise the dean on strategy and other related matters.  The Advisory Council currently has 12 members, each of whom will get the chance to meet several Turner College faculty at the December luncheon.  Among the members of the Advisory Council is Paul Amos, who joined Aflac as executive vice president of U.S. Operations in 2005 and was named COO and President in 2007.   He retired from Aflac in 2017 to become Director of Jordan Blanchard Capital.  In 1977, another current Advisory Council member, Wade Burford, started his career at CB&T as a part-time teller.  He now works as Market President for Synovus in Phenix City.  Philip Tomlinson spent almost 49 years in financial services, retiring as President and CEO of TSYS in 2015. 

by Cristina Feliciano, WRBL-TV With a big grand prize at stake, four local entrepreneurs pitched their small businesses to a panel of judges on November 17, 2022, at Columbus State University.  In front of a live audience, BizPitch Columbus finalists took the stage, pitching their business proposals for the chance to win a grand prize of $15,000.  BizPitch, a Shark-Tank inspired pitch competition, serves as a networking opportunity for various local businesses and highlights the importance of economic development in the Chattahoochee Valley.  The finalists included Rashmi Hudson of Alltimate Luggage, Michael Williams of Huneu, Connell Reynolds of Travel Kots, and Alap Shah of iParaDox.  There was a heavy community presence as people shuffled into the event and were greeted by various local vendors such as Boss Mom Enterprise and TapWagen Columbus.  Michael Woodham , owner of TapWagen Columbus, is very familiar with the ups and downs that come with starting a new business venture.  Woo

With more than 25 years of experience in the healthcare and real estate development industries, Denise Kendust has a proven track record of accomplishment for growing and increasing brand awareness and market share in complex environments.   Since August of 2021, Denise has worked in Tallahassee, Florida, as the Assistant Vice President for Community Engagement at HCA Healthcare, which is one of the nation’s leading providers of healthcare services, comprising 182 hospitals and approximately more than 2,300 sites of care, including surgery centers, freestanding ERs, urgent care centers, and physician clinics, in 20 states and the United Kingdom.   Prior to holding this position, she was a director of communications and community engagement for HCA Healthcare in the Fort Walton-Destin market, where she supported and led the community relations team at Twin Cities Hospital and the communications team at Fort Walton Beach Medical Center.   Denise’s impressive business career has also inc

When COVID-19 hit the United States and institutions of higher learning went virtual, traditional models of teaching and learning were no longer useful.   Educators were forced to innovate.   Turner College finance professor Joshua Brooks adapted in a remarkable way.   “When we went into lockdown, I taught myself video editing software and created a YouTube channel to begin posting short problem solving videos for each of my [finance] classes. I continue to build on this and have found it to be invaluable for teaching business analytics and managerial finance,” Brooks explained.   Brooks also elevated his contact with students by communicating with them each week through announcements and e-mail messages.   To bring a human element to spring semester of 2020, he provided his classes weekly photographic updates of a flower garden his family planted and cultivated during quarantine.   “Several students emailed me at the end of the [spring 2020] semester thanking me for the pictures of t

Turner College economics students Heather Chason and Michael Carter recently travelled to Valdosta State University to present their research on food insecurity and inflation as part of the 2022 Georgia Undergraduate Research Conference.  Using data from the National Garden Association, their study investigates the effectiveness of backyard farming in combatting food insecurity and inflation in the United States.  The results of the study suggest that although the initial costs of starting a backyard garden can vary, the revenue generated from the produce harvested outweighs the costs of production by as much as $2,000.  When asked by Turner Business about the conclusions and recommendations from the research, Chason explained that the results of the study “suggest that government support of backyard farming through tax[ation policies], facilitating exchange markets, and media advertising will increase participation and food security for . . . disadvantaged populations . . . [and] .

Turner College economics professor Frank Mixon was recently invited to guest edit a forthcoming special issue of Frontiers in Applied Mathematics and Statistics .  Mixon will be assisted in this endeavor by Richard Cebula, a professor of economics at George Mason University.  The title of the special issue will be “Theoretical and Empirical Approaches to Public Choice.”  As Mixon explained to Turner Business , public choice is often defined as the application of the methodology of economics to the study of politics.  Given that the machinations of politics occur outside of traditional market settings, public choice has also been referred to as the (economic) study of non-market decision making.  “As evident by these descriptions, public choice is an inherently interdisciplinary field, whose contributions have emanated from economists, political scientists, legal scholars, and mathematicians, among others.  As such, examinations of the subject are sometimes formal or mathematical in na

Shortly after promotion to full professor, each CSU faculty delivers a lecture to the university community as part of CSU’s “Rite of Passage” series.   Turner College finance professor Brett Cotten recently delivered such a lecture inside the Schwob Library on CSU’s main campus.   Unlike many such presentations, Cotten’s rite of passage lecture was student-centered, as he discussed his involvement with the Turner College’s chapter of the Financial Management Association, the premier student organization for finance majors.   Cotten also described his mentorship of students who have represented the Turner College in various competitions, and his leadership on student field trips to the financial district in New York City.   In keeping with the student-centered nature of the lecture, the multimedia portion of Cotten’s lecture included a number of humorous memes about the challenges today’s students face with finance concepts like margins, calls, puts, and stop losses, as well as their f

