By leaps and Bounds

New academic year brings twenty-two new additions to the faculty,
including a prestigious endowed professorship

Introduction by Steve McGregor  |  Profiles by Jeanne Spreier


Twenty-two new faculty members, including fifteen who are tenured or
tenure-track, are bringing new ideas and experience to The School of
Management this fall.


Noted researcher appointed to Andrew R. Cecil Endowed Chair

Dr. Gregory G. Dess, an internationally recognized expert on business
management strategy, joined The School of Management this fall. A full
professor in the Organization, Strategy, and International Management
area, Dr. Dess occupies the prestigious Andrew R. Cecil Endowed Chair.

"Greg Dess is an outstanding addition to a very talented group of
facultyŠ, many of whom have achieved national and international
recognition," Dean Dr. Hasan Pirkul says. "We are both fortunate and
delighted that he has joined us. By recruiting the very best educators and
researchers, and offering cutting-edge programsŠ, UTD will continue to
deliver high-quality, high-value management education to its students."

Most recently, Dr. Dess held the Carol Martin Gatton Endowed Chair in
Leadership and Strategic Manage-ment at the University of Kentucky. For
the past several years, he served as a visiting professor of management at
the Chinese University of Hong Kong and at the Norwegian School of
Management. He served at the Tuck School of Business at Dartmouth College
as well. He has been a Fulbright Scholar at the University of Oporto in
Portugal.

Dr. Dess is co-author of the textbook Strategic Management. He also
recently co-authored two practitioner-oriented books, Mission Critical:
Avoiding Common Strategic Traps, and Beyond Productivity: How Leading-Edge
Companies Achieve Superior Performance by Leveraging Their Human Capital.

His primary research interests lie in strategic management,
entrepreneurship, and knowledge management. He has published more than
thirty refereed journal articles and has served on the editorial boards of
several highly rated journals. He was recently inducted as a charter
member of the Academy of Management Journal's Hall of Fame.

Dr. Dess received his Bachelor of Industrial and Systems Engineering
degree from Georgia Tech, his MBA degree from Georgia State University,
and his PhD in Business Administration from the University of Washington.

The chair to which Dr. Dess has been appointed is named in honor of the
late Dr. Andrew R. Cecil for his long-standing support of education and
UTD. The chair recognizes an outstanding scholar who epitomizes Dr.
Cecil's commitment to the basic principles of ethics. Dr. Cecil, a past
president of the Southwestern Legal Foundation, is also remembered in an
annual lecture series at UTD that addresses the topic of ethical values in
a free society. - S.M.


Sumit Majumdar If the topic is telecommunications, Dr. Sumit Majumdar will
know the issue at hand, whether it's pricing decisions, investment
strategies, regulatory impacts on companies' performance, or a host of
other concerns. "I have been working on strategy issues in the
telecommunications sector generally for the past decade," says Dr.
Majumdar. A full professor of Managerial Economics and Strategy, he
received his doctorate in strategic management and organization from the
University of Minnesota. "The issues that I am interested in deal with
firms' actual activities and behavior.Š My research has been heavily
grounded in the analysis of firms' data, and this has always involved
close connections and collaborations with firms," he says. At UTD, Dr.
Majumdar expects to establish ties with local companies, as he did most
recently as chairman of strategic management at the University of London.
He says he is leaving behind "a range of company connections that have
been mutually beneficial in generating research ideas as well as solutions
to corporate problems." Among graduate-level classes he will be teaching
are telecommunications strategy and industrial organization.

Michael Oliff Dr. Oliff has seen the inner workings of a multitude of
global companies and has an acute sense of the issues these corporations
face. He is interested in researching those topics during his tenure as a
visiting professor of Information Systems and Operations Management. "My
research focuses on the question, 'What keeps dominant companies
dominant?' " says Dr. Oliff, who received his PhD in management science
from Clemson University. He wants to know how companies create value with
customers, build distinctive competencies, and establish high-performance
teams. Dr. Oliff previously was director and executive committee member of
IMD in Lausanne, Switzerland, where he managed that institute's research
and development program. It included seventy-five professionals, ten
institutional projects, and forty educational programs. While at IMD, Dr.
Oliff directed the Manufacturing 2000 R&D Program that enlisted support
from twenty corporations, including Audi, BP, Nokia, Sony, and IBM. He is
also founder and president of The Phoenix Performance Group, a
Dallas-based corporate development company. At UTD, Dr. Oliff is teaching
graduate and executive level classes that include business strategy and
change management.

