Four professors received 2019 Outstanding Faculty Awards from the Terry College of Business for their contributions to UGA’s teaching, research and public service missions.
Amrit Tiwana, the P. George Benson Professor in the Department of Management Information Systems, received the Research Excellence Award. The award is given to tenure-track faculty for superior research conducted or published in the past five years.
An expert on the corporate governance of IT at the firm-level and in large-scale ecosystems, Tiwana’s work has appeared in the three premier MIS journals since 2014. In 2018, he was ranked No. 1 for research output in the top three MIS journals. He serves or has served on the editorial boards of those same MIS journals and began a senior editor term at MIS Quarterly in 2019.
Marcus Cunha Jr., a marketing professor and director of the Master of Marketing Research program, is the recipient of the Teaching Excellence Award. The award is given to tenure-track faculty for demonstrating excellence in the classroom.
Cunha has taught courses in the undergraduate, MBA, MMR, Ph.D. and executive programs. He developed an MMR course in Advertising and Promotion Management and created a modified version of that course for the MBA program. He assumed responsibility for the MMR Executive Seminar Series course and plays a key role in the Marketing Research Project I and II courses by working to identify corporate sponsors and coordinate client agreements. Outside of the classroom, he has been recognized by the UGA Career Center for contributing to the professional development of UGA students.
Jason Rudbeck received the Instructional Excellence Award as a senior lecturer in the Department of Economics.
He has established a reputation as a superior teacher, demonstrating extraordinarily high effectiveness across a range of teaching assignments. In the past five years, Rudbeck has taught more than 8,850 students, which comes to an average of about 1,770 students per academic year. He serves as the advisor for Alpha Kappa Psi, the professional co-ed business fraternity, and has been recognized as one of the college’s Outstanding Teaching Faculty three times and received the Lothar Tresp Outstanding Honors Professor Award in 2011.
Rick Watson, a Regents Professor and the J. Rex Fuqua Distinguished Chair for Internet Strategy, received the Faculty Service Award.
He has been an invaluable member of the Management Information Systems Department for three decades and played a major role in the successful launch of the new M.S. in Business Analytics program. He was a critical advisor and industry liaison in the planning process, helping to identify and align courses and offerings with the needs of the marketplace. He previously served as interim department head and has earned many honors throughout his distinguished career, including a Fulbright Award, being named an AIS Fellow, and is a recipient of the AIS LEO award for exceptional lifetime achievement in Information Systems.