Turner Business

Preparation for fall semester 2026 in the Turner College begins on Monday, August 3, as faculty begin the course planning process. On Tuesday, August 4, a CSU faculty and staff breakfast is scheduled for 8:00am through 9:30am in University Hall. After the breakfast, from 9:30am through 11:00am, CSU President Stuart Rayfield will deliver the annual Presidential Address. Then, from 11:30am through 1:00pm, CSU's academic colleges, including the Turner College, will hold organizational meetings across the two campuses. From 9:00am through 11:00am on Wednesday, August 5, the TSYS School of Computer Science will hold a faculty and staff meeting. Later that day, from 1:00pm through 2:30pm, the Turner College's Department of Management and Marketing will hold its faculty and staff meeting. On Thursday, August 6, the Turner College's Department of Accounting and Finance will hold its faculty and staff meeting from 11:00am through 12:30pm. Lastly, on Friday, August 7, the annual Fres...

According to Beau Evans' recent report for State Affairs Georgia , lottery revenues for Georgia preschools and the HOPE Scholarship rebounded this past fiscal year after recent dips sparked some alarms over possible future shortfalls for key state-funded education programs.  Ticket sales for the fiscal year that ended July 1 netted roughly $1.54 billion in proceeds for preschools and scholarships, topping last year’s collections by 5% and trailing only 2021 for the highest revenue haul since the lottery’s creation in 1992. This is good news for the Turner College, which has been suffering enrollment losses in recent semesters. The second item in this blog is an update to the Turner College's AACSB accreditation efforts. The Turner College is now one month beyond 3.5 years into its current AACSB accreditation cycle. While previous cycles have spanned five years, the AACSB now utilizes a six-year accreditation cycle. The bottom row of the table below shows where the Turner Colleg...

Cougar Clips recently announced that two Turner College faculty have moved on to other endeavors. These are Deborah Kidder , professor of management and former Dean of the Turner College, and Tom Tebeau , instructor of business law. Most readers of Turner Business are familiar with Kidder's move to Kutztown University, where she will take the reins as the new business school dean. Tebeau's future plans are unknown. The 2025-2026 employee parking permit expires July 31, 2026. As a reminder, parking permits are required, and parking citations will begin at the start of the semester. If parking fees are paid through payroll deduction – you do not have to renew annually. Your permit will automatically renew. Renewals are only required for new employees, part-time employees and anyone who does not pay via payroll deduction (you must renew online each year beginning August 1).

Christi Pennington Rubio ’99 did not initially envision her journey to becoming Colony Bank’s chief brand and business development officer when she began her studies at Columbus State University in 1994.  For the Columbus native and Glenwood School graduate, Columbus State was her first choice. She recounted changing majors three times, eventually landing on a business administration degree with a focus on marketing. She realized “this is just me” and credits Robin Snipes and Sandi Hortman for providing her with the academic marketing foundation she relies on professionally.  “Looking back, it was my first real exercise in professional experimentation,” she said of changing her major. “Your career will seldom follow a straight line. True success lies not in anchoring yourself to a rigid plan, but in the agility with which you embrace changing landscapes.”  Since graduating with her Turner College of Business & Technology degree, Rubio has built a marketing career b...

According to today's report for the Ledger-Enquirer by Jordyn Paul-Slater, Startup Columbus is turning its annual pitch competition into an economic development tool. Starting this year, the LaunchCon pitch competition will offer a relocation incentive for entrepreneurs outside the Columbus area, pairing cash with mentorship, investor connections and local business resources in hopes of convincing founders to build their companies and create jobs in Columbus. Applications for the competition opened this month and will close August 7. As in prior years, finalists will compete in a “Shark Tank”-style competition on November 13 at the Cunningham Center for a share of $40,000 in prize money. This year, however, if an entrepreneur from outside the Columbus region reaches the finals, Startup Columbus will offer a relocation package that includes $5,000 to relocate, introductions to investors, guaranteed one-on-one mentoring sessions, access to local service providers, and support durin...

Turner College economist Frank Mixon has been invited to guest edit a special issue of Economies titled "Labor Market Institutions." Labor market institutions are the formal and informal rules, organizations and policies that regulate employment, wage-setting and working conditions. Prominent examples in this topic include labor unions, minimum wage legislation, unemployment insurance and employment protection laws that dictate hiring and firing processes.  Economies is an international, peer-reviewed, journal that publishes mainly in the fields of development economics and macroeconomics. It also supports research in health economics, labor economics and regional economics. Stay connected to Turner Business for future posts on this assignment.