For more than 25 years Turner College alumna Jennifer Slaughter has worked closely with business and IT executives across all industries in order to help them transform their business and achieve their objectives through the use of technology.   Much of this work has been done by Slaughter under the banner of some of the world’s most recognizable companies.   She is currently the Area Vice President for Strategic Accounts at Adobe, a position she has held for almost three years.   In this position, Slaughter formally launched Adobe’s consumer goods vertical.   Prior to that she achieved 132% attainment, driving customer success across the entire business.   In her first position with Adobe – Senior Enterprise Account Executive – Slaughter was named Digital Experience Sales Executive of the Year for achieving 445% of her business quota. Slaughter came to Adobe in 2014 from a senior account executive position with Zimbra, which she joined in July of 2010.   This experience was preceded

The Turner College of Business hosted a Service Corps of Retired Executives (SCORE) workshop on November 9 th aimed at helping new entrepreneurs and small business owners understand the importance of business strategy.   The workshop was delivered by Turner College management professor and holder of the Ray and Evelyn Crowley Chair in Entrepreneurship, Kirk Heriot , who also serves as a mentor and Vice Chair for Workshops for the Columbus chapter of SCORE.   During his presentation, Heriot discussed the differences between operational effectiveness and strategy, as well as the differences between a differentiation strategy and a low cost strategy.   As Heriot explained, a successful or sustainable strategy is about being different from rival firms in a purposeful way, not just for the sake of being different.   This means doing activities that are different from those of rival firms.   In making these points, Heriot referred to the example of Southwest Airlines, a no frills airline th

A new study by TSYS School alum Jordan Harner appearing in the Journal of Systemics, Cybernetics and Informatics investigates how prominent social media sites such as Facebook and Twitter use content and filter algorithms that play a significant role in creating filter bubbles that captivate users.  The study explains that filter bubbles are created when a social media website feeds user interactions into an algorithm that then exposes the user to more content similar to that which they have previously interacted.  By continually exposing users to like-minded content, this can create what is called a feedback loop where the more the user interacts with certain types of content, the more they are algorithmically bombarded with similar viewpoints.  The paper, co-authored with TSYS School professor Lydia Ray and Florence Wakoko-Studstill of CSU’s Department of Criminal Justice and Sociology, hypothesizes that the secrecy around content algorithms and their ability to perpetuate filter b

For the first time in Columbus State University’s near 65-year history, all of its signature volunteer boards are under the leadership of CSU alumni, with three-fourths of these being under the leadership of graduates of CSU’s Turner College of Business.   Together, these boards oversee alumni engagement and philanthropic programs in CSU’s Office of University Advancement and Department of Intercollegiate Athletics.  These Turner College alumni leaders include Rick Gordy , chair of CSU Properties Foundation, Tim Money , chair of the CSU Foundation, and Cortney Laughlin Wilson , president of the CSU Athletic Association.   “Our association and foundation boards have for decades benefited from the combined leadership of alumni, community leaders and friends of the university,” said Dr. Rocky Kettering, CFRE, who as CSU’s vice president for advancement, holds ex-officio positions on the CSU Foundation and CSU Athletic Association boards. “Our alumni are among our greatest ambassadors.   A

In their study forthcoming in IEEE Transactions on Computational Social Systems , TSYS School’s Anastasia Angelopoulou and her research colleagues at Auburn University assert that public sentiment can impact the implementation of public policies and even cause policy failure if public support does not exist.   This means that knowledge of public sentiment concerning new and emerging policies is critical for policymakers.   The COVID-19 pandemic offers a useful example, given that various precautionary measures have been either implemented or suggested in an attempt to delay or mitigate the spread of the virus.   Angelopoulou’s new study presents a framework that applies natural language processing (NLP) techniques in order to characterize the public sentiment on three prominent COVID-19 mitigation measures – mask wearing, social distancing, and quarantining – as shared by Twitter users in the United States.   As part of the framework, the researchers apply a bigram graph-based approac

There is no shortage of good news coming out of the Turner College’s TSYS School of Computer Science.   Cybersecurity nexus program student Benjamin Price recently began an internship with TSYS/Global Payments, Inc., as a security operations center (SOC) analyst.   “ Thank you to Columbus State University for supporting the Cybersecurity Nexus Program and to  Patrick Aiken  for leading the program that has prepared me for my career . . . [I am] Incredibly blessed to have this opportunity,” Price stated.   On Thursday, November 3rd from 6:00 to 7:00 p.m., Aiken will share basic information about the cybersecurity nexus program at CSU and answer any questions.   The session will be held in room 125 of the Synovus Center on CSU’s main campus.   The next day, November 4 th , representatives of various companies will again visit the Synovus Center for another round of mock interviews.   This time members of Cohort 5 of the cybersecurity nexus program will get to test their interviewing ski

A new academic study by Turner College alum Julissa Santoyo explores the possibility of gender discrimination in higher education wages using data on deans’ salaries from more than 200 colleges and schools of business in the U.S.  The study, set for publication in a forthcoming issue of Frontiers in Education , extends prior research suggesting that if an applicant for business school dean is female, and if the previous business school dean’s salary is important, then the applicant is able to circumvent wage discrimination given that the salaries of public university officials are publicly available.  Econometric results presented in the study indicate that although the earnings of male deans exceed those of their female counterparts, nearly all of the difference is attributed to the fact that male deans possess highly-valued characteristics, such as experience, tenure, scholarship and others, in abundance relative to female deans.  The remaining difference between the earnings of mal