College News

TUSCALOOSA, Ala. — Marillyn A. Hewson, a graduate of The University of Alabama’s Culverhouse College of Commerce, has been named president and chief operating officer of Lockheed Martin, succeeding president and COO Chris Kubasik. The changes are effective Jan. 1, 2013.

Kubasik will succeed Bob Stevens as CEO.

Hewson’s successor as executive vice president of Lockheed Martin’s Electronic Systems business area will be announced later this year.

“Continuous global economic and security challenges have created a new reality in which leadership with a long-term view can provide a sustained competitive advantag e,” Stevens said. “Chris and Marillyn are superbly well prepared to guide the continuous evolution of Lockheed Martin’s strategies and operating concepts in ways that will allow us to simultaneously address the evolving needs of customers and the expectations of shareholders.”

Hewson was named executive vice president of the Electronic Systems business area in January 2010.  In serving the company for 29 years, she has held leadership positions on the corporate staff and in three of the corporation’s four businesses.

Hewson earned her bachelor’s degree in business administration and a master’s degree in economics from UA.  She also attended the Columbia Business School and Harvard Business School executive development programs. She chairs the Sandia Corp. board of directors, and she serves on the board of DuPont.

Hewson is a member of the Association of the United States Army Council of Trustees and The University of Alabama’s Culverhouse College of Commerce and Business Administration Board of Visitors.

Headquartered in Bethesda, Md., Lockheed Martin is a global security and aerospace company that employs about 123,000 people worldwide and is principally engaged in the research, design, development, manufacture, integration and sustainment of advanced technology systems, products and services. The corporation’s net sales for 2011 were $46.5 billion.

Leslie Parrish of Fairfax, Va., a major in marketing and economics, was named the first recipient of The University of Alabama’s Dr. James Cashman Business Honors Award established this year to honor the late professor of management.

Ms. Parrish, the daughter of Mr. and Mrs. Don Parrish, also was named an Austin Scholar during Honors Day at The University of Alabama. Being named an Austin Scholar is one of the most prestigious honors bestowed by the business school and recognizes the student’s outstanding academic record.

Dr. Cashman, who died in December, 2011 was a professor of management at UA’s Culverhouse College of Commerce and Business Administration. He joined the University of Alabama in July 1975. He served as coordinator of the management program area and for the 10
years prior to his death, he helped co-found and build the Business Honors Program within the business school.

Dr. David J. Heggem, associate dean for undergraduate programs at the business school, said Ms. Parrish was an excellent choice for the Cashman award.

“I know Jim would be very pleased and proud of this young woman. She is an excellent student and exemplifies the scholarship and the concern for humanity that also characterized Dr. Cashman,” Heggem said.

Dr. Cashman was a nationally known expert on the automotive industry and was the lead consultant in the development of Saturn Corporation's organizational development and design program. He was part of the six person team that helped to develop Saturn from a concept to a reality. He appeared frequently for interviews on National Public Radio's (NPR) Marketplace; additionally, he was interviewed often on regional and worldwide television..

The Austin Cup: Christy Boardman

Austin Scholars: 

Fernanda V. Lima
Leslie Parrish
Katherine (Katie) L. Price

C&BA Awards:

Faculty Scholars Recognition:

Business Honors Program Class of 2012: 

Allison Bivens
Jonathan Brayman
Katie Craig
Steven Dockery
Caroline Faraino
Brooke Fleming
Brown Gill
Travis Hatt
Sarah Hinton
Sharon Jackson
Brittany Linton
Elliot Mayson
Rob Norwood
Leslie Parrish
Priscilla Pauley
Caroline Philips
Daniel Powell
Creighton Rhodes
Emily Sanford
Sarah Shannahan
Lissa Handley Tyson
Jason Walter

Business Honors Program Class of 2013:

Kaiya Arroyo
Gracie Beer
Sydney Branch
Victoria Burton
Lauren Byrd
Alan Cheng
Sean Coe
Abbey Davenport
Ariel Doran
John Hanner
Emily Henderson
Coleman Humphrey
Allison Incan
Seth Kennedy
Mark Lail
Lisa Ledbetter
Nancy McEnerney
Kathleen Morrison
Caroline Murray
Matt Newton
Andrea Olson
Hallie Majure Phillips
Colby Register
Kendal Riney
Matthew Roden
Christian Smith
Susan Speaker
Felicia Staub
Jake Switzer
Corey Whaley
Alyssa Yoon

The Bashinsky Computer Center & Bruno Library will open at 3 pm Easter Sunday, April 8th.

