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UPCOMING EVENTS

SPOTLIGHTS

FACULTY

 

Dr. Yu-Luen Ma

In fall 2017, as part of the 70th Anniversary of the teaching of insurance at the University of North Texas, the University reached a major milestone by hiring three noted scholars to join the program. The new scholars will join existing faculty members to elevate the program to national prominence. Among the new hires is Dr. Yu-Luen Ma who joins the faculty as the first holder of the Glen L. Taylor Professorship in Insurance.

The Glen L. Taylor Professorship in Insurance represents the culmination of decades of fundraising by alumni and friends of the insurance program to provide support to recruit and retain scholars in the insurance discipline.

The Glen L. Taylor Chair in Insurance was established to honor Dr. Glen L. Taylor. Dr. Taylor’s UNT career began as an undergraduate student in 1947. After receiving a doctorate in insurance from the Wharton School at the University of Pennsylvania, Dr. Taylor returned to UNT where he worked for more than three decades as a professor in the UNT College of Business. During his career, Dr. Taylor was a noted scholar and dedicated teacher who prepared generations of students for the insurance industry.

Don Medlin, UNT alumni and President and CEO of Scarborough, Medlin & Associates, and Dr. John H. Thornton, Regents Professor Emeritus of Insurance, worked with supporters of the insurance program at UNT to raise funds for the Chair to honor Dr. Taylor and to support the insurance program at UNT. READ MORE...

STUDENT

 

Ipinowula Adedokun

Ipinowula “Ipi” Adedokun, a junior majoring in finance, found his calling for helping others following last year’s July 7 ambush of police officers in downtown Dallas. 

Adedokun wanted to help children who lost parents that night, so he started a group in hopes that it could become a nonprofit to lend him credibility. This past June, just a few weeks before the one-year anniversary of the shooting, the organization – World Apparel Co. – became designated as a domestic nonprofit corporation. About half of the proceeds from online purchases of T-shirts and trendy dresses, jackets and hats goes to aid children’s charities or individual families.

“‘A purchase with a purpose,’” Adedokun said a friend calls it. “I’m trying to persuade my age group that your life can affect millions just by you purchasing a shirt. A lot of people don’t like to donate or because they think they cannot afford to, but yet, they still have money for other things that they want to do, like shopping.”

The organization has since expanded to help children in a multitude of causes globally and is currently working on a campaign for the water crisis in Flint, Michigan. However, Adedokun says the spark for his nonprofit started last summer as he watched the violence unfurl on social media and television. He made a vow that good should and could come from that tragedy. READ MORE...

 

IN THE NEWS

First-year doctoral student takes home top prize at International Society of Franchising Conference

 
Congratulations to Swati Panda for winning the best doctoral student paper and a $500 cash award at the 31st annual International Society of Franchising Conference held in Atlanta, Georgia this past June.

Panda’s award-winning paper focused on how franchisors attracts potential franchisees. “We were trying to explore how franchisors signal their quality to prospective franchisees. This is an important question as the relationship manifests in an environment of risk and uncertainty – specifically for the franchisee who is at a greater risk as compared to the franchisor,” explained Panda.

The first-year doctoral student in the Department of Marketing and Logistics worked with Dr. Audhesh Paswan, College of Business Academic Associate Dean, to co-author the winning paper. “He helped me frame the arguments and offered a broad overview as to how the paper should be positioned. It was with his constant guidance, support and motivation that we were able to complete the paper in time,” said Panda.
 
The annual ISoF Conference is the premier conference for researchers in franchising and Panda's recognition speaks volumes to the quality of her work. 

ITDS selected for National Centers of Academic Excellence in Cybersecurity (CAE-C) Grant

The Department of Information, Technology and Decision Sciences has been selected to receive the National Centers of Academic Excellence in Cybersecurity Grant, funded by the National Security Agency.

This federal grant encourages cybersecurity education professionals to use innovative approaches, and will bring the College of Business more than $230,000 to employ such techniques in the coming fiscal year. 

With the help of the NSA, UNT will continue its excellence in academic research and grantsmanship to keep its Tier One status -- continuing to advance education through innovation. 

TxDPS contracts with UNT criminal justice and logistics faculty for racial profiling study

UNT’s logistics and criminal justice faculty are coming together to help the Texas Department of Public Safety (TxDPS) combat racial profiling. TxDPS awarded UNT a $194,273, nine-month contract to study 15 million records of the state’s data to determine whether racial profiling happens during traffic stops.                        

“The study will provide empirical, unbiased evidence of whether or not racial profiling occurs within the TxDPS by utilizing the latest validated analytic techniques for racial profiling assessment,” says Eric Fritsch, chair of the Department of Criminal Justice, and the lead UNT researcher for the project.

Since December 2016, Fritsch, along with Chad Trulson, criminal justice professor, David Nowicki, director of the Center for Logistics Research and Education, and Wesley Randall, chair of the Department of Marketing and Logistics, have been assessing traffic stop data from 2011 to 2016. They are tasked with looking for evidence of racial profiling by TxDPS highway patrol officers and commercial motor vehicle enforcement officers. This includes any racial or ethnic disparities in traffic stops, searches or other post-stop actions at the state, regional or district levels.

UNT students from the logistics, computer science and engineering and criminal justice programs will assist with data management in organizing the project, which will be among the largest racial profiling studies in the country. READ MORE... 

Dr. Gopala Ganesh receives Outstanding Educator Award

Dr. Gopala Ganesh, UNT College of Business Department of Marketing and Logistics professor, was selected as the 2017 Association of Collegiate Marketing Educators (ACME)/Federation of Business Disciplines Outstanding Educator.

This highly-revered distinction was presented to Ganesh at the ACME conference in March and is a testament to his contributions to the field of marketing. 

Ganesh has published more than forty journal articles and has received more than a dozen other awards and recognitions in his professional career, including his recent Southwestern Business Deans Association
nomination for the 2017 Bizzell Award. 

Ganesh's research and conference contributions help expand the breadth of marketing knowledge in and out of the classroom and are just one example of why he was chosen as this year's Outstanding Educator.

THE MORE YOU KNOW

UNT professors research how forecasting recessions can play a role in increased annual returns

Does it make sense to change your investments if you see a recession coming? Possibly so, but you'll need some economics know-how.

The bottom line is fairly simple. If you can get your prediction of the beginning or end of an economic cycle correct, then it could boost your portfolio returns substantially, according to some recently published research.

An investor who could predict the start or end of a recession and then invest accordingly would add 2 percentage points to annual returns, according to a research paper from University of North Texas professors James A. Conover and Marilyn K. Wiley, along with University of Lewisville Professor David A. Dubofsky.

In the current world where 8 percent annual returns might look optimistic, adding 2 percent a year is a big deal.

Better still, there were gains to be made even for investors who changed their investments one month after the economic cycle turned from expansion to contraction (or vice versa), the report says.

The study was based on stock and bond returns as well as data on U.S. economic cycles over the period 1970 through 2015. The authors created a passive benchmark return weighted with stocks and short-term government bonds in proportion to how often the economy was growing or in recession, respectively. They then compared that benchmark to what the performance would have been if investors switched their portfolio entirely into government securities in a recession and entirely into stocks in an expansion. READ MORE...

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