Learning from the best

Wade M. Chumney
Cecil B. Day Term Professor of Business Ethics and Law

Academic Areas: Ethics, Law

__________________________

J.D., University of Virginia School of Law
Hometown: Charleston, SC

Invaluable corporate research experience

Wade Chumney is an avid basketball player who, despite an incredible lack of height and talent, had the good fortune to play college basketball in England ("they're not very good over there", says Chumney). Early on, Chumney learned that collaboration and teamwork are the keys to business success – and he applies those same skills to research and education.

"My research focuses on the interplay between ethics, law and technology in the management field. I have published on the patenting of tax strategies by financial firms and its potential impact on the development of new technologies. I have also written about the regulation of company online privacy policies by the Federal Trade Commission and the repercussions for data privacy and security for all businesses. Additionally, I have published on ethical and legal issues surrounding the iPhone trademark and its impact on future marketing practices by technology companies."

A special place

"Georgia Tech is special because of the diverse student body it brings together and combines with business area experts."

Nishant Dass
Assistant Professor

Academic Area: Finance

__________________________

PhD, INSEAD
Hometown: Hapur, India

Impressive strides

"I think this is a very exciting time to be at Georgia Tech," says Nishant Dass. "Thanks to the hard work of Dean Salbu and his executive team, the Scheller College of Business has taken impressive strides over the last few years. Georgia Tech is now ranked among the top MBAs in the country. Given the Institute's strength in engineering, a mix of management and technology is our forté."

And Dass is proud that the Finance course offerings further strengthen the program. "In Finance, we offer an exciting array of electives to choose from – Corporate Restructuring, Derivative Securities, Fixed Income, International Finance, and Investments, etc."

Dass uses his background to teach an MBA International elective that incorporates the principles of international finance and applies them to the study of corporate finance. "The course also incorporates elements of ethics throughout. The lens through which we study ethics in Finance is corporate governance. By the end of this elective, students are expected to make basic decisions on international finance problems managers of multinational corporations face, while being mindful of any ethical dilemmas."

An enriching atmosphere

"Our MBA student population is extremely diverse, which especially enriches the classroom experience. Working with peers from different career and cultural backgrounds proves to be a very valuable experience. Our MBA class is relatively small, which makes the experience more personal."

As a transplant from India, Dass loves the Atlanta area. "One of the sometimes-overlooked strengths of Georgia Tech is its location. Located in a metropolitan city enhances the employment opportunities, especially for Finance graduates because all the major banks and consulting firms have a significant presence in Atlanta. In fact, for companies located in the South, Atlanta is the obvious destination for banking and consulting services. Besides that, Atlanta is a great city to be in as it offers a lot more than a small college town but is not as hectic and crazy as the larger cities on the coasts."

Cheryl Gaimon
Regents' Professor

Academic Areas: Operations Management,
Management of Technology

__________________________

PhD, Carnegie Mellon University
Hometown: Brooklyn, NY

Strength through diversity

Cheryl Gaimon believes students don't come to Georgia Tech to learn from a book – they come to Georgia Tech to learn about what's going on around them and to learn what's not yet in the book. It's one of the reasons that Gaimon also teaches non-management students who are interested in management, for example, aerospace engineers who want to understand how technology and innovation relate to marketing and operations or technology management.

In her Management of Technology class, Gaimon fosters an interactive dialogue based on the perspectives of her students' diverse backgrounds. Through a series of industry themes, students work on case studies and solve real problems in varied topics such as new product development, project management, strategic flexibility, IT, application of new technology, innovation or implementation of strategies for a variety of industries (e.g. pharma, aerospace, automotive, banking, consulting, etc.).

Gaimon finds that, "as interdisciplinary student teams work on team building activities, it quickly becomes apparent how everyone has a different perspective of how one company operates – everyone offers a different insight." It's Gaimon's goal to make the class comfortable for engineers and scientists who are challenged by unstructured formats. "Engineers and scientists are not used to class discussion and business writing, so sometimes it's challenging to help them break the ice – learning something different than the traditional – and have them enjoy the class."

Koert van Ittersum
Associate Professor of Marketing
Marketing Area Coordinator

Academic Area: Marketing

__________________________

PhD, Wageningen University
Hometown: Apeldoorn, The Netherlands

Invaluable corporate research experience

As part of a longitudinal, multidisciplinary research collaboration with Georgia Tech's School of Psychology and Deere & Company, Koert van Ittersum works to improve methods to predict the acceptance of new products and technologies. "I have proposed a new and unique measure - cumulative timed intent – for assessing customers' intention to adopt a new product or technology. Through research, I have shown this measure more accurately predicts future behavior than do the intent measures social scientists have used for almost five decades. It further offers accurate predictions of when the behavior is most likely to occur."

