by M. C. Jennings | May 9, 2023 | Academics, Accounting, Current Students, Faith Infusion, MAcc, Research, Student Spotlights, Uncategorized
Written by special contributor Lance Fleming
Each day, students across the ACU campus display the university’s mission to educate students for Christian service and leadership throughout the world through their actions and acts of service on the campus. Each year, students like those are nominated by their academic departments. From those nominations, 50 scholars are selected by the ACU Faculty Senate to receive the University Scholars Award for their graduating class.
Among those 50 scholars who demonstrated outstanding scholarship by maintaining a grade point average (GPA) of 3.5 or higher, earning 90 hours towards their degree, and continuing the pursuit of knowledge in their research field, seven are students from the College of Business Administration. The COBA students who received this year’s University Scholars Award are Kathryn Crawford, Gracie Isham, Matthew Roberson, Will Harris, Diego Lozano Welsh, Ben Blackmon, and Garrett Powell.
We will highlight each of the seven over the next month, including this profile of Matthew Roberson, a native of Weatherford who carries a 4.0 GPA and is graduating with a degree in accounting. After graduation, Matthew plans to complete his Master of Accountancy with ACU and continue his audit internship with Condley and Company.
Matthew has served as Vice President of Fundraising for ACU’s chapter of the International Justice Mission and was also a member of the Alpha Chi National College Honor Society and the Beta Gamma Sigma Honor Society.
Matthew recently answered a few questions about his time at ACU and in COBA, covering everything from his most influential class to the most unique thing he’s been a part of while at ACU:
Q: What is the most important thing you’ve learned about yourself at ACU?
Roberson: “I’ve learned that I value relationships more than academic or work success. Investing time to know the people I am around provides me with the most fulfillment.”
Q: What professor or class has impacted you most and why?
Roberson: “This one is tough to answer. Each professor I have had at COBA has profoundly impacted my life, and I cannot honestly rank who has done so the most. However, the class that most influenced the trajectory of my life was Financial Accounting 210 with Dr. Clint Buck. Before taking that class, I struggled with finding purpose and fulfillment in my previous major. While Dr. Buck provided a logical foundation for accounting principles that I still rely on to this day, the most important thing he did was help me understand why and how accountants bring good into our communities. All I needed was the ‘why’ and the ‘what’ followed soon after.”
Q: What has been your experience in COBA?
Roberson: “My experience in COBA has been unparalleled. I transferred to ACU in the second half of my junior year, and I fully expected COBA to be like the other academic environments I had experienced. However, I was happily proved wrong. There is a familial atmosphere at COBA that I was hard-pressed to find elsewhere. The professors pushed me to be the best I could be, but I never once felt like I had to go it alone.”
Q: Of all the things you’ve experienced at ACU, what do you believe will have the most impact on your life?
Roberson: “The connections I have formed at ACU will impact my life the most.”
by M. C. Jennings | May 5, 2023 | Academics, COBA Faculty, Current Students, Faith Infusion, Financial Management, Management, Outcomes, Research, Social Entrepreneurship, Student Spotlights, Uncategorized
Written by special contributor Lance Fleming
Each day, students across the ACU campus display the university’s mission to educate students for Christian service and leadership throughout the world through their actions and acts of service on the campus. Each year, students like those are nominated by their academic departments. From those nominations, 50 scholars are selected by the ACU Faculty Senate to receive the University Scholars Award for their graduating class.
Among those 50 scholars who demonstrated outstanding scholarship by maintaining a grade point average (GPA) of 3.5 or higher, earning 90 hours towards their degree, and continuing the pursuit of knowledge in their research field, seven are students from the College of Business Administration. The COBA students who received this year’s University Scholars Award are Kathryn Crawford, Gracie Isham, Matthew Roberson, Will Harris, Diego Lozano Welsh, Ben Blackmon, and Garrett Powell.
We will highlight each of the seven over the next month, including this profile of Kathryn Crawford. A native of Flower Mound, Texas, Kathryn carries a 4.0 GPA and is graduating with a BBA degree double majoring in Financial Management and Management with a concentration in Leadership. After graduation, she will travel this summer and serve as a Resident Advisor for the Leipzig Study Abroad program.
Kathryn is a member of Sigma Theta Chi and participated in Sing Song with her club each of the last two years. As a freshman, she was in Sing Song and directed a Freshman Follies Hall act. She also volunteered at Palm House as a freshman and sophomore and worked in the Lytle Center for Faith and Learning.
Kathryn recently answered a few questions about her time at ACU and in COBA, covering everything from her most influential class to the most unique thing she’s been a part of while at ACU:
Q: What is the most important thing you’ve learned about yourself at ACU?
