- UTD Top 100 Business School Research Rankings™ Show Worldwide Increase in Productivity
- Nine Jindal School Faculty Members Receive Highest Academic Honors at Investiture Ceremony
- Trade Pact Concerns Aired at Global Strategy and Emerging Markets Conference
- Jindal School Moves Up in U.S. News Rankings
- Faculty News and Achievements
- Student News
UTD Top 100 Business School Research Rankings™ Show Worldwide Increase in Productivity
The UT Dallas Top 100 Business School Research Rankings™, released Feb. 21, show universities around the globe gaining competitive ground in business school research productivity.
Published annually since 2005 by the Naveen Jindal School of Management at The University of Texas at Dallas, the rankings are a compilation based on business school faculty research publications in 24 leading peer-reviewed journals. Each year, the rankings, reported for schools in North America and across the globe, reflect a rolling five-year average.
Thirteen countries are represented among the top 100 in the latest reporting period. When the rankings were first published in 2005, only nine countries made it into the top 100.
China led the way for non-American universities with seven universities in the top 100, up from six last year. Other than the United States, Canada is the only nation to previously have more than six universities in the worldwide standings.
The number of universities from the United States and Canada in the top 100 of the global ranking has steadily decreased since 2005. However, productivity in both countries has steadily increased. Top 100 U.S. universities produced 7,948 articles in the 2014-2018 reporting period, compared to 5,359 articles in the inaugural 2000-2004 period. The number of articles from Canadian universities in the Top 100 has grown from 207 articles in 2005 to 545 in 2019.
The number of publications by Top 100 universities from countries outside North America has increased from 538 in 2005 to 2,489 in 2019. China has led the way by increasing from 155 articles in 2005 to 648 in 2019.
“Being able to analyze productivity by country is an interesting facet of the UT Dallas Top 100 Business School Research Rankings,” said Dr. Hasan Pirkul, Caruth Chair and Jindal School dean. “To see international universities gaining on American schools speaks to global competitiveness and puts us on notice to stay on our toes.”
Universities from the U.S. still dominate the rankings. In the 2014-2018 reporting period, the Wharton School at the University of Pennsylvania was the most productive university, followed by the Leonard N. Stern Business School at New York University at No. 2. NYU moved ahead of Harvard Business School, which had occupied the No. 2 position since the 2012 report. That year, NYU was No. 6.
The Jindal School finished fourth in the North American and Worldwide Rankings. Columbia Business School rounded out the top five for North American schools, and INSEAD School of Business ranked fifth worldwide.
Read more on Inside Jindal, the online news center of the Naveen Jindal School of Management.
Nine Jindal School Faculty Members Receive Highest Academic Honors at Investiture Ceremony
Mike Redeker Distinguished Professor in Management
Ashbel Smith Professor
Ashbel Smith Professor
Ashbel Smith Professor
George and Fonsa Brody Professor in Management
Naveen Jindal School Advisory Council Chair
Dr. Joseph Picken Distinguished Professor in Innovation and Entrepreneurship
Nine faculty members in the Naveen Jindal School of Management were among 12 UT Dallas faculty members honored at the 2019 University Investiture Ceremony.
Recognized before their families, colleagues, mentors and students, the honorees were each introduced by a student speaker before receiving a medallion from University President Richard C. Benson and Dr. Inga Musselman, vice president for academic affairs and provost.
Considered the highest academic honor a university can bestow, chair and professorship endowments provide senior-level faculty with funds to advance their scholarly activities and support research.
UT Dallas has 123 chairs and professorships. They are made possible by philanthropic donations, with several established by or honoring the University’s founders and early leaders.
Dr. Özalp Özer is the first George and Fonsa Brody Professor in Management. Retired business owner George Brody, who attended the ceremony with his wife, Fonsa Brody, serves on the Naveen Jindal School of Management Advisory Council.
“I’m delighted to be a recipient of this investiture,” Özer said. “I would like to congratulate all the recipients for their outstanding research and teaching accomplishments and the donors for investing in the future of humanity.”
Faculty members were introduced by students, some of whom now teach at other institutions across the globe. Bharadwaj Kadiyala, PhD’17, who introduced Özer, is an assistant professor of operations management at the Hong Kong University of Science and Technology.
Xuying Zhao, MS’07, PhD’07, an associate professor of information technology, analytics and operations at the University of Notre Dame, introduced Dr. Kathyrn E. Stecke, who was honored with the Naveen Jindal School Advisory Council Chair.