The Bashinsky Computer Center & Bruno Library will open at 3 pm Easter Sunday, April 8th.

Excerpt from al.com

In the fall of 2009, a group of University of Alabama Honors College students began an initiative to grant small loans to low-income borrowers in rural Alabama.

This week, Forza Financial granted its first loan to Katrina Rollins, an Alberta business owner who lost her Curl Shoppe salon in the April 27 tornado.

Rollins, who left her shop just before the tornado struck, is now closer to re-establishing her business thanks to a $3,500 loan from the nonprofit organization.

“After last April, I was too discouraged to find help,” Rollins said.  “Now I’m better, and this loan will help me get back on my feet.”

Forza CEO David Bailey, a junior at UA, said he's confident the organization has made a good investment in Rollins' business.

Read more at al.com

A just-published paper examining author affiliation in supply chain management and logistics ranks The University of Alabama’s program ninth in each of two of the top journals in the field, theJournal of Business Logistics and the International Journal of Physical Distribution and Logistics Management.

“It is a ranking of research productivity in the area of supply chain management and logistics,” said Dr. Glenn Richey, associate professor of marketing. “It has been published every year since analysis started in 1967.”

The paper also says the UA program represents the 10^th most productive overall research school world-wide in supply chain management and logistics.

Richey said the contributors to the publications were himself, Dr. Alex Ellinger, associate professor of marketing and supply chain management; Dr. Charles Sox, professor and University Chair of Management Science and Manufacturing Management, and several doctoral students.

“It is quite an amazing result considering we are such a small group going up against full supply chain management and logistics departments,” Richey said.

The eight -year-old program has made a name for itself quickly. A study released in 2009 in Transportation Journal ranked the UA supply chain management and logistics faculty seventh in the world in the number of articles published in logistics, supply chain management and transportation journals for the period 2005 through 2007.

The faculty ranked first in the number of articles appearing in the International Journal of Physical Distribution and Logistics Management and third most productive in articles appearing in the Journal of Business Logistics.

In addition, Richey, in 2010, and Ellinger, in 2002, are each recent recipients of The Council of Supply Chain Management Professionals’ Bernard J. La Londe Best Paper Award, for the most valuable paper published in the Journal of Business Logistics.

With identity fraud and the increasingly open Internet growing, consumers seem less likely to give out personal information online. For e-commerce and online marketers, this is a roadblock to the customer service and market research on which they thrive.

So what makes consumers more willing to give out their personal information? A paper just published in theJournal of Service Research by professors at The University of Alabama, Troy University and Loyola Marymount examined the factors that affect a consumer’s willingness to reveal basic and sensitive personal information online.

The researchers found four basic factors that individually, or in combination, affect the likelihood that consumers will divulge personal information. Specifically, their study suggests that (a) sensitive information is riskier to divulge and therefore less likely to be disclosed, (b) giving consumers control over how their information will be used by the firm can increase disclosure, particularly if that information is sensitive in nature, (c) customizing the web experience to provide enhanced web benefits can increase disclosure particularly if the firm also enhances consumer control and lowers consumer privacy concerns specific to their website, and (d) web strategies that lower privacy concerns can increase disclosure particularly when the requested information is sensitive.

“While the acquisition of sensitive information is often the goal of online marketers, our research suggests that control, customization and trust-building activities to reduce privacy concerns are critical to convincing consumers that it is in their best interest to divulge such information,” said Dr. David Mothersbaugh, professor of marketing at the Culverhouse College of Commerce at The University of Alabama and one of the authors of the study.

“Given consumers’ reluctance to provide sensitive information, firms should be vigilant in obtaining the least amount of sensitive information possible, while still effectively marketing to their customers,” said Dr. Sharon Beatty, professor of marketing at Culverhouse and another author of paper. “They also should note the importance of building trust in their firm, as well as providing consumers control to the use of the information, before attempting to obtain this information.”

Some firms are already changing their websites to conform to what the research has found. Google recently changed its privacy policy to emphasize both a consumer’s control over the personal information they share, as well as the perceived benefits of Google using such information.

A section called “privacy tools” gives consumers, according to Google, “meaningful choices to protect your privacy” through features like encrypted searches, incognito mode in Chrome, off-the-record chatting, and general personalization opt outs. As Google states on the website, “our new policy simply makes it clear that we use data to refine and improve your experience” by getting consumers “better search results, ads and other content” (www.google.com).

