The Terry College of Business presented its annual awards for outstanding teaching, research and service to five faculty members in December. The award winners were chosen based on nominations by their peers.
Meghan Skira, an associate professor of economics, received the Teaching Excellence Award. The award recognizes tenure-track faculty for demonstrating excellence in the classroom. Skira annually teaches Honors sections of the Principles of Microeconomics course, which plays a foundational role in the curriculum for every Terry College undergraduate, as well as Labor Economics in the PhD program. Her student evaluations reveal near-perfect scores for enthusiasm, preparedness, use of class time and encouraging participation.
Many students seek her mentorship after taking her microeconomics course and have moved on to highly respected graduate programs, work at top consulting firms and investment banks, and won national scholarships, including Rhodes, Marshall, Truman and Beinecke scholars.
As a member of the economics faculty, she launched the Women in Economics initiative in 2018 and advises the student organization that grew out of the effort. WiE has helped increase female enrollment in the major and supports classmates through professional development and community activities.
Jennifer Rivers, a senior lecturer in the J.M. Tull School of Accounting, received the Instructional Excellence Award. Rivers is a key figure in the undergraduate accounting program as one of the instructors of the first core class that each accounting major takes. Rivers has taught virtually every student who has taken Intermediate Financial Accounting over the past 13 years, compassionately coaching the new accounting students and helping those who struggle to rise to the challenge and achieve success. In addition, she has taught Principles of Accounting I and Financial Reporting and Analysis.
She serves as faculty advisor to Beta Alpha Psi, assisting student officers who plan meetings and activities for one of the college’s best-known honor societies and who report to the national organization and manage the chapter’s finances.
Rivers has led two study abroad trips. The first visited Panama in 2019, and the second traveled to Italy this past summer to learn about the early history of accounting and the evolution of financial reporting, with a focus on environmental, social and governance (ESG) reporting in Italy and the European Union.
William Lastrapes, the Bernard B. and Eugenia A. Ramsey Chair of Private Enterprise in the John Munro Godfrey, Sr. Department of Economics, received the Distinguished Research Award. The award is given to tenure-track faculty for research that displays a history of excellence, longevity and impact within its field.
As a macroeconomist, Lastrapes applies time-series econometric methods to study questions about the broader economy. His work has primarily focused on monetary economics, financial markets and the role of monetary policy.
Since 1989, Lastrapes has published 39 papers in refereed journals, with more than half of them appearing in some of the most prestigious journals in the field. Eight of the papers were solo-authored. His research has received more than 8,200 citations in Google Scholar and over 2,200 in the Web of Science, and nearly a quarter of the citations were accumulated in the past five years. He’s also ranked among the top 5% of all economic authors based on his citations weighted by impact factor on RePEC/IDEAS.
Hani Safadi, an associate professor in the Department of Management Information Systems, received the Research Excellence Award. The award recognizes tenure-track faculty for superior research conducted or published in the last five years.
Safadi studies online communities, social media, health IT, information systems development, and the application of computational techniques in management research. Since 2019, his research has been published in the field’s top journals, including MIS Quarterly, where he serves as an associate editor, Information Systems Research, Organization Science, Journal of the Association for Information Systems and Journal of Medical Internet Research.
The recipient of six external research awards in the past five years, his work is pushing theoretical boundaries using innovative, computationally intensive methods to analyze qualitative data. As an acknowledgement of his expertise, Safadi was invited in 2022 to co-author an editorial in MIS Quarterly on computationally intensive theory construction.
Martin Parker, a senior lecturer in the Department of Management specializing in the Operations/Supply Chain Area of Emphasis, received the Outstanding Faculty Service Award.
Soon after joining the college in 2016, Parker created one of the fastest growing industry boards at the college with the Supply Chain Advisory Board. The board is run by students and organizes four meetings a year, generating financial support for the supply chain program and annual scholarships for outstanding students, in addition to networking and experiential learning opportunities.
Parker reserves large blocks of time on his calendar for career discussions with students, to offer feedback on résumés and LinkedIn profiles, and arrange informational interviews with companies. The network he has built plays a pivotal role in students having incredible insight into supply chain careers and strong professional connections approaching graduation. And he works tirelessly to set up annual supply chain and operations internships at the Masters Tournament at Augusta National Golf Club and with several other employers.