Mays Impacts

Jeff Miller ’88, president and Chief Health, Safety and Environment officer of Halliburton, will speak at Texas A&M University’s Mays Business School April 14 as a part of Dean Eli Jones’ Executive Speaker Series. The program will begin at 12:45 p.m. in Wehner 114.

In his presentation, Miller will use his personal journey to share insights on career and leadership development. He will also discuss the many aspects of his current role at Halliburton, a world leader in providing products and services to the energy industry.

Jones said he is honored to welcome Jeff Miller back to Mays Business School. “Jeff has always sought roles throughout his business career that allow contribution through leadership, insight and analysis, building and improving business, making important changes to organizations and developing staff,” he said. “Mays Business School develops ethical leaders that display excellence in their business careers,” Jones said. “Jeff exemplifies this mission remarkably.”

Miller is on the Halliburton Board of Directors. He earned a bachelor of science in agriculture and business from McNeese State University and an MBA from Texas A&M. He is a 2012 Mays Outstanding Alumni Award honoree.

Miller was named president and chief Health, Safety, and Environmental Officer at Halliburton in 2012. He began his career with Halliburton in 1997 as director of financial reporting, and has held a number of leadership roles that have enabled him to work and live all over the globe. Before joining Halliburton, Miller worked for Arthur Andersen LLP for eight years.

He is also a certified public accountant and a member of the board of directors of Atwood Oceanics, Inc. Miller has continued to engage with Texas A&M as a member of the Advisory Council for the College of Engineering.

Discrimination is sometimes discrete, often unexpected and usually not easy to address. Those were some of the remarks that emerged from “Mays Speaks,” as a panel of students, faculty and staff of Mays Business School shared their experiences at Texas A&M University and beyond from a range of different perspectives. The discussion came after a viewing of “Color Blind or Color Brave?” a TED Talk on unconscious biases by Mellody Hopson, an American businesswoman who is the president of Ariel Investments and the current chair of the board of directors of Dreamworks Animation.

The panel was the first in a series of programs planned at Mays to address diversity and inclusion. “Biases about race, culture, religion, age and other differences can create thought patterns and habits that cause us to behave in ways that impede our ability to meet our goals,” explained Annie McGowan, Professional Program director, who coordinated the event. “Some biases are deeply held but considered politically incorrect to act upon. Others are not intentional. We may not even be aware that they exist.”

Cultural acumen is an important leadership skill, and McGowan believes that proactive conversations about the unconscious biases that we all possess will help our students, faculty and staff develop the inclusive leadership skills that they need to navigate in the global society. Planning is underway for additional  “Mays Speaks” forums designed to increase awareness about important issues that are sometimes difficult to talk about.

Panelists from the spring event included students Ryan Zepeda, Azra Razvi, Timi Fadugbata, Olivia Williams, Kendal Galimore and Joshua Arey; faculty members Henry Musoma and Antonio Arrelola-Risa; and staff members Venita Mahajan, Shannon Deer and Kelli Levey.

Former Navy Seal Mike Zapata ’00 was “Professor for the Day” at the Aggies on Wall Street Investment Banking Certificate Program’s colloquium, held every spring semester. Zapata, founder and managing partner of Sententia Capital Management, shared with the Mays Business School students how the military prepared him for a career in investment management and led the aspiring investment bankers in solving a real-life case.

Each year, the colloquium gives Aggies on Wall Street Investment Banking (AOWS IB) students an opportunity to personally learn from finance practitioners. Arvind Mahajan, finance professor and director of the AOWS IB program, said the students took away a lot from Zapata’s presentation.

“His presentation fit extremely well with the larger scope of the class in many ways,” Mahajan said. “He introduced students to hedge funds and did such a great job of inspiring the students and providing them with concrete skills to help them obtain a job on Wall Street.”

Zapata received his bachelor’s degree in industrial distribution from Texas A&M and in the same month was commissioned as a naval officer. For the next decade, he served as a Navy SEAL officer and was deployed multiple times during the global war on terrorism, including tours to Iraq, Afghanistan and Africa.

But in 2011, he decided it was time for a change. “I had some incredible experiences in the Teams. But at the 10-year mark for an officer, you move towards more managerial positions, away from the hands-on work I was fortunate to have in that time window. For me, it was time for a transition.”

Zapata moved out of the military to attend Columbia University’s business school. There he was accepted into the Heilbrunn Center for Graham and Dodd Investing, where he earned his master’s degree with a focus on investment management. Upon completion of his MBA, Zapata formed Sententia Capital Management, a value-based hedge fund.