The Turner College is n ow hiring Peer Academic Leaders. Students seeking a  rewarding graduate assistantship may apply to join the Turner College in this capacity and help students succeed while earning a $6,000 stipend per semester, tuition assistance (fees not included), and a flexible schedule. Interested students may a pply today through the CSU Employment Portal.

CSU has partnered with Follett Higher Education to launch Cougar Outfitters, the university’s newly transformed on-campus retail and course materials destination. Operated by Follett, North America’s largest campus retailer, Cougar Outfitters represents a significant upgrade to both the in-person and online campus bookstore experience.  Most notably, the name “Cougar Outfitters”—chosen with input from student leaders—signals a shift from the traditional bookstore concept to a one-stop shop for every Cougar. Although its Main Campus location in the Davidson Student Center remains the same, the reimagined bookstore will elevate student success by offering affordable course materials and updated technology services, while also promoting campus spirit through a broader range of products and events.  “We are excited to launch this new chapter at Columbus State University,” said Kim Scranage, the university’s chief student officer. "Cougar Outfitters, through our partnership with Fo...

According to a new report by the Ledger-Enquirer 's Jordyn-Paul Slater, StartUP Columbus is now accepting applications for its LaunchCon Pitch Competition happening on November 13, 2026. The competition is a live business pitch event designed to give emerging entrepreneurs access to capital, exposure, and support as they work to grow their businesses. In conjunction with report, Executive Director Ben MacMinn stated that StartUP Columbus will again be partnering with the Turner College in hosting the event, during which the top-placed competitor will be awarded $40,000. MacMinn added that an added benefit of the competition is that the contestants will be pitching to a crowd of investors and peer entrepreneurs. Links to the LaunchCon application is available via StartUP Columbus' website.

With the Turner College opting to delay the search to replace former Dean Deborah Kidder , Acting Dean Tesa Leonce and Acting Associate Dean John Finley begin the 2026-2027 academic year with the titles "Interim Dean" and "Interim Associate Dean," respectively. CSU currently has a number of high-level position searches going, and the search for the new Turner College dean should join the group next month. Kidder, who was removed as Turner College dean late in fall semester 2025, is now the business school dean at Kutztown University. Last week CSU President Stuart Rayfield reported to the CSU community that the administration  continues to closely monitor enrollment and retention efforts, and that she is cautiously optimistic about the fall based on all the early indicators the central administration monitors daily. "As the new fiscal year begins, our budgets serve as an important reminder of how these efforts are tied to our bottom line," Rayfield explai...

A new study by Turner College MISM professor Insung Hwang and Lehigh University's Andreea Kiss, Naomi Rothman and Willy Das  investigates the effects of entrepreneurial subjective ambivalence on a form of adaptive action referred to as venture idea revision. Building on the affect-as-information perspective, Hwang and his co-authors propose that entrepreneurial subjective ambivalence will increase venture idea revision by increasing information search behaviors. The results of a longitudinal, repeated-measures field study based on 175 entrepreneurs in a top incubator program demonstrate that when entrepreneurs experience higher subjective ambivalence (compared to lower ambivalence) in response to mentor feedback about their new ventures, they engage in higher levels of venture idea revision. Hwang et al. theorize and find that this increase in venture idea revision arises because subjective ambivalence is positively associated with more intense and broader information search behav...

TSYS School alum Kaylee Dodson is building a career protecting what matters most in today’s digital world: data. As an information governance analyst at Aflac, she plays a key role in safeguarding sensitive information and helping her organization stay secure in an increasingly complex cyber landscape. Her path to this role was not traditional, but it was shaped by determination, mentorship, and the opportunities she found at CSU.  When Dodson enrolled at CSU, she initially planned to study finance until she found a direction that felt right. That changed when she was introduced to the university’s Cybersecurity Nexus Program. With no prior background in technology, stepping into cybersecurity required a steep learning curve that she called “a complete culture shock, and my brain kind of melted at first.”  Her path between high school in her native Fayetteville, Georgia, and college wasn’t a straight one. She took a break from school after starting her college studies to work...