Van Ittersum also brings corporate research projects into the classroom. In collaboration with The Morrison Agency, his students have worked on research projects for Air2Web, Autotrader.com, McGregor, and Mitsubishi Electric. As part of these projects, students conduct extensive brand audits and develop strategic branding plans, which have been presented to the management of the companies involved.

Smart students who work hard

Van Ittersum has been impressed by the strong work ethic of his students. "One of the many things I appreciate about Georgia Tech and our MBA students is their down-to-earth mentality – they roll up their sleeves, work hard and make things happen. Teaching smart students is enjoyable. Teaching smart students who are willing to roll up their sleeves and make things happen is truly gratifying. I get the biggest kick out of seeing when things click, when they really get it, and start challenging me based on the materials I taught them."

Charles M. Mulford
Invesco Chair and Professor of Accounting

Academic Area: Accounting
__________________________

PhD, Florida State University
Hometown: Bradenton, FL

Georgia Tech's Financial Analysis Lab

Charles Mulford spearheads the Financial Analysis Lab that conducts research on issues of financial reporting and analysis. "Unbiased information is vital to effective investment decision-making. Accordingly, we think that independent research organizations, such as our own, have an important role to play in providing information to market participants."

"Because our lab is housed within a university, all of our research reports have an educational quality, as they are designed to impart knowledge and understanding to those who read them. Our focus is on issues that we believe will be of interest to a large segment of stock market participants. Depending on the issue, we may focus our attention on individual companies, groups of companies, or on large segments of the market at large."

"A recurring theme in our work is the identification of reporting practices that give investors a misleading signal, whether positive or negative, of corporate earning power. We define earning power as the ability to generate a sustainable stream of earnings that is backed by cash flow. Accordingly, our research may look into reporting practices that affect either earnings or cash flow, or both. At times, our research may look at stock prices generally, though from a fundamental and not technical point of view."

More than 900 financial professionals at a wide-ranging collection of firms, including investment firms, commercial and investment banks, hedge funds, research shops, financial publications and universities read the research published by the Lab.

Prepared students make smarter students

"Our students are smart and very motivated. They come to class prepared for a meaningful educational experience," says Mulford. He believes that because the Georgia Tech MBA program is a small program, it provides a unique and intimate, non-competitive learning environment. "Our students work and play hard as they strive to use their graduate education opportunity to improve themselves and their careers."

Frank T. Rothaermel

The Angel and Stephen M. Deedy Professor of Strategic Management & Sloan Industry Studies Fellow

Academic Area: Strategic Management

__________________________

PhD, University of Washington

Innovative leadership skills

Frank Rothaermel's research interests lie in the areas of strategy, innovation and entrepreneurship. He has conducted extensive fieldwork and executive training with leading corporations including Amgen, Daimler, Eli Lilly, GE Energy Systems, GE Healthcare, ICOS, McKesson, Microsoft, and Thomson Financial.

Bloomberg BusinessWeek recently named Rothaermel one of Georgia Tech's Prominent Faculty in their national survey of business schools and The Kauffman Foundation views him as one of the world's 75 thought leaders in entrepreneurship and innovation. Rothaermel regularly translates his research findings for wider audiences in articles that appeared in The Wall Street Journal, MIT Sloan Management Review, and elsewhere.

Paving the way for students

Rothaermel also guides the Integrative Management Project, a core class and a strong differentiator for Georgia Tech's MBA program. "With support of the Jones MBA Career Center, we organize 14-20 live cases each year in which student teams conduct a complete strategic analysis of a company. We arrange for executive support that the students can interact with throughout the semester. Company executives are present on campus when students give their final presentation. This course has led to numerous internships and full-time employment opportunities."

Participating companies, include:

Innovative students

To Rothaermel, the success of the partnership between students and corporations on the Integrative Management Project can be attributed directly to a passion for innovative solutions. "The MBA program at Georgia Tech is special because it's where innovation and business meet. It's where we train leaders for the knowledge-based world of the 21st century."

"I really enjoy teaching in the MBA program, because of the well-educated and highly motivated students. Georgia Tech is not your vanilla business school, because when teaching a case study, for example, there is a good chance that one of the class members was intimately involved in this industry or even on the very same project, given the diverse work experience of many of our students."