Kathryn Stecke Joining the Information Systems and Operations Management
faculty at UTD's School of Management, Dr. Kathryn Stecke arrives from the
University of Michigan, where she had been associate professor of
operations management since 1985. While there, Dr. Stecke also held a
number of short-term assignments at universities overseas, including in
Australia, Hungary, and Hong Kong. At UTD, she will continue her research
in an Continued from previous page area that first caught her attention
when she was a doctoral student at Purdue University. "There are many
types of various operational problems associated with highly automated
flexible manufacturing systems," she says. "Solving these would help
companies better and more efficiently use their very capital-intensive
equipment." Dr. Stecke started working toward her industrial engineering
PhD by looking at specific problems. "As the systems become more advanced,
the problems companies need to address evolve. Different approaches to
solve problems are needed for different types of these automated systems."
A full professor, Dr. Stecke is teaching a core MBA operations management
class and is offering a new graduate level elective on flexible
manufacturing strategies.

____________

Chris Kirby Dr. Kirby's research is of interest to anyone worried about
recent stock market returns. "I'm currently investigating the effect of
time-varying volatility on portfolio selection and hedging decisions,"
says the School's new associate professor in Finance. "This has the
potential to yield new insights on how portfolio managers can exploit
volatility models to improve their investment performance." A recent paper
he wrote, "The Economic Value of Volatility Timing," was nominated for the
2001 best paper prize at the Journal of Finance. The winner of that prize
was fellow SOM professor, Yexiao Xu. Dr. Kirby, who received his PhD in
business administration from Duke University, returns to UTD after a
two-and-a-half-year stint at the University of New South Wales in
Australia. He is teaching classes in investment management at
undergraduate and graduate levels.

Jane Salk While trying to determine the underlying reasons for
dissatisfaction and conflict at a joint British-Italian venture, Dr. Salk
became fascinated with a culture's influence on organizations.
"Individuals (in that venture) stubbornly stuck to their expectations and
styles even when they acknowledged it was probably ineffective," she
recalls. That experience guides her current research interests, which deal
with how to connect strategic needs with the management of human resources
and the development of international work teams. Since 1995, she has been
teaching at ESSEC Business School in France. At UTD, Dr. Salk, who
received her doctorate in management at MIT, is an associate professor in
Organization, Strategy, and International Management. She teaches
undergraduate and graduate classes related to international management and
leads SOM's doctoral seminar in international management.

____________

Jayatirtha Asundi When Dr. Asundi was working as a software engineer,
before he began graduate school, he noticed an interesting practice that
piqued his curiosity. Software engineers, via their design decisions, were
making economic decisions that impacted their companies. But these impacts
were unknown or hidden to their managers. "This problem highlighted the
need for interdisciplinary work to address [it]," he says. As an
Information Systems assistant professor, Dr. Asundi will focus his
research on understanding decision-making in organizations that use and
develop information systems, and he hopes to tie technical issues with
economic and organizational issues. Dr. Asundi, who received his doctorate
from Carnegie Mellon University's Department of Engineering and Public
Policy, teaches graduate and undergraduate courses related to software.

Octavian  V. Carare Dr. Carare is interested in auctions, specifically
online auctions, and how to use data from those auctions to determine
product demand. "My undergraduate degree is in electrical engineering,"
says Dr. Carare, who received his doctorate in economics from Rutgers
University. "I have been looking at ways in which engineering and
economics may interact. The design, analysis, and implementation of
auctions - Internet auctions in particular - put both engineering and
economics to work." Dr. Carare, an assistant professor in the Managerial
Economics area, is teaching managerial economics to graduate and
undergraduate students. He anticipates teaching classes in the future on
the economics of information and economics of the Internet.