“Dr. Stecke was instrumental in my studies and my career path in the academic world, where I frequently recall what I learned as a student,” Zhao said.
The Jindal School professors who participated in the ceremony are pictured above.
Read more at the UT Dallas News Center.
Trade Pact Concerns Aired at Global Strategy and Emerging Markets Conference
More than 100 diplomats, scholars, students and practitioners from around the world gathered recently at the Naveen Jindal School of Management for wide-ranging discussions on the global marketplace.
The Fourth Annual Global Strategy and Emerging Markets Conference, held May 8-10, featured topics ranging from trade wars and trade agreements to corruption and eco-friendly competition to what is going on in Brazil, India, Poland, Russia and Venezuela, among other countries.
Co-sponsored by Cornell University, Northeastern University and the University of Miami, the conference was chaired by Dr. Mike Peng, O.P. Jindal Distinguished Chair and executive director of the Jindal School’s Center for Global Business.
“The conference is an important part of our University’s strategy to build, grow and share knowledge about economies and businesses around the world,” said Hubert Zydorek, director of the Center for Global Business and director of the Jindal School’s Bachelor of Science in Global Business and Master of Science in International Management Studies degree programs.
Conference-goers said the variety of panels and top-rate experts made the event well worth attending.
“You normally only see speakers and experts like these on paper, not in person,” said Julio Martinez Suarez, an associate lecturer at Monterrey Institute of Technology who was seeking feedback on his research paper. “This conference is an enormous opportunity to have face-to-face interactions and learn about emerging markets firsthand.”
Read more on Inside Jindal, the online news publication of the Naveen Jindal School of Management.
Jindal School Moves Up in U.S. News Rankings
U.S. News & World Report 2020 rankings, released in March, brought good news to the Jindal School’s Full-Time and Professional MBA programs.
Overall, the full-time program moved up two places, from No. 40 (tied) to No 38 (tied). Among U.S. public universities, the full-time program fared even better, moving from No. 19 (tied) to No. 13 (tied).
The Professional (part-time) MBA program went from No. 20 overall in 2019 to No. 17 (tied). Among U.S. public universities, its standing remained the same both years, No. 10 (tied).
To arrive at the full-time rankings, U.S. News surveyed all 475 MBA programs accredited by the Association to Advance Collegiate Schools of Business International. In all, 367 schools responded. Of those, 131 provided enough required data to be ranked.
Of the 323 part-time MBA programs surveyed, 287 submitted enough data to be included in the rankings, and U.S. News ranked the top three-quarters of the part-time MBA programs that qualified for ranking.
This story was originally published in the Spring 2019 issue of MANAGEMENT magazine.
Faculty News and Achievements
Jindal School Finance Professors Win Top Crowell Prizes
Two Naveen Jindal School of Management finance and managerial economics faculty members have earned recognition for their research as top finishers in the 2018 Crowell Prize competition. Sponsored by PanAgora Asset Management, the annual contest celebrates innovative research that connects theory with practice in the field of quantitative investment management.
Dr. Umit Gurun, also a professor in the accounting program, and his co-authors received first place for their paper, “IQ from IP: Simplifying Search in Portfolio Choice”. Dr. Jun Li, an associate professor, and his co-researcher earned the third-place prize for their paper, “The Expected Investment Growth Premium.”
Gurun and his team studied the proliferation of investment signals and how mutual fund managers make decisions about what information to follow and, ultimately, act upon. They analyzed the tracking behavior of managers, following the Securities and Exchange Commission disclosures that the managers downloaded, how consistently they did so and how their information tracking impacted their portfolio decisions. The researchers specifically looked at insider-trading filings, finding the fund managers tend to track specific firms and top management of companies — CEOs, CFOS and board chairs — and that this behavior stayed constant over time.
Jun Li, who earned a Crowell second-place prize in 2015 and third place in 2011 for previous research, focused on planned investments of firms and how they impact their risk premiums. Along with his co-author, Huijun Wang of the University of Delaware, Li developed a measure of investment plans called expected investment growth (EIG), and found that high EIG firms earned an annualized stock return that was 15 percent higher than low EIG firms among U.S. public firms from 1968 to 2016. Further, none of the leading asset-pricing factor models can capture this large EIG premium, Li said.
Read more on Inside Jindal, the online news publication of the Naveen Jindal School of Management.
Lifetime Service Award Bestowed on Jindal School Faculty Member
Dr. William (Bill) Hefley, a clinical professor of information systems and director of the Jindal School’s MS in Business Analytics program received a lifetime service award from the Association for Computing Machinery’s Special Interest Group on Computer-Human Interaction (SIGCHI) at a conference in May in Glasgow, Scotland.