Crawford: “I grow the most when I am challenged. Even though it can be difficult, pushing myself out of my comfort zone has been pivotal to my development personally, academically, and spiritually.”
Q: What professor or class has impacted you most and why?
Crawford: “The class that impacted me most at ACU was International Business. I had the opportunity to take this course abroad during my junior year when I spent a semester in Leipzig, Germany. I not only learned how countries engage with one another, but I was also able to experience first-hand how businesses operate outside the United States. Touring companies such as BMW and Leipziger Messe allowed me to gain a new perspective on the possible operations and organizational structures of businesses in a way that would not have been possible in a traditional classroom setting. I came to appreciate cultural collaboration and international business through this course and plan to pursue this area more in my future career.”
Q: What has been your experience in COBA?
Crawford: “For someone who didn’t know exactly what she wanted to do entering college, I could not have ended up in a better place to explore my passions and cultivate my skills than COBA. Surrounded by encouraging faculty, I uncovered new areas of interest each year. The support I experienced from a few specific professors, such as Dr. Jody Jones, helped me find my affinity for research and ignited a desire to continue my education beyond a bachelor’s degree. With unique courses such as social enterprise consulting and S.T.A.R., I immersed myself in real-life situations that forced me to apply classroom concepts to actual projects. Most importantly, I will walk away most grateful for the integration of faith into every single aspect of my experience from my time at ACU. Between equipping courses like Leadership Summit and the consistent spiritual encouragement from my professors, particularly Dr. Marquardt, I was exposed to an incredibly unique experience. I leave ACU well-rounded and equipped to enter life as a young professional with confidence only possible from the strong foundation in knowledge, faith, and purpose that COBA cultivated.”
Q: Of all the things you’ve experienced at ACU, what do you believe will have the most impact on your life?
Crawford: “My semester abroad will have the most impact on my life. This experience gave me a new perspective on the world around me and my role in it. I came to appreciate living outside my normal, everyday comforts and continually found myself enamored by the cultural nuances surrounding me everywhere I traveled. It solidified my ability to love and appreciate my neighbors regardless of their customs, traditions, or beliefs. I hope that I never stop seeing the world with the awe and wonder I felt during this time, and I pray that God will use that for his glory wherever life leads me.”
by M. C. Jennings | May 3, 2023 | Academics, Current Students, Faith Infusion, Research, School of Information Technology and Computing, Student Spotlights, Uncategorized
Written by special contributor Lance Fleming
Each day, students across the ACU campus display the university’s mission to educate students for Christian service and leadership throughout the world through their actions and acts of service on the campus. Each year, students like those are nominated by their academic departments. From those nominations, 50 scholars are selected by the ACU Faculty Senate to receive the University Scholars Award for their graduating class.
Among those 50 scholars who demonstrated outstanding scholarship by maintaining a grade point average (GPA) of 3.5 or higher, earning 90 hours towards their degree, and continuing the pursuit of knowledge in their research field, seven are students from the College of Business Administration. The COBA students who received this year’s University Scholars Award are Kathryn Crawford, Gracie Isham, Matthew Roberson, Will Harris, Diego Lozano Welsh, Ben Blackmon, and Garrett Powell.
We will highlight each of the seven over the next month, including this profile of Garrett Powell, a native of Aledo, Texas, who carries a 3.9 GPA while majoring in computer science with a focus on software engineering and minoring in mathematics. Garrett – who has been working as an intern for Funeral Directors Life Insurance Company – will go to work with FCLIC as a DevOps Developer.
While at ACU, Garrett has been heavily involved in academic and campus life pursuits. He has served as Dr. James Prather’s research assistant, researching metacognition, programming error messages, and novice programmers. Seven of his articles have been published on various platforms over the last three years.
He’s also the chairman of the local ACM SIGCHI Chapter and is president of the ACU Swing Cats, the swing dance club on campus. Garrett has been with the group since the fall of his freshman year (2019-20) and was with the group on April 29 when it celebrated its 20th anniversary with a dance at the Elks Ballroom.
Garrett recently answered a few questions about his time at ACU and in COBA, covering everything from his most influential class and professor to the most impactful thing he’s been a part of while at ACU:
Q: What is the most important thing you’ve learned about yourself at ACU?
Powell: “Learning to interact and communicate with people from different areas of life, whether from other majors or societal backgrounds.”
Q: What professor or class has impacted you most and why?