Transferring skills to a new career

The learning curve to be a successful investor was steep at first, but Zapata said his military experience had prepared him well. “As SEALs we had to be good learners. There may have been better shooters, sky divers or mountain climbers than us, but we learned from them and as a result, we were better all around.”

Zapata had earlier assigned the Mays students a case study based on an experience he had faced at Sententia. The students were required to value a specific company for acquisition and had to decide what price they should offer for it. They presented their analysis and the proposed solutions during the colloquium after which Zapata explained what he had done when making an offer to buy this company.

“There are three highly transferable skills from the military to the world of investing: Analyzing behavior to mitigate risk, focusing and researching a target set, and making decisions in a dynamic and less than perfect environment,” Zapata told them. “In investing we spend most of our time in analysis. That’s where you make the money. Like in the military, if we don’t do our homework, someone or something of value could be left behind.”

Laura Fulton ’85 trusts her inner guidance when making professional decisions. Her intuition regularly encourages her to accept positions that involve risk-taking and trying new things while also honoring her talents and what she enjoys doing. This approach has guided Fulton’s career from an entry-level auditing job at a public accounting firm to her current position as chief financial officer of Hi-Crush Proppants LLC and its publicly traded partnership, Hi-Crush Partners LP. Eventually, that inner guidance may lead her to the CEO office.

In a conversation with Mays Business School’s Business Honors students, Fulton noted that following her intuition led to career twists that surprised even her. “If you had asked me if I was going to be in the sand business and if I was going to be in charge of logistics, I never would have guessed it,” she said. “I’ve really tried hard to listen to myself and take advantage of the opportunities as they present themselves and then make the best of it. That’s something that Texas A&M teaches you more than anything.”

A career with breadth and depth

The CPA’s professional success is rooted in a career that – despite its twists and turns – allowed her to develop both breadth and depth of experience. Her first job after graduation was in Deloitte & Touche’s audit department. “Public accounting gave me experience doing a lot of different things, such as creating work papers and documenting specific action steps,” Fulton said. “I learned how to talk to someone who had 20-25 years of experience and ask, ‘What do you do? How do you do it? And why is that so important?’”

Fulton also credits her time at Deloitte with teaching her to lead others. “If I go back to the very beginning of my career at Deloitte, what they really taught me was a lot about leadership because you have to lead your audit team, tax team or consulting team,” she said. “I had the opportunity to lead recruiting teams and training teams.”

Her ability to lead, ask questions and think strategically proved invaluable when she was tasked with developing the Sarbanes-Oxley certification process while working at Lyondell Chemical Company, a centralized company with operations in the United States, Europe and Asia. “It was an incredible opportunity to create a process to document and test internal controls that no one in the United States had ever done before,” Fulton said. During that time, she also gained experience in Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) reporting and polished her leadership and management skills by turning a dysfunctional group of individuals into a world-class department.

Fulton’s next career move took her in an entirely different direction. She joined AEI Services, LLC, a decentralized company that operated in the emerging markets of South America and Eastern Europe. When AEI leaders decided to sell the company three years later, Fulton used her generous severance package to take a six-month sabbatical to do some soul-searching about her life and career.  

A few months after being laid off, Fulton began tapping into her intuition as she sought her next career challenge. “I always had the faith that I’m good at what I do and it will take some time, but I will find the right place,” she said, adding that she realized that she never worked for a small company. Six months after being laid off, Fulton found a match in Hi-Crush, a small company that was looking for someone with extensive accounting, management and leadership experience.

Using life lessons to inform business decisions

Fulton’s wide range of professional and personal experiences ground her day-to-day approach to business matters. Take employees’ paychecks. “Compensation is really important and very personal. I’ve learned that there’s no decision you’re going to make in this area that won’t have at least five different views of how you should have made that decision,” she said. “To try to come to a cohesive decision is a lot tougher than you think. As an accountant, I think there’s a logical answer. But no, this is a person’s paycheck and there’s emotion involved. Sometimes, you have to remember all those factors when you think about how you’ll make a decision.”

A family matter led Fulton to develop an increased awareness of the importance of communication during stressful times. She recounted how her son – who was 6 at the time – thought Fulton’s one-week break between jobs meant she was unemployed and that the family would soon be homeless. “He was picking up on things that I didn’t realize. He was overhearing me talking to my husband about, ‘Should I do this? Should I do that?’ He was hearing me make the decision and I didn’t realize how much he was paying attention,” explained the Houston Business Journal’s 2013 CFO of the Year for Small Public Company and Community Impact.  