This is, or should be, the goal of any website, the researchers said.

“New privacy policies and features to help users control personal information will help make such goals transparent and, in theory, easier to achieve,” said Dr. Katherine Lemon, Accenture Professor at Boston College and editor of the journal. “More firms can follow Google’s lead to redesign their websites and privacy polices so they can encourage customers to willingly disclose additional information.”

In recognizing the burdens of disclosure and the difficulty of overcoming consumer concerns, firms should consider, the researchers said, matching their information requests to the specific needs at hand.

“A one-size-fits-all strategy to information gathering is not appropriate,” Mothersbaugh said. “Firms must consider both their information needs and the privacy concerns of their various consumer segments and request the least sensitive information possible for effectively marketing to each of those segments.”

Additionally, according to the article, firms can mitigate customer privacy concerns if they improve their website perceptions through factors that increase consumer trust, such as obtaining privacy seals and strengthening corporate reputation. By tweaking websites to increase consumer trust and control, and by making the benefits of customization salient, online marketers can more easily gather essential consumer data.

A copy of the article, “Disclosure Antecedents in an Online Service Context: The Role of Sensitivity of Information,” by Mothersbaugh, William Foxx II, Beatty and Sijun Wang, can be viewed at the Journal of Service Research website:http://jsr.sagepub.com/content/early/recent.

C&BA Students,

 You are invited to participate in the 2012 Business Ethics Essay Competition. Submissions are now being accepted! Click here to download the application.

 
Why Participate?

According to a recent article in the Harvard Business Review, the recent financial crisis and recession have betrayed society’s faith in Corporate America. “As a result, there's an active distrust of business schools and their graduates,” the article says. Now more than ever, companies realize the importance of business ethics. Accordingly, your participation in an ethics-based competition could set you apart when interviewing for jobs, helping to overshadow that distrust.

What’s in it for you?

Each of the FIVE winners will receive a $300 prize, an engraved plaque and certificate of achievement, recognition at the 2012 J. Craig Smith Business Ethics Lecture, and an invitation to the 2012 Business Ethics Awards Dinner with senior University administrators, the deans and faculty members of the Business School, and the Honorable Drayton Nabers, Jr., former Chief Justice of the Alabama Supreme Court. In addition, the names of all five winners will be added to a permanent plaque displayed in Bidgood Hall.

Essay Deadline and Evaluation

The deadline for essay submission is Friday, March 2, 2012 by 5:00 PM. Submissions will be judged by the college’s Ethics Advisory Committee based on the following criteria:

1.       All directions on the application are followed

2.       Writer presents imagination and creativity (when appropriate)

3.       Ideas and concepts are logical and adequately developed

4.       Ideas and concepts are supported by detail and/or examples

5.       Ideas and concepts are original and clearly articulated

6.       An ultimate conclusion regarding the ethical issue is reached

How to Apply

The application found here includes three prompts. After responding to one of the prompts in an essay, there are two ways to apply:

1.       Complete the PDF application and e-mail it with your essay to cba.ahc@gmail.com.

2.       Complete a printed copy* of the application and submit it with your essay to Dr. David Heggem in 10 Bidgood Hall.

If you have any questions or concerns, please feel free to contact Dr. David Heggem at dheggem@cba.ua.edu or the Academic Honor Council at cba.ahc@gmail.com.

Academic Honor Council

Culverhouse College of Commerce

*Printed copies of the application are available in Student Services (10 Bidgood Hall)

It’s almost too horrible to think about – a terrorist attack using infectious diseases.

But, according to those who study such things, many consider a terrorist attack of a biological nature inevitable. Thus, the level of preparedness that will influence the ultimate outcome of a deliberate act of biological terrorism must be considered.

The use of analytics to circumvent the intended outcome of such an event by alerting health officials in its earliest possible stages was one of many topics presented at the second major analytics symposium The University of Alabama campus.

Sam Edgemon of SAS Corp. will address the issue in a presentation titled, “Why we need Real-time Analytics in Bio-Surveillance.”

Edgemon is a consultant in the SAS US Business Analytics Consulting Practice. He has recently been involved as the technical project lead for an initiative originated by the Department of Homeland Security to develop new and superior “early alert” systems for naturally and
unnaturally occurring biological events. Edgemon holds a Bachelor of Science in mathematics and a Bachelor of Science in statistics from the University of Tennessee.

He spoke with Leigh Garner of Birmingham’s Channel 42 News about the issue.