We continue our look at enrollment issues in the Turner College's graduate business programs by looking back to a Turner Business post from 11-August of 2025 . That post examined SCH production by Turner College faculty across all fall 2025 course sections in the MBA and MSOL programs. As that post noted, all sections from fall 2025 generated 1,233 SCH. The table below provides the same information for fall 2026, but in a slightly different way. The fall 2025 numbers are included for comparison, while some revenue figures are added to the analysis. The shaded entries denote staffing adjustments. As the table above indicates, SCH production in all but one of the MBA and MSOL program course sections for the fall 2026 is down, and in some cases quite dramatically so. While total SCH production for fall 2025 was 1,233, the same set of courses are generating only 801 SCH this coming fall (i.e., fall 2026). Last fall, tuition and fees from these courses came to $557,316. So far, this fa...

Yesterday, Turner Business began an in-depth look at fall 2026 enrollment in its business programs. The first two posts concerned the organization's graduate business programs . This particular entry focuses on some of the undergraduate course offerings for fall 2026. As shown in the table below, six fall 2026 course sections of various subjects currently have low enrollments, ranging from a low of four students to a high of 11 students. Using the recent decision to cancel all MSOL courses with fewer than 11 students, four of these six sections would have been cancelled last week.   The table above also shows the current tuition and fee generation of each of the six low enrollment courses. These range from a low of only $5,088 to a high of only $13,992. The total tuition and fee generation from the menu above is only $66,144, and covering these six course sections requires use of two full-time faculty. In contrast, the four sections of MSOL courses that were cancelled last week w...

This morning's post covered the faltering enrollments in the Turner College's MSOL program. This afternoon we continue our series on declining enrollments in the Turner College's business programs with a look at its MBA course offerings for fall semester 2026. The table below shows the four course offerings for fall 2026 and their current enrollments. Based on this morning's blog post, if the first offering shown in the table below had an "MSOL" prefix, it would, with only 10 enrollees, have been cancelled last week. Two of the other three courses currently stand with only 11 students enrolled, while the largest section currently has only 13 enrollees. Based on in-state tuition, the Turner College's MBA program will be generating $61,020 in tuition and fees this fall. Based on the numbers reported in this morning's post , the Turner College's MSOL program will be generating $294,252 in tuition and fees this fall.

The past academic year (i.e., 2025-26) was marked by indicators pointing to troubling trends regarding CSU's enrollment. New information paints a similar picture for the beginning of the 2026-27 academic year. Turner College administrators recently cancelled four fall semester course sections in its MSOL program. These sections, which include MSOL 6135, MSOL 6155, MSOL 6165 and MSOL 6175, were cancelled due to low enrollment. Two of these sections had 10 students enrolled on the date of cancellation, while the remaining two course sections enrolled seven and five students, respectively. This decision establishes a minimum enrollment of at least 11 students, if not more, for fall business courses to be considered populated enough to avoid cancellation. To further consider what these decisions mean for the MSOL program, the table below shows current enrollments by course section for fall 2026. Note that with the above course section cancellations, there are no courses for which multi...

On 6-April of this year we posted a blog about the academic achievements of Turner College student Indigo Pullen . Recently, CSU produced a press release on Pullen's extraordinary scholastic accomplishments. Below is that press release from Averi Morton.  Indigo Pullen is balancing more than most college students ever will.  As a 46S sergeant in the U.S. Army, Pullen serves as a public affairs mass communication specialist, producing news stories, capturing photography and video, and sharing the Army’s mission with audiences around the world.  “One of my favorite aspects of public affairs work is being able to capture authentic moments and humanize experiences people may never personally see,” she said. “I love telling stories that make people feel connected to others and understood.”  In addition to being deployed in the Middle East on active duty, she’s working toward earning two degrees at Columbus State University: a bachelor of business administration in entrep...

Turner College alum Mat Edmunds has been named the new Director of Graduate Admissions for the J. Mack Robinson College of Business at Georgia State University. Edmunds, who earned an MSOL degree from the Turner College in 2019, has spent the past six  years as the Director of Graduate Admissions for the Stetson-Hatcher School of Business at Mercer University. Congratulations to Mat on this phenomenal professional achievement.

Turner College professor of finance Uma Sridharan is completing her last semester on the faculty at CSU. Sridharan joined the Turner College (as Chair of the Department of Accounting and Finance) about 10 years ago from Lander University. She won the 2023 Turner College Online Teaching Award, while, four years earlier (in 2019), she received CSU's Educator of the Year Award. Over the course of her academic career, Sridharan published research in Financial Management , Financial Review , International Journal of Auditing and Supply Chain Management , all classified as A-level journal outlets. She closes her academic career with 675 Google Scholar citations, a number that will continue to climb in the years to come. Turner Business congratulates Sridharan on her retirement and wishes her the best going forward.