The award is given to individuals who have contributed to the growth and success of the group and includes an honorarium of $5,000.
Before coming to the Jindal School, Hefley taught at Carnegie Mellon University, where he was a founding member of the Human-Computer Interaction Institute and helped develop a master’s degree program in human-computer interaction. He also has participated in curriculum efforts in SIGCHI and the Project Management Institute.
He and two associates founded the Intelligent User Interface conference series in 1993. Active in SIGCHI conferences, he has led panels and served on conference committees. He also has served on the SIGCHI Executive Committee.
Hefley has been editor-in-chief of the SIGCHI Bulletin, adjunct chair for User Interface Magazine, vice chair for publications and founding editor of Interactions magazine.
The award announcement said that “it was in the creation and initial leadership of Interactions that he made an indelible contribution, and it is primarily that significant contribution and service to SIGCHI now being acknowledged” by the service award.
Read more at the UT Dallas News Center.
Marketing Professor Wins President’s Teaching Award
Dr. Abhijit Biswas, a Jindal School clinical professor of marketing, was among five educators from The University of Texas at Dallas recently recognized with President’s Teaching Excellence Awards for their positive impact on student learning and innovation in the classroom. He won in the Online/Blended Instruction category.
Biswas, who has been on the Jindal School faculty 19 years, said that seeing the evolution of his students’ questions over the duration of a course has been the most rewarding part of his teaching experience. “Questions are as important as answers,” he said. “Seeing students organically asking good questions, relevant questions and ‘better’ questions in class not only opens the corridors of learning but also signals their academic maturation. The better I teach, the better the questions.”
President Richard C. Benson honored the recipients for their outstanding efforts on May 2 at the third annual Celebration of Teaching Excellence. The Center for Teaching and Learning requests nominees for the awards each year.
Read more at the UT Dallas News Center.
Student News
Sales Program Earns High Honors at First International Competition
Three recent UT Dallas graduates from the Pro Sales Concentration in the Naveen Jindal School of Management made an impressive entrance into international competition with several strong performances at the 2019 UK University Sales Competition at Edinburgh Napier University in Edinburgh, Scotland.
The UTD team, the sole representative of America, faced teams from across the United Kingdom over two days in March. Marketing major Tyra Banks won first place in the speed-sell contest, with fellow marketing student Vivanh (Olivia) Keomoungkhoun earning third place. Jordan Murphy, an emerging media and communication major with a minor in marketing, placed second in the role-play competition. All three graduated in May.
“This was a great inaugural international experience for our sales program,” said Dr. Howard Dover, director of the concentration and the Center for Professional Sales. “We wanted to add an additional element to our program by joining our friends in Europe and learning about sales in other countries.”
Banks, Murphy and Keomoungkhoun are taking this preparation with them as they head into sales programs after graduation. Banks is moving to San Francisco to work for Adobe. She was invited to interview for the position based on her performance at a sales competition in Wisconsin last fall. Murphy accepted a position at Qualtrics in its Software Sales Development Program. Keomoungkhou accepted a sales role at Fujitsu in Dallas.
Read more on Inside Jindal, the online news publication of the Naveen Jindal School of Management.
JSOM Entrepreneurship Program Leads Enterprising Student to New Career Path
A recent UT Dallas graduate is embarking on a career as a business owner, thanks to the time he spent plugging into the Jindal School’s innovation and entrepreneurship program.
Brian Hoang, who recently earned a Bachelor of Science degree in software engineering, formed and led a team that won the Texas Shark Tank pitch competition at UT Austin, prevailing over 22 other graduate and undergraduate teams from across the state and capping a winning streak that provided him the resources to pursue full-time entrepreneurship.
Texas Shark Tank was the latest competition win for SurviVR, a company that provides virtual reality training programs for law enforcement. The SurviVR team also won the grand prize in the campus Big Idea Competition last November and the Audience Choice Award in the Princeton TigerLaunch competition in April.
None of these awards surprised Paul Nichols, academic director of innovation and entrepreneurship programs at the Jindal School. He said Hoang was thoroughly prepared because he took multiple JSOM entrepreneurship courses and participated in the competitions.
“As a result of building the courses and having the extracurriculars, we have created a pathway for anybody to come in with a business idea,” said Nichols, who also is assistant director of the Institute for Innovation and Entrepreneurship (IIE). “We give them all these options in which they can try it out, test it out, be rewarded for it financially and have what they need to go out and compete — and even dominate — in competitions around the country. They also get opportunities to meet with investors.”
