The University of Tennessee, Knoxville’s Haslam College of Business welcomes 15 new faculty members this fall. They join the departments of accounting and information management, business analytics and statistics, graduate and executive education, management and entrepreneurship, marketing and supply chain management. With experience in different industries, educational settings and regions of the globe, the group both enhances Haslam’s instructional repertoire and expands its international profile.
The faculty are joining the departments and/or offices of:
Accounting and Information Management
Assistant professor Justin Short comes to UT from Emory University. Before launching his academic career, Short held several positions at EY’s Nashville office, specializing in the insurance and manufacturing industries. His research focuses on corporate governance, boards of directors, financial reporting and auditing, and he teaches undergraduate intermediate financial accounting. Short earned his doctorate and bachelor’s degrees from UT. He is a licensed CPA in the state of Tennessee.
Business Analytics and Statistics
Nana Bryan is a lecturer in business analytics and statistics. She teaches operations, data visualization and decision analysis classes in the undergraduate program. Bryan received her undergraduate degree in mathematics from Tbilisi State University, Republic of Georgia, and her doctorate in management science from UT.
A graduate of Haslam’s MSBA program, Jordan Gill returns to UT after holding prominent positions at Hanesbrands, Williams-Sonoma and other corporations. During this time, he gained diverse analytics exposure in sales, marketing, sourcing, operations and distribution. His corporate teams functioned as internal consulting groups aimed at educating, partnering with and empowering individuals to make better decisions through data analysis. Gill will strive to connect academia with industry, drawing on his experience as a student capstone manager and as a corporate sponsor for capstone projects and case competitions. As a lecturer and co-director of the MSBA program, he oversees capstone projects and teaches courses in data mining and statistics.
Allen Pannell, a lecturer in business analytics and statistics who also teaches graduate and executive education courses, recently was named the first Amy Foster Memorial Research Fellow. The fellowship is designated for business analytics and statistics faculty, preferably one whose research affects the life expectancy of those impacted by metastatic breast cancer research, a focus of Pannell’s research. Pannell has a background in business process improvement, leadership, strategic planning and experimental design. Since 1985, his consulting work has included coaching senior executives through major change efforts. He has worked with companies such as Kraft, Coca-Cola, Ford and Cargill. Pannell received his bachelor’s, master’s and doctorate in statistics from UT, and he holds a Six Sigma Master Black Belt certification.
Graduate and Executive Education (GEE)
An international enterprise excellence and quality expert, Mark Baker joins GEE as a lecturer. For more than 35 years, he has guided corporations in more than 30 countries in making transformative changes to their operations. These include firms in manufacturing, mining, oil and gas, medical devices, banking and insurance. Baker began his career as a mechanical engineer at Honda Motor Company, eventually leading the enterprise excellence rollout for Saint-Gobain, then heading the Shingo Institute for Enterprise Excellence as well as being involved with McKinsey & Company.
Management and Entrepreneurship
Christina Ekern, who is now a lecturer in the department, previously was an adjunct lecturer and coach for the college, primarily working with MBA and undergraduate students on the application of strategic management, fulfilling her passion for developing experiential learning opportunities. As a lecturer, Ekern brings a breadth of work with both for-profits and non-profits, from large multinational corporations to early-stage startups in industries ranging from healthcare to manufacturing to nanotechnology. Ekern received her master’s from UT and her bachelor’s from Michigan State University.
Christina Hymer has joined the department as an assistant professor. She earned her doctorate in organizational behavior/human resources from the University of South Carolina and her undergraduate degree in industrial and labor relations from Cornell University. Before pursuing her doctorate, Hymer spent four years as a human capital consultant at Deloitte Consulting’s New York and Nashville offices.
Alice Stewart comes to UT as a distinguished lecturer after serving for the past 18 years as a full-time faculty member at North Carolina A&T State University. Previously, she was the director of strategic analysis and planning at The Ohio State University. Her research focuses on strategy, organizational learning, leadership and the scholarship of teaching and learning. She won the Graduate Management Admissions Council’s Ideas to Innovation Challenge in 2011 and was honored with a UNC Academic Affairs Faculty Fellowship for her work on measuring the economic value of UNC education for graduates living in North Carolina. She is a co-author of Making College Pay, a book about college choice targeted to parents and high school students. Stewart received her doctorate in strategic management from the University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill in 1991.