Powell: “James Prather has by far been the most influential professor. He picked me up as a research assistant in the spring of my freshman year and has been a mentor ever since. He introduced me to the many ways we can improve people’s lives by implementing accessibility tools on our software. The most influential class would have actually had to have been a two-part class. Software 1 and 2, taught by Brent Reeves, greatly impacted me. He helped implement projects that reflected what working in the real world was like. It did a great job preparing me for what I see in my job day to day.”
Q: Of all the things you’ve experienced at ACU, what do you believe will have the most impact on your life?
Powell: “Being involved in Swing Cats has been the most influential part of my college experience. It brought me out of my comfort zone and moved me into a leadership position.”
by Katherine Norris | May 28, 2020 | Academics, COBA Faculty, Research, Uncategorized
COBA professors have been in a researching groove lately (as Don Pope would say, “They must be butter; they’re on a roll.”). We have seen professors such as Dr. Monty Lynn, Dr. Ryan Jessup, and now Dr. Dennis Marquardt, continue to conduct important research and have their work published in industry journals. Dennis Marquardt recently wrote a paper entitled: “Leader Goal Orientation and Ethical Leadership: A Socio-Cognitive Approach of the Impact of Leader Goal-Oriented Behavior on Employee Unethical Behavior.” The paper was written with co-authors Dr. Wendy Casper at UT-Arlington and Dr. Maribeth Kuenzi at SMU.
We asked Dr. Marquardt where his motivation and inspiration to work on this research came from. “For the past decade, I’ve been fascinated by the idea of ‘unintended consequences,’ specifically as this applies to leader/follower dyads. In other words, are there attitudes or behaviors that managers engage in that don’t necessarily seem unethical, but may have the consequence of unknowingly encouraging unethical behavior among employees.”
Photo by Jeremy Enlow
Dr. Marquardt summarized the concepts in the research and what type of consequences can come from such situations saying, “In this paper, we propose that leaders with high levels of a performance-avoid goal orientation are perceived to be less ethical and in turn, encourage employees to engage in unethical behaviors. Performance-avoid goal orientation refers to the extent to which a person approaches tasks or goals with a desire to not look incompetent compared to their peers. When a leader has such an orientation they are likely to send cues and signals to employees that making mistakes is to be avoided at all costs, that having the appearance of incompetence is unacceptable, or that making the leader look bad is a cardinal sin.”
He continued, “These cues and signals don’t seem unethical on their own, but imagine what they might do to employees over time. If I’m constantly hearing about avoiding mistakes and failures and trying to not look incompetent, what do I do when I actually do make a mistake? We propose that you might have a higher propensity to consider covering things up, blaming others, or lying about your performance. Our study analyzing several hundred leader/follower dyads found that leaders with high levels of avoid-goal orientation have significantly lower levels of ethical leadership (as perceived by their followers) and have employees who are more likely to engage in unethical behavior. Only when leaders also had a high learning goal orientation did the effects of avoid goal orientation become non-significant.”
Photo by Jeremy Enlow
Having this paper published is definitely a feeling of joy and accomplishment for Marquardt. “This paper has been in the works since 2014 and out of all my published papers, it’s the one I’m most proud of. God is good! There are many times I was going to give up on it because it took so many hours of work over these past six years. I’m thankful for great co-authors who are people I respect and people who have modeled a learning goal orientation for me.”
Dr. Marquardt’s paper “Leader Goal Orientation and Ethical Leadership: A Socio-Cognitive Approach of the Impact of Leader Goal-Oriented Behavior on Employee Unethical Behavior.” was published in the Journal of Business Ethics this May and is available for reading by clicking here.
by Isabella Maradiaga Molina | May 21, 2020 | Academics, Alumni Spotlight, COBA Faculty, Marketing, Research, School of Information Technology and Computing, Uncategorized
Have you ever struggled to make a decision when given too many options? Choice overload, or overchoice, is a cognitive process where people have difficulty making a decision due to a variety of options. Why does this happen?
As part of the lifelong relationship vision of the College of Business Administration, Associate Professor of Marketing, Dr. Ryan Jessup, and SITC Director and Professor of Computer Science, Dr. John Homer, partnered with ACU alum, Levi Ritchie (’15), to research the choice overload effect. Their paper, “Hurry up and decide: Empirical tests of the choice overload effect using cognitive process models”, was featured in the American Psychology Association’s April issue on decision. According to Scimago Journal & Country Rank, this journal is in the top 10% in psychology, neuropsychology and physical psychology subfield.