“That taught me to realize that you have to think through who is going to be impacted by the things you do and the decisions that you make. You have to put yourself in their shoes and try to think about how they are going to interpret this decision. They don’t come from the same background that I have; they don’t have the same experiences that I have. What is it that I need to tell them that will give them comfort in a time of change?”

This lesson has been driven home because of the recent downturn in the oil industry. As people lose their jobs, Fulton is more conscious of trying to communicate what is happening and how the company is trying to help employees make a difficult transition. She also considers important factors when making business decisions, such as the date when a layoff will be made since the timing can mean another month of health benefits for laid-off employees.

The downturn in the oil industry also forced Fulton to take on the role of the company’s “chief agitation officer” who asks colleagues to think about potential devastating scenarios. “You really can’t ever anticipate how bad things can get,” she said. “You always say, ‘I’m going to plan for the worst and hope for the best,’ but you almost have to be more Draconian than that. All you can really do is deal with the hand that you’ve got right then and there and try to be as proactive as possible.”

Texas A&M business sophomore Béryl Gastaldello was officially named to the French Olympic Team on Wednesday and will represent France and Texas A&M at the 2016 Summer Olympic Games in Rio de Janiero, Brazil.

Gastaldello, from Miramas, France, will compete in the 100-meter freestyle and with France’s 4×100-meter freestyle relay at the Olympics.

She earned her spot on the team with a strong performance at the French Elite Nationals last week in Montpellier, France. Gastaldello posted top four finishes in five events at France’s Olympic qualifier, including a victory in the 100-meter backstroke and runner-up finishes in the 100 free and 50 butterfly.

“We are very excited for and proud of Béryl for this accomplishment,” said assistant coach Tanica Jamison, who accompanied Gastaldello to the French Elite Nationals. “Béryl overcame so many obstacles through the year, but hard work, determination and support from family and friends have made a dream come true today. It’s a well-deserved honor and we could not be prouder.”

Gastaldello is coming off a spectacular collegiate season that saw her earn first-team All-Southeastern Conference honors, as well as first-team All-America honors in the 50 free and 100 free and with the Aggies’ 400 free relay and 200 medley relay. Gastaldello owns Texas A&M’s school records in the 50- and 100-yard freestyle and swam the lead-off leg on the Aggies’ record-setting 400 free relay.

-by Brad Marquardt, associate director, Texas A&M Athletics Media Relations

Rajan Varadarajan was recognized on March 31st by Mays Business School for a prolific career of research and teaching. He was given the Lifetime Achievement Award – the highest award given to a faculty member at Mays for sustained and outstanding scholarly contributions.

Varadarajan is a University Distinguished Professor and Distinguished Professor of Marketing at Texas A&M University, a Regents Professor and holder of the Ford Chair in Marketing and E-Commerce. He was also the recipient of the American Marketing Association’s Irwin/McGraw-Hill Distinguished Marketing Educator Award in 2015.

He is such a perfectionist as a writer and editor, even his dean fears his red pen. That’s because Dean Eli Jones is a former student of Varadarajan’s. “I have been writing a congratulatory note to him for the past 45 minutes, and I’m still not sure I got it right,” Jones said.

A record of excellence

Jones said during his 35 years at Texas A&M, Varadarajan has won “just about every award,” and that he was proud to present him the Mays Lifetime Achievement Award. Varadarajan responded, “It’s always a thrill and a delight to address a former student by his designated title. Maybe one day I’ll have the pleasure of calling him President Jones.”

Varadarajan came from India to the United States in 1976, and he came to Texas A&M five years later. He said he has been fortunate to teach and collaborate on research projects with many outstanding faculty colleagues and doctoral students. He said he enjoyed his time as department head – two stints totally 14 years – but was happy to return to teaching full-time in 2014.

He has been teaching a doctoral seminar on marketing strategy since 1982, master’s level courses on marketing strategy and innovation, and has in recent years developed an interest in environmental sustainability related issues. He characterized his current research focusing on issues relating to environmental sustainability as akin to working toward a second Ph.D. Varadarajan said he was fortunate to have had the opportunity to serve as editor of two top journals in his field, the Journal of Marketing and the Journal of the Academy of Marketing Science. In reference to the six years he served as editor of these journals, he said: “Compared to every other experience I’ve had, these six years were among the best of my professional years. They were, for the most part, seven-day work weeks. But it was a small price to pay for all the learning.”