Sujoy Chakravarty Coming to UTD with a special passion for teaching, Dr.
Chakravarty is leading undergraduate students through their first course
in management information systems. "More than any awards I have received,"
says Dr. Chakravarty, an Information Systems assistant professor, "I feel
the energy from class discussion and learning something new every day has
helped both my students and me grow." He last taught at Purdue University,
where he received his doctorate in economics. Dr. Chakravarty's interest
in the economics of information, goods, and services will guide his future
research. "This field is hard to characterize in the [same] way one can
for a bricks-and-mortar economy.ŠThese new paradigms in thinking pose a
challenge for scholars."

Kutsal Dogan Kutsal Dogan returns to The School of Management as an
Information Systems assistant professor. Several years ago, Dr. Dogan
started his doctoral studies here. Later, he completed them at the
University of Florida, where he received a PhD in decision and information
sciences. Back at UTD, his research will focus on analytical modeling of
electronic commerce and information systems. "My research aims to improve
a firm's pricing decisions," he says. Dr. Dogan's undergraduate degree in
management engineering was "quite quantitative and, surprisingly, very
research oriented," he recalls. This nurtured in him a strong interest in
research. Students in his undergraduate and graduate level classes at UTD
will be happy to learn that while at the University of Florida, Dr. Dogan
received high teaching evaluations that led to his appointment to the
business college's teaching committee.

Mark LaPlante Mutual funds continue to be the means by which most
Americans invest in the stock market. "The mutual fund industry continues
to grow in terms of the number of funds and investors," says Dr. LaPlante,
an assistant professor of Finance, who received his doctorate in finance
and business economics at the University of Washington. "Research that
attempts to assess the behavior and performance of this industry can have
a real impact on how individuals allocate their investment dollars." Dr.
LaPlante, who will focus his research on investment strategies and
performance of mutual funds, says this represents a clear intersection
between financial theory and the actual practice of highly trained people.
At UTD, Dr. LaPlante initially is teaching undergraduate classes in
business finance.

Seung-Hyun Lee There's nothing like a heated debate to get an
investigation moving. Dr. Lee had several of those with colleagues who
"blindly argued," he says, "that it is not worthwhile to study a dead
economy." Dr. Lee, an assistant professor in Organization, Strategy, and
International Management, disagrees, believing there is much to learn from
analyzing the recent Asian economic crisis and why some companies continue
to perform well, despite tumultuous times. He also wants to know "why some
companies performing well in one environment cannot sustain their
performance level in a different environment." With a doctorate in
international business and strategic management from Ohio State
University, Dr. Lee is an assistant professor teaching undergraduate
international business classes.

Syam Menon Dr. Menon, an assistant professor in Information Systems, will
be researching telecommunications network design, particularly
applications that involve using optimization techniques. "I became
interested in this topic after reading research in the area," Dr. Menon
says. With his training in large-scale optimization, it was a natural area
for him to study. Dr. Menon most recently was an assistant professor at
Oklahoma State University, where he not only was on the faculty
recruitment committee but also was part of a task force that designed that
school's MBA courses in information technology. He received his doctorate
from the University of Chicago's Graduate School of Business and teaches
graduate level classes in telecommunications and network design.

Mark Vargus Dr. Vargus' research is particularly timely, as even a casual
reader of a newspaper's business pages will note. "I examine the role of
executives' stock-based incentives on their firm's accounting choices,"
says Dr. Vargus, who received his PhD in accounting from The Wharton
School of the University of Pennsylvania. "Some of my current projects
examine whether insider trading is related to firms' earnings quality, the
timing of special charges, and financial distress." This line of research,
says the assistant professor of Accounting and Information Management,
taps into his training in finance and accounting. Dr. Vargus comes to UTD
from the University of Southern California. He is teaching introductory
financial accounting classes.

Davina Vora Davina Vora's research interest dovetails with [the concerns
of] global companies that are looking to retain their top talent. "My
research can help companies better understand what motivates employees to
remain in a company or division, be committed to it, and perform well,"
says Ms. Vora, whose doctorate from the University of South Carolina will
be in international business and organizational behavior. Ms. Vora is
particularly interested in dual organizational identification, that is,
feeling a personal connection to two organizational units. "This topic
fascinates me because of the multiplicity of identifications that can
exist," says Ms. Vora, an assistant professor in Organization, Strategy,
and International Management. She is teaching graduate and undergraduate
classes in international business and international management.