Dr. Ryan Jessup
While in graduate school at Indiana University, Dr. Ryan Jessup collected data to study a theory of decision making that prompted him to conduct this research as a follow-up from that work. As the lead author, Dr. Jessup generated the research idea and designed the experiment which was programmed by Dr. Homer. Levi Ritchie helped program part of the experiment in Python, recruited participants, and collected data before analyzing the data along with Dr. Jessup. The team combined their expertise in their respective fields to compile and edit the paper that was then published in the APA Journal. Dr. Jessup described the goal of their research as, “We wanted to test between multiple competing hypotheses that I had proposed in an earlier paper for the choice overload aka too much choice effect. The effect is that people purchase more when they have fewer options to choose from, violating basic economic principles.”
Levi Ritchie (’15)
The science of cognitive psychology is broad and contains a variety of potential research studies; however, Levi Ritchie described the importance of studying the choice overload effect as essential to the business field, “From a business perspective, understanding the elements that moderate the effect is crucial to marketing. Even when your selection of alternatives is plentiful, it may be beneficial to only present the strongest subset.” Similarly, Dr. Jessup commented on how important the understanding of this effect is when selling or promoting a product, as well as for personal decision making.
“An interesting thing about conducting quality research is that it makes us better at teaching. In my case, it is particularly true because I tend to teach courses on how to conduct or analyze research. But, even if I were teaching a different type of course it would still improve my teaching for several reasons. First, when teaching on a relevant topic, I would be far more aware of the pioneering research – in some cases because I would have been the one to do it; in other cases, it would be because I had to examine all possible theories and explanations when conducting my research, simultaneously giving far more breadth and depth than I would have gotten had I just read about it in the textbook or merely just read a few things about it. In essence, researchers know more about these findings because they are the ones making them – we are not merely reading about them. It is the ultimate in experiential learning”, Jessup said.
The conclusion of this research was explained in-depth in their publication, but Jessup summarized by saying, “We found that one of our proposed explanations well predicted the data whereas another one – the one that is commonly espoused as causing the effect – did not appear to play a role. A specific conclusion was time pressure appears to really drive the effect; so, if you are trying to sell things to people who are often hurried – think drive-thru’s or situations where people often have little children with them – you are better off giving them a very small set of options.”
Levi Ritchie is currently pursuing a career in Data Science, while Dr. Jessup continues to work on research on an improved theory of decision making that combines choice with learning. He is currently working on another project that involves the choices of married individuals and economic games with professors Katie Wick, John Homer and, recently graduated marketing major, Luke Stevens (’20).
by Katherine Norris | May 14, 2020 | Academics, COBA Faculty, Faith Infusion, Outcomes, Poverty and Development, Research, Uncategorized
Do you ever wonder what COBA professors do when they aren’t teaching class? You may not know it, but many of our professors commit their time to conducting research of all different types. Dr. Monty Lynn recently co-authored a research article titled, “Better Together: Improving Food Security and Nutrition by Linking Market and Food Systems”. The article is a literature review of market and food systems informing on the latest impacts of COVID-19 towards global food security.
Dr. Lynn says, “The article is the fruit of a collaborative effort with technical advisors at World Vision and CARE, supplemented by faculty members at ACU and the Catholic University of America. To share the findings, the article authors will host a webinar in June to describe our work, mostly with a global CARE and World Vision audience. In the article, we combine two popular approaches in global food security which attempt to strengthen markets and nutrition, and we describe CARE and World Vision food security programming that illustrates the model. In the webinar, we will describe the latest information from CARE and World Vision on how the coronavirus pandemic and COVID-19 are impacting global food security.” Dr. Lynn notes that “It is a welcome and special opportunity to join a research team with two of the largest development organizations in the United States and to collaborate with my colleague, Dan Norell, a Senior Technical Advisor in Economic Development at World Vision in Washington, D.C.”
The article and webinar will explore the following:
- The Inclusive Market and Food Systems Model
- The importance of bringing the market to vulnerable households
- How empowering women multiplies nutritional outcomes
- How access does not necessarily equal consumption
- The impact of COVID-19 on programming and adaptive management for livelihood programs
Photo by Jeremy Enlow
International development is a topic that Dr. Lynn stays current with for his research and an International Development class that he occasionally teaches at ACU. His recent research shows that “Major gains have been made in global food security, reducing global hunger. Gains began eroding in 2015, however, and global food insecurity began rising again. Nearly one billion people are food insecure today and 140 million of those became food insecure because of the impact of the coronavirus pandemic and mitigation efforts that have disrupted food production and supply chains.”
This blog post is just a glimpse of the information that is covered in the research article. We encourage you to read the full article HERE and join the webinar on May 19th at 12:30 pm EST, Washington, D.C. time zone HERE.