Varadarajan is currently serving as Vice President for Publications for the American Marketing Association, and on the Editorial Review Boards a number of journals, including the Journal of Marketing, Journal of the Academy of Marketing Science, Journal of International Marketing, Journal of Interactive Marketing, Journal of Strategic Marketing and Journal of Marketing Management. He has served as program co-chair for the American Marketing Association Marketing Educators’ Conference, the Academy of Marketing Science Marketing Educators’ Conference, the American Marketing Association Faculty Consortium and the American Marketing Association Doctoral Consortium.

Jones lauded Varadarajan’s ability to get conceptual papers published in top-tier journals, and his colleagues call him without peer in his ability to synthesize and develop integrative conceptual frameworks for the study of marketing, business and corporate strategy-related issues. A number of sources have cited him as one of the most productive marketing faculty member, with his record so far of publishing more than 100 journal articles and book chapters, and making more than 200 presentations at major national and international conferences.

A hunger for knowledge

On the day of his award, Varadarajan spoke on “My Academic Journey: Musings on Aspirations, Inspirations, Pursuits and Serendipity.” Beforehand, Mays faculty, staff and Ph.D. students joined friends and family members to celebrate with Varadarajan in the Cocanougher Center.

Varadarajan’s voracious appetite for knowledge feeds his agility with words and research. He calls himself a book scavenger, and told stories of stray books he has picked up and read that have influenced him with their pearls of wisdom.” The topics ranged from sociology to philosophy to poetry – almost anything outside his discipline. He encourages his students to do the same.

After the presentation, Jones said of Varadarajan, “I learn something every time. He just took me back over 20 years, and I was back in his classroom.” He handed him an envelope with his hand-written congratulatory letter and said, “The check is in the mail.”

By Ben Haimowitz, Academy of Management

What happens when the romance of corporate leadership collides with the romance of stock analysis? With a massive literature devoted to leadership and American companies reportedly spending $14 billion a year to teach it, one might expect a CEO’s reputation for superior governance to prove dominant over even sharp-eyed analysis. Yet, some new research finds otherwise.

According to a study in the current issue of the Academy of Management Journal, “a downgrade by a star analyst causes tremendous valuation changes, which are not offset by the CEO’s reputation….CEO reputation buffers the stock market reaction to downgrades by regular analysts, but, when a downgrade is issued by a star analyst, the CEO’s reputation has almost no effect on the market reaction.”

In short, “star analysts’ reputation is more powerful when it comes to how the market reacts to downgrades, even when star analysts are downgrading firms run by star CEOs.”

Specifically, the researchers found the stock market’s reaction to a downgrade by a star analyst (someone ranked among the top one sixth or thereabouts of the breed) led to an average market-adjusted, two-day decline of a stock of 3.5 to 3.6 percent whether the CEO had won as many as five prestigious leadership awards over the previous five years or had been honored with one or two or none at all. In marked contrast, the impact of a downgrade by analysts outside that select circle varied considerably depending on the reputation of the CEO. While leading to an average market-adjusted decline of 1.93 percent for firms headed by five-time leadership honorees, it produced a 2.74 percent decline for those headed by non-honorees (presumably run-of-the-mill types), a drop of 42 percent more.

Comments Steven Boivie of Texas A&M University’s Mays Business School, who conducted the research with Scott D. Graffin of the University of Georgia and Richard J. Gentry of the University of Mississippi, “There has been much documentation of the advantages a firm enjoys when the CEO has a reputation for excellent leadership (an advantage our study confirms), but little research has been done on how this plays out in interactions with highly reputed others. We’ve all heard about the romance of leadership, a belief verging on mysticism about what great chief executives can lead companies to achieve. But, although we don’t hear quite as much about it, there’s also a romance of stock analysts, who, as Harvard’s Boris Groysberg informs us, have been variously described by seasoned investors as ‘Diogenes with a lamp’ or ‘a Renaissance man’ or a ‘course fixed on truth.’ Our findings suggest that the romance of analysis exceeds the romance of leadership, at least where the investment community is concerned.”