Read more on Inside Jindal, the online news publication of the Naveen Jindal School of Management.
Business Analytics Teams Bring Home Three Firsts
MS in Business Analytics teams from the Naveen Jindal School of Management capped the spring semester by winning three competitions.
Students Harsh Gupta and Siddharth Oza were members of all three first-place teams. For them and JSOM, the first win came at UT Arlington’s annual analytics symposium. The March 29 event, “Value Through Analytics and AI,” was hosted by UT Arlington’s Center for Innovation and Digital Transformation and Pier 1 Imports. Gupta, Oza and their teammates Rajdeep Arora and Shivank Garg earned $1,000.
Competitors were tasked with providing Pier 1 with actionable information to help the company increase its online sales and better market its products.
Another JSOM team comprised of Manish Aggarwal, Priyash Maini and Shubham Murari placed third in the symposium competition.
And Jindal School business analytics students placed first in the UNT Hackathon 2019 competition at the University of North Texas in Denton on April 7. Members of the team were Gupta, Oza, Ashish Sharma and Manish Shukla.
The third first-place win for a JSOM MS in Business Analytics team came on April 30 at the INFORMS Analytics Challenge at the Jindal School. The team of Gupta, Oza, Sharma and Amit Deshmukh received $750. The team analyzed restaurant inspection data in order to identify the various factors that go into determining a restaurant’s health inspection grade.
Read more on Inside Jindal, the online news publication of the Naveen Jindal School of Management.
UT Dallas Excels at DECA Conference — With Freshmen Leading the Way
UT Dallas freshmen made an impressive showing at the 2019 DECA International Career Development Conference in Orlando, Florida, April 13-16.
Thirty-four UT Dallas students competed in various categories. Sixteen students placed in the top 10 of their categories, and seven finished in the top three. All the first-, second- and third-place finishers were freshmen.
Among campus competitors, 20 were Jindal School students. Half the JSOM students placed in the top 10 of their categories, and five of them finished in the top three.
Carola Del Castillo, a marketing major, and Karla Trujillo, a business administration major, landed first place in marketing communications. Mayank Nakra, a double-major in finance and economics, and Sonika Rao, a finance major, took second place in business ethics. Roshni Shah, healthcare management, Hannah Lee, biochemistry, and Emily Nguyen, biology, took third place in business research.
“It was incredible how our newest members took to the organization,” said Dheera Dammanna, president of the UT Dallas chapter of DECA, which is based in the Jindal School. “They were ready to be leaders very quickly.”
Dammanna, a senior in biology and healthcare management, had a top-10 finish at the Orlando conference, working as an individual in the Business Research category.
DECA is a business-preparation club with a major focus on improving students’ knowledge in entrepreneurism, finance, hospitality, management and marketing. According to the DECA website, its college division has more than 15,000 members on 250 campuses worldwide.
Read more on Inside Jindal, the online news publication of the Naveen Jindal School of Management.
Phi Beta Lambda Turns in Strong Performance at Texas State Leadership Conference
Students from the UT Dallas chapter of Phi Beta Lambda had a strong showing at the Texas State Leadership Conference, April 12-13, at Stephen F. Austin State University in Nacogdoches.
Phi Beta Lambda is the collegiate division of the Future Business Leaders of America. The campus chapter, based in the Jindal School, tallied 18 first-place showings, seven second-place finishes and a third-place finish.
The president and vice president of the Phi Beta Lambda chapter teamed up for first-place finishes in the human resource management and business presentations categories. For the latter, they were pressed with the challenge of showing why companies should partner with nonprofit organizations.
“I played the role of the company, and she played the role of the nonprofit organization, and we were presenting to the shareholders of both places on why they should join forces,” said Akhil Mutyala, president of the chapter and a senior in information technology and systems.
Niveditha Srinivasa, vice president of the chapter and a finance senior, said the vast topic was challenging: “Just trying to figure out how to narrow down such a large topic into what the judges would want to see and how we could make sure that we were hitting all the points.”
Dr. Kristen Lawson, the Phi Beta Lambda chapter advisor and a JSOM clinical assistant professor who teaches business communications, was pleased with competition results and students’ reactions to the experience.
“They are an amazing group that is always out to do better,” Lawson said.
Read more on Inside Jindal, the online news publication of the Naveen Jindal School of Management.
