Turner College Faculty Recognized with Annual Awards

Five Turner College faculty were recognized with awards at the College’s annual spring retreat yesterday.  Winning the Turner College’s 2023 Teaching Award was Becca Jones, assistant professor of marketing.  This win capped off a big week for Jones, who yesterday also won the 2023 CSU Teaching Innovation Award.  John Finley, chair of the Turner College’s Department of Management and Marketing, speaks highly of Jones’ teaching talents.  “Becca consistently engages in innovative activities in her teaching, including experiential learning activities.  She is a very talented, dedicated and respected member of the Turner College and I am proud to have her as a colleague in the department,” Finley stated to Turner Business.  In one such example of Finley’s comment, during the height of the COVID-19 pandemic, Jones invited sales industry professionals to visit her virtual classes to speak about their careers in sales and how the pandemic has impacted their jobs. 

Next, TSYS School assistant professor Yi Zhou won the Turner College’s 2023 Research & Scholarship Award.  Zhou’s research has been a consistent feature here at Turner Business over the past several months.  Over this academic year (2022-23), his research has been published by IEEE Transactions on Cloud Computing and IEEE Transactions on Network and Service Management, both A-level academic journals.  I addition to these, Zhou has also recently published in IEEE Transactions on Computers and Software: Practice and Experience, among others.  The third award, the 2023 Service Award, went to Brett Cotten, professor of finance. 

Like Jones, yesterday was huge for Cotten, as he also took home the 2023 CSU Excellence in Teaching Award.  Brett currently serves as faculty advisor for the Turner College’s chapter of the Financial Management Association.  He also served as faculty advisor to the CSU team that participated in the Nobias Investing Challenge, a global competition wherein students manage a simulated portfolio.  The CSU team finished 17^th overall against institutions such as Yale University, University of Pennsylvania, University of Chicago, University of Cambridge, Emory University, and others.  Lastly, Cotten currently serves on four CSU committees, including the Institutional Review Board, the Sustainability Committee, the Student Evaluation Committee, and the Athletic Committee. 

Professor of finance Uma Sridharan won the 2023 Online Teaching Award.  Within only a few months of her arrival in Columbus in July of 2016, Sridharan completed the required Quality Matters for teaching an online courses at CSU.  She also pioneered Quality Matters certification of online courses within the Turner College by obtaining Quality Matters certification for accounting principles, which, in 2016, was the first Quality Matters certified course in the Department of Accounting and Finance.  A nominee for CSU’s 2019 Educator of the Year Award, Sridharan co-led led a study abroad tour in Ireland that same year (with Neal Thomson).  Finally, Jennifer Pitts, professor of management information systems, won the 2023 Graduate Teaching Award.  For the past 15 years, Pitts has served as instructor of record for a graduate level information systems course that draws enrollments from both MBA and Organizational Leadership students.  She updated the course in the fall of 2022 to include more hands-on projects and a new presentation medium, Microsoft Sway, to research and present emerging technologies.  According to Organizational Leadership student Boyana Bjork, “This has been one of the most interesting and challenging classes I have taken.  It was a tough one for us from the MSOL program, but I would highly recommend it to anyone!”  Bjork’s opinion is shared by almost all of Pitts’ students, as her teaching evaluation average from fall semester was a 4.95 (out of 5).  Lastly, Pitts has also been instrumental in developing and administering the graduate assessment program over the past five years, part of which she served as the Turner College’s Graduate Programs Director.