Jindal School Now – July 2020

JSOM Faculty Member Makes Headlines with Socially Conscious Research

Jindal School faculty member Dr. Umit Gurun conducts research that explores how markets can be redesigned to level the playing field so that most people can be better off. That passion has paid off with a flurry of news headlines that bring attention to the issues.

The Ashbel Smith Professor stirred up the news cycle recently with a study about whether some of the bond mutual funds really are as safe as they purport to be. He and his co-authors, Dr. Lauren Cohen of Harvard University and Dr. Huaizhi Chen of the University of Notre Dame, concluded: buyer beware.

“You find a set of people who seem to be suffering, you identify the reason why that’s happening, and you come up with the best solutions to make the problem go away,” said the professor of both accounting and of finance and managerial economics. “That’s the stuff I’m interested in.”

Gurun and two research colleagues, Dr. Jordan Nickerson and Dr. David H. Solomon, both of Boston College, also explored whether Seattle-based Starbucks was paying a steep economic price for its 2018 open-door policy stating anyone could hang out and use its restrooms regardless of whether they make a purchase. The study’s conclusion that the policy was affecting the company’s bottom line also made headlines.

Gurun’s headline-making research is not a recent development. A few years ago, his study about patent trolls squelching business innovation caught the news media’s interest.

His goal, however, is not to capture the media’s attention, but rather to find solutions that benefit society.

That was the focus of a recent study Gurun co-wrote about the approval of new drugs by the Food and Drug Administration. He and fellow researchers, Cohen of Harvard and Dr. Danielle Li of MIT, discovered the FDA approved triple the number of drugs in December as it did in a typical month. That study caught the Wall Street Journal’s interest.

“Umit is a fearless researcher,” said Dr. Alex Butler, a former Jindal School faculty member now a professor of finance at Rice University who has collaborated with Gurun. “He’s willing to take on any interesting economic question, from crony capitalism to patent trolls to the distortive effects of corporate advertising to fintech. He has a great mind for how to bring complex data to bear on interesting and timely questions.”

Jindal School Marketing Professor Wins President’s Teaching Excellence Award

Semiramis Amirpour, a senior lecturer in the Marketing Area at the Jindal School, won the President’s Teaching Excellence Award in the Undergraduate Instruction (non-tenure-track) category. For her, the most rewarding part of the teaching experience is being able to ignite the interest of her students in the sales and marketing professions while transforming lives.

“It is amazing to see students walk in at the beginning of the semester with limited knowledge and then leave with marketable skills and a curious mind,” she said. “I love playing a role in shaping these young men and women into professionals who make a strong impact in their field.”

Read more on the UT Dallas News Center.

Alumna at Nonprofit Confronts a Global Crisis with Local Impact

During the COVID-19 emergency, Erica Yaeger, MBA’02, chief external affairs officer at the North Texas Food Bank, helps pack 60,000 emergency family meal boxes a week with other NTFB office staff and 80 temporary hires who lost their jobs in the local hospitality industry.

“Everyone is driven by the mission,” she said. “We know we showed up when people were hungry.”

After more than 10 hours daily in the warehouse, the NTFB professional staffers go home to do their “day job” of running the nonprofit. A few hours later, they are back in one of the warehouses – either in Plano or near Love Field in Dallas.

Read more on Inside Jindal School.

Healthcare IT Excellence Earns Alumna Minority Business Leader Award

The Dallas Business Journal named Rashmi Mehta Jain, MBA’08, a winner of a 2020 Minority Business Leader Award. The honor recognizes individuals in the North Texas business community for their outstanding leadership in business and the community.

The chief information officer at Careington International Corporation, a privately held discount healthcare company based in Frisco, Texas, said the award has given her a strong personal sense of accomplishment.

She said she chose to pursue an MBA degree at UT Dallas because she needed something to bolster her confidence in IT health.

“I started looking at MBA programs, and I found the program at UT Dallas,” she said. “It was the first year that the school had offered an MBA [with concentrations] in information systems and healthcare, and it was perfect for me.”

Read more on Inside Jindal School.