Qin Zhang Any person making a purchase of just about any item could be the
topic of Dr. Qin Zhang's research. "I study the effect of consumers'
expectations about future prices of brands on their current purchase
decisions - whether, what, and how much to buy," says Dr. Zhang, who
earned her doctorate in marketing from Washington University in St. Louis.
Her undergraduate degree in economics emphasized both quantitative and
qualitative skills, she says, spurring her interest in marketing. As an
assistant professor in Marketing, Dr. Zhang is teaching undergraduate
classes in marketing management.

Ertunga Ozelkan Dr. Ozelkan understands that timing is everything. In his
most recent position, as customer service manager at i2 Technologies in
Irving, Texas, he ensured that i2 customers received the correct training
at the optimal time in order to get maximum benefits from the company's
software. At UTD this fall, where he is a visiting assistant professor in
Operations Management, he is teaching operations management and research
classes as well as supply-chain management. Dr. Ozelkan received his
doctorate in systems and industrial engineering from the University of
Arizona.

____________

Hans-Joachim Adler For the past four years, Senior Lecturer Hans-Joachim
Adler has worked with large international technology firms. He knows what
issues must be addressed for companies to compete in a worldwide arena. "I
will be working on an international technology (IT) marketing program that
will enable businesses of any size to compete successfully in a global
market," says Dr. Adler, who received his doctorate in information
processing from the University of Lyon in France. Dr. Adler found that, in
recent years, companies have focused on technology without developing a
professional marketing plan that communicates to customers the benefits of
their product or service. In The School of Management's Information
Systems and Operations Management area, Dr. Adler teaches IT and
telecommunications classes at both graduate and undergraduate levels.

Arthur Agulnek After working more than thirty years with tax-related
issues, Mr. Agulnek brings his vast experience and knowledge to students
who are taking classes with him through the Accounting and Information
Management area. Before retiring as a tax partner in Ernst & Young LLP's
southwest area office, Mr. Agulnek worked with clients on international
tax issues and advised executives on financial and tax implications of
global transfers. Moving to the classroom as a senior lecturer is a
natural transition, Mr. Agulnek says. "I was always involved in the firm's
education programs and had responsibility for developing both in-house and
outside programs. . . . [After retiring,] I wanted to spend some time
doing something I was interested in but never had the time to do."

Tiffany Bortz Ms. Bortz, a visiting senior lecturer in the Accounting and
Information Management area, has real-world experience to share with her
School of Management students. As an audit manager with
PricewaterhouseCoopers LLP, she planned and coordinated all phases of an
audit, supervised staff, handled clients from telecommunications,
financial, and not-for-profit areas, and worked with SEC requirements and
reporting. Ms. Bortz, a CPA, is teaching undergraduate accounting classes
and a graduate-level financial reporting course this fall.

Mary Beth Goodrich Mary Beth Goodrich lives the classes she teaches for
the Accounting and Information Management area. As an auditor for the past
five years with Citigroup, Ms. Goodrich has done risk assessments, audit
scope development and planning, fraud investigations, and a multitude of
special projects, including those involving Internet-linked software
dealing with human resources, benefits, and payroll. Ms. Goodrich received
an MBA with a concentration on internal auditing from Louisiana State
University. As a senior lecturer at UTD, she uses her real-world
experience when teaching various undergraduate accounting classes.

Anishka Olsztynska Dr. Olsztynska, a visiting senior lecturer from Poland,
will be able to address issues of marketing and management in the emerging
economies of Eastern Europe. She is particularly interested in internal
marketing. "While cooperating with several companies [that] operate in the
Polish market, I noticed that they searched for new knowledge that they
could use to motivate their employees to be more customer-oriented," she
says. "Using a marketing-like approach toward employees is becoming
crucial in the rapidly changing world." Dr. Olsztynska, who received her
doctorate in management and marketing from the Poznan University of
Economics in Poland, is teaching undergraduate classes in organizational
behavior and international marketing.