Sandra Slaughter

Professor of Information Technology Management
and Alton M. Costley Chair

Academic Area: Information Technology

__________________________

PhD, Carlson School of Management, University of Minnesota

Hometown: Milwaukee, WI

Learning in tandem

Sandra Slaughter loves to travel and explore – and whenever possible, by foot or bicycle so she can get the full, three-dimensional experience of sight, sound, and smell. Slaughter and her husband were even in the Guinness Book of World Records in 1993 for traveling 18,022.5 miles around the world on a tandem bicycle.

It's that same spirit of hands-on, ground-level adventure that drives Slaughter in the classroom and in her research. "Georgia Tech is an entrepreneurial, innovative university that fosters new ways of thinking and inspires students to become thought-leaders in their fields of study," says Slaughter.

"What is unique about Georgia Tech as a premier research institute, is students can get involved in the knowledge producing activities and special projects with companies. This is an exciting process and gives students an opportunity to learn how to translate creative ideas into valuable products and services."

To that end, Slaughter is currently working on various, concurrent research projects with companies relating to IT project management. One study, with a major software vendor, evaluates the value of soft skills for IT project managers. Another study, with a major company in Atlanta, looks at how profiling can help with managing project complexity. The third study examines conflict in a major IT project that spans industry and academia to consider what causes conflicts to erupt and how these conflicts can be mitigated.

Innovative skills

Slaughter believes that Georgia Tech students have a combination of skills that make them successful – not only in the classroom, but in real-life job settings. "MBA students at Georgia Tech have a unique blend of what I would call 'soft skills' (they are personable, work well on teams, good communicators) and 'hard skills' (they have the technical and quantitative 'smarts' that are necessary to survive at a place like Georgia Tech). This gives our MBA students a real edge in the job market, as the blend of soft and hard skills is very relevant to creating new firms and innovating in existing firms."

Beril Toktay

Nancy J. and Larry P. Huang Associate Professor

Academic Area: Operations Management

__________________________

PhD, Massachusetts Institute of Technology

Hometown: Izmir, Turkey

Sustainability as a business strategy

When Beril Toktay first joined Georgia Tech, she was looking for ways to contribute to the strategic mission of the Institute – and sustainability education was an obvious choice that she enthusiastically embraced since it's been her research focus for the last decade. Specifically, Toktay created the Business Strategies for Sustainability elective to benefit MBA students.

"I introduce students to critical environmental issues we face today and teach them about the many strategies that businesses can use to fuse business sustainability and environmental sustainability," says Toktay. "Georgia Tech is doing a phenomenal job of developing the technologies that will help solve critical environmental issues such as pollution, water scarcity, and unsustainable levels of energy and resource consumption that face the world today."

Toktay's course is designed to complement the technological knowledge base of our students with an understanding of how businesses can deploy technology within business frameworks that are mindful of sustainability issues. Toktay strongly believes that, "businesses must take leadership in solving environmental issues; they cannot be solved with a compliance focus only."

Open mindedness

Through her courses, Toktay strives to give tomorrow's business leaders the tools and mindset to lead the way in sustainability. Her students are "refreshingly open to new ideas and have a tremendous work ethic and enthusiasm for learning. It's a great pleasure to interact with them."

Nicholas (Nick) Voigt

Professor of the Practice, Global Leadership and Innovation

Specializations: International Business and Entrepreneurship

__________________________

Academic Area: International Business

Hometown: Riverside, CA

Global leadership begins at home

Even though Nick Voigt was born in California, his life has always revolved around Georgia Tech. After taking early retirement from Hewlett-Packard, Voigt joined the Georgia Tech faculty. It was like coming home again. Voigt received both his undergraduate and Master's degree from Georgia Tech. Both his children graduated from Georgia Tech, and he's had Tech football season tickets for over 25 years (section 225). When he's not watching football on a Saturday afternoon, Voigt has a much different perspective as a global leader and educator.

"In today's world, all business is global," says Voigt. "To give our students experience in the global world we offer a Global Consultancy elective called the International Practicum. For the past five years, the students participating in the International Practicum have engaged in 'real world' consulting projects to destinations like Argentina, Czech Republic, Costa Rica, Ireland, Japan and Singapore."

"These projects can be with multi-national companies such as HP and IBM, or smaller local companies that look to the Georgia Tech MBA team for business guidance and expertise. The highlight of the International Practicum is a trip to the company location during the College's spring break."

Solving global problems

To Voigt, there's no substitute for practical, hands-on experience combined with instruction from faculty who have both outstanding academic credentials and strong business experience.

"In business, a Georgia Tech graduate has the reputation of being a hard working problem solver. When I was with Hewlett-Packard, I always looked for Georgia Tech graduates for the difficult problems – because I knew they had gone through a rigorous academic experience at Tech and absolutely knew how to get things done."