Marketing
Jules Morris has joined Haslam as a lecturer of marketing. She has nearly 30 years of marketing and media experience in both higher education and corporate environments. This includes founding BombDiggity, LLC, a Knoxville Business Journal top 20 boutique marketing agency, and leading it since 2011; serving as the director of marketing, promotions and community relations for WBIR-TV; managing marketing and implementation for multiple events around super bowl weekend; building B2C cause-marketing campaigns for Samsung Electronics; and facilitating human-centered innovation and design workshops across the United States.
Morris’ research interests cut across disciplines like marketing, media, communications, management and leadership, delving into how marketing leaders nurture creativity and innovation within their organizations. She is currently pursuing her doctorate at UT.
Ruta Ruzeviciute is an assistant professor in marketing. Previously on the faculty of the University of Amsterdam, she completed her doctoral studies at Vienna University of Economics and Business (WU Vienna) in 2018. Ruzeviciute’s research primarily focuses on sensory marketing, investigating how specific sensory cues, such as scent or colors, influence judgment and decision making and examining sensory interaction effects and the role of sensory imagery in the context of e-retail. Ruzeviciute is also interested in healthful consumption and mindfulness in consumer behavior.
Supply Chain Management
Coming to UT from Michigan State University, Yemisi Bolumole has accepted the new Ryder Professorship of Supply Chain Management. Previously, she served as director of the transportation and logistics program at the University of North Florida. Before entering academia, Bolumole worked in the oil and gas and third-party logistics sectors in operations management and business development. She earned her doctorate in logistics and supply chain management from the United Kingdom’s Cranfield University in 2001.
Her research focuses on third-party logistics and transportation outsourcing, transportation policy and supply chain’s talent development. Bolumole has written more than 40 publications, including book chapters, reports and articles in publications such as the Transportation Journal and Supply Chain Management Review, among others. Her awards include the Bernard J. LaLonde Prize for Best Paper Published in the Journal of Business Logistics and the AT&T Instructional Technology Award for Best Hybrid/Flipped class at Michigan State University.
John-Patrick Paraskevas earned his doctorate in supply chain management with a minor in strategic management from the University of Maryland. His research focuses on buyer-supplier relationships, supply chain representation in the C-suite and supply chain risk management. Professor Paraskevas’ research has appeared in Journal of Supply Chain Management and the International Journal of Operations and Production Management. His research has been nominated for awards at the Academy of Management conference, the Strategic Management Society conference and the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers.
Serhiy Ponomarov (Sergey), associate professor of supply chain management at the Citadel, is serving as an adjunct lecturer with the supply management department. His research interests focus on supply chain risk management, resilience and sustainability, strategic global sourcing, buyer-supplier relationships and dynamic capabilities. He completed his doctorate and his master’s in statistics at UT and received his MBA from the University of Louisiana. Ponomarov has been published in journals like The International Journal of Logistics Management and Supply Chain Management: An International Journal. He has several years of experience working in supply chain management, demand forecasting and consumer marketing.
Alex Scott is an assistant professor of supply chain management at Haslam. Scott’s research focuses on supply chain policy, transportation safety and market dynamics and buyer-supplier governance structures. His research has appeared in the Journal of Operations Management and Transportation Science among others and has been covered by numerous industry publications. His work also has been presented as evidence to a U.S. transportation safety congressional subcommittee. He regularly presents at national conferences and serves as a referee for various leading academic journals.
Scott worked for nine years in industry, including at a large transportation company, a large third-party logistics provider and an international consulting firm. He has consulted on and led projects on supply chain strategy (including a multibillion-dollar merger), network design and more in many industries and countries, including Brazil, Japan, New Zealand, Russia and Saudi Arabia.
Jeff Trombly is a clinical assistant professor of supply chain management. Before coming to UT, Trombly was a career transportation analyst, planner and researcher in both the public and private sectors. He earned his doctorate in civil engineering from UT and was an adjunct faculty member with its Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering and with Haslam. His teaching interests include logistics planning and operations, supply chain network design and modeling, and advanced transportation technologies.
CONTACT:
Scott McNutt, business writer/publicist, rmcnutt4@utk.edu