The researchers found a pattern among upgrades that was a somewhat reduced mirror image of the pattern for downgrades. Once again, rating changes by star analysts had the greatest impact on the market. And, once again, the market response to star-analyst changes was about the same no matter the number of awards garnered by CEOs, the average market-adjusted response to their upgrades being between 3.27 percent and 3.29 percent, whether the CEO was a non-honoree or a five-timer.

In contrast, the mean response to upgrades by non-star analysts ranged from 1.86 percent for firms with five-time-honoree CEOs to 2.29 percent for companies of non-honorees, a 23 percent greater boost for the latter group. Why do firms of pedestrian CEOs receive this significantly greater bump? As the professors explain, “Increased expectations for future performance will cause shareholders to react less positively to upgrades by analysts because their expectations that star CEOs will continue to deliver high levels of performance are already reflected in the firm’s value.”

The study draws on large databases of corporate, financial, and market information compiled over a 13-year period. CEO reputation is determined by the number of leadership awards bestowed on a chief in the five years previous to a given year by seven leading business magazines. Analyst stardom is gauged by selection to one of the all-American teams published annually by Institutional Investor magazine through worldwide surveys of money managers at large investment and hedge funds, a select group that constitutes about 17 percent of analysts. The study’s total of about 19,500 downgrades and 17,400 upgrades each consisted of a change of one point or more in recommendations that ranged from 1/strong buy to 5/strong sell.

As would be expected, the researchers controlled for many factors that can influence the effects of changed recommendations, including those related to analysis (such as extent of analysts’ experience or number of a firm’s upgrades or downgrades in the prior two weeks); those related to firms themselves (such as size, diversification, past profitability, and percent of institutional ownership); and those associated with company management (such as board size, CEO duality, and CEO tenure).

CEOs were recipients on average of 1.25 prestigious awards for leadership over five previous years, the study reveals. For the entire sample, each prior award reduced market reaction to a downgrade by an average of 3% and (because of higher market expectations for superior leadership) reduced reaction to an upgrade by 4%. In addition to finding that recommendation changes by star analysts amplified changes in market response compared to those resulting from changes by non-stars, the professors found that “firms being covered by star analysts received more upgrades and downgrades,” a finding that suggests that “star analysts may simply have more discretion in changing the recommendations they issue, and may also have a greater incentive in making changes in order to maintain their recommendation’s accuracy.”

It was also discovered that firms led by CEOs who had received one or more awards generally elicited more recommendation changes than others, which, the professors speculate, may be attributable to analysts’ seeking to “garner attention.” At the same time, “having a large number of CEO awards decreased the number of downgrades a firm received by star analysts.” The two findings lead the authors to observe that “firms led by star CEOs receive greater scrutiny in general…but CEO reputation may offset that scrutiny for star analysts.”

In conclusion, the authors wonder if, given that “star analysts move markets dramatically and are generally more likely to issue recommendation changes…it might be worthwhile [re]considering to what types of firms they are assigned. Markets may function more effectively if these influential analysts are distributed more evenly across all firm sizes and types.”

Adds Boivie: “Instead of having so much insight, and influence clustered around a relatively small number of the sexiest firms, maybe that talent can be of more service covering a more varied group. Instead of having three or four all-stars covering Google or Apple, maybe we could do as well with one or two.”

The paper, “Understanding the Direction, Magnitude, and Joint Effects of Reputation when Multiple Actors’ Reputations Collide” is in the February/March issue of the Academy of Management Journal. This peer-reviewed publication is published every other month by the academy, which, with more than 18,000 members in 123 countries, is the largest organization in the world devoted to management research and teaching. The Academy’s other publications are Academy of Management Review, Academy of Management Perspectives, Academy of Management Learning and Education, Academy of Management Annals and Academy of Management Discoveries.

Three members of the Mays Business School faculty will be honored with the 2016 Distinguished Achievement Awards for Teaching. They will be among 24 outstanding Texas A&M faculty and staff members selected by the university and the Association of Former Students. Since 1955, Texas A&M University and the Association of Former Students has given this honor to hundreds of professionals who have exhibited the highest standards of excellence at Texas A&M.

The 2016 Distinguished Achievement Awards will be formally presented at 1:30 p.m. April 25 during a ceremony in Rudder Theater. In recognition of their achievements, each recipient will receive a cash gift, an engraved watch and a commemorative plaque.

The awards and their respective recipients from Mays Business School are:

• Haipeng “Allan” Chen, Department of Marketing
• Subodha Kumar, Department of Information and Operations Management
• Bala Shetty, Department of Information and Operations Management

Haipeng (Allan) Chen is the John E. Pearson Endowed Associate Professor of Marketing at the Texas A&M University. He received his Ph.D. in Business Administration (Marketing concentration) from the University of Minnesota (Twin Cities), his M.A. in Applied Linguistics from Zhejiang University (Hangzhou, China) and his B.Eng. (with honors) in Mechanical Engineering from Shandong University of Technology (Zibo, China). Chen conducts research in the area of Behavioral Decision Theory (BDT) and behavioral pricing. His research interests focus on examining decision biases of individual consumers and managers, and their economic and cultural ramifications, mostly in the area of pricing. His research has been published or accepted for publication in Management Science, Marketing Science, the Journal of Marketing Research, the Journal of Consumer Research, the Journal of Marketing, the Journal of Monetary Economics, the Review of Economics and Statistics, Economica, Marketing Letters and the Review of Marketing Research and Energy. Currently, he is serving on the editorial review board of the Journal of Marketing and the Journal of Consumer Psychology. He has won various research awards, including the 2012 ACR Best Competitive Paper Award, the 2010 Ricky W. Griffin Outstanding Research Achievement Award, the Mays Research Fellowship (2007-2010, 2011-2014), the 2007 Marketing Science Institute (MSI) Young Scholar and the 2001 ACR-Sheth Foundation Dissertation Award (co-winner of the Public Policy Track).

Subodha Kumar is the Carol and G. David Van Houten, Jr. ’71 Professor at the Mays Business School, Texas A&M University. He earned his MBA and Ph.D. from the University of Texas at Dallas in 2000 and 2001, respectively, and his M. Tech. from the Indian Institute of Technology, Kanpur in 1997. He joined the faculty of Mays BusinessSchool in 2009 in the Information and Operations Management Department. Before that, he was faculty at the Foster School of Business, University of Washington, from 2001 to 2009. He is also a regular Visiting Scholar at the Indian School of Business, Hyderabad, India. Professor Kumar’s research and teaching interests include Supply Chain Management, Optimization, and Information Technology. He has published several papers in reputed journals and refereed conferences. In addition, he has co-authored Harvard Business School cases and Ivey Business School cases. The list of journals where his papers have appeared include Management Science, Operations Research, Information Systems Research, Production and Operations Management, IIE Transactions, Decision Sciences, Journal of Management Information Systems, IEEE Transactions on Knowledge and Data Engineering, European Journal of Operational Research, Interfaces, Journal of Scheduling, and Computers and Industrial Engineering. Professor Kumar is currently the Deputy Editor and a Department Editor of Production and Operations Management (POM), a Senior Editor of Decision Sciences, and an Associate Editor of Information Systems Research (ISR). Additionally, he serves on the editorial boards of Journal of Database Management and International Journal of Social and Organizational Dynamics in IT. He is also the Vice President, Communications and the Web Editor of POM Society, and the Vice President of INFORMS’ Information Systems Society (ISS).

Bala Shetty is Professor, holder of the Cullen Trust for Higher Education Chair and Interim Associate Dean for Graduate Programs at Mays Business School. He received his MS and PhD degrees in Operations Research from the School of Engineering at Southern Methodist University (SMU). In addition to serving on the faculty of Texas A&M University since 1985, he has held faculty positions at Cox School of Business (SMU) and Madrid Business School (Spain). He also served as a Research Fellow at Princeton University in 1996 and 2008. His previous leadership roles at the departmental level include service as Ph.D. Director, Assistant Department Head, and Head of Department of Information and Operations Management. At the college level, he served as Associate Dean for Graduate Programs from 2004-2008, and Executive Associate Dean from 2008-2015. He has taught with distinction at multiple levels (undergraduate, master’s, and doctoral levels), and in multiple programs (BBA, Full-Time MBA, Professional MBA, Executive MBA, PhD, and Center for Executive Development). He has been recognized for his outstanding teaching contributions with a number of prestigious awards. At TAMU, they include the Association of Former Students College-Level Teaching Award (2001), EMBA Outstanding Faculty Award (2008, 2014), PMBA Outstanding Faculty Award (2014, 2015), MBA Outstanding Faculty Award (1998, 2000, 2001, and 2005), and Alpha Kappa Psi Undergraduate Teaching Award (1990, 1991). His research interests include supply chain management, optimization, and finance. He has served as associate editor for Operations Research, Decision Sciences, and Naval Research Logistics and twice as a guest editor for the Annals of Operations Research.