Author: James Schisler

The W. Frank Barton School of Business has named Dr. Christine Porter as its new School of Accountancy director. Porter is replacing Dr. Greg Merrill who left in August.

“We are so glad to have Christine as our new Director,” said Dr. Larisa Genin, dean of the Barton School. “Her professionalism, vision, knowledge and dedication led to her ascension to this leadership role. It’s obvious that she is also well respected, connected and admired by her peers.”

Porter joined WSU in 2015 after receiving her Ph.D. from the University of Kansas. Her research focus is audit archival research and many of her papers explore bank auditors as well as non-Big4 audit markets.

Since joining the faculty, Porter has been published in multiple publication journals including “Auditing: A Journal of Practice and Theory,” which is a top-tier journal in her field. Porter has also been teaching and auditing and managerial accounting courses at the Barton School. Before receiving her Ph.D, she worked in public accounting for five years for regional firms in Baltimore and Denver.

“I’m energized about the future of the School of Accountancy,” said Porter. “I plan to uphold the top quality curriculum and programs we are known for while equipping our students with the knowledge and skills to make a difference in the field.”

For more information on the Barton School’s School of Accountancy, visit wichita.edu/academics/business/accountancy/.

Brian Umbenhauer and Geoff Tuff — principals at Deloitte and Executive-In-Residence duo — at the W. Frank Barton School of Business — will provide a keynote presentation titled “Innovation at the speed of your customers” at 5:30 p.m. Wednesday, Oct. 26 at the Woolsey Hall Auditorium.

To attend, participants must RSVP by emailing jenn.lopez@wichita.edu by Oct. 17.

• Pat McLeod, former CMD Director, and current Conference Director worked many hours with the Wichita Property Tax Conference Planning Committee and the CMD team to make the conference an outstanding success.
• Wilma Hart, former CMD Coordinator, and current conference team member arranged for and coordinated the complex logistical tasks of people movement, among many other responsibilities.
• Paula Seiwert, Associate Director of the CMD, planned and executed outstanding marketing and promotional materials to educate and persuade professionals to attend.
• Melissa Donham, Director of Operations for the CMD, coordinated IT tasks while tracking financials and keeping the books current.
• Tracy Rittmueller, Registrar of the CMD, coordinated participant registrations, food and beverage services, and contributions from other vendors and WSU professionals.

And a loud “thank you” to the excellent service from our WSU partners:

• Facility Services
• Chartwell’s catering team
• Shocker Printing
• MRC Team
• Parking Services
• Event Services
• Post Office

Dr. Ross Gruetzemacher, assistant professor of business analytics at the Barton School of Business, was featured in the Harvard Business Review. In the article, Gruetzemacher discusses the potential for natural language processing to transform many traditional roles in organizations during the current decade.

Dr. Abigail Devereaux, research fellow at the Institute for the Study of Economic Growth (ISEG) and assistant professor of economics in the Barton School of Business, and Dr. Roger Koppl, professor of finance at Syracuse University, recently published an op-ed in the Wall Street Journal May 2. The op-ed is about the potential dangers of the Department of Homeland Security’s newly formed Disinformation Governance Board.

The W. Frank Barton School of Business is hosting a keynote speaking event featuring Sunil Srivastava, senior vice president (SVP) of core technology at Pandora11:30 a.m.-12:30 p.m. April 27 via Zoom. Sunil, a Wichita State alumnus, will speak from Pandora’s headquarters located in Copenhagen, Denmark. Sunil will discuss the “Digital Transformation in Retail.” The event is open to the public.

“It’s been more than 20 years since my last engagement with the university and I’m so excited to be back,” Srivastava said. “Thank you to the Barton School for giving me the opportunity to discuss such an important topic with students, faculty and the Wichita community.”

Pandora is a Danish jewelry manufacturer and retailer that was originally founded as a family-run shop in 1982. It is known for its customizable charm bracelets, designer rings, earrings, and necklaces. Today, Pandora has a presence in more than 100 countries on six continents, 26,000 employees worldwide and a market cap of $9.5 billion. As the SVP of Core Technology, Srivastava leads Pandora’s engineering and technology culture to support its growth ambitions and deliver on digital transformation.

“Sunil has a wealth of knowledge about the retail world and the constant digital evolution it’s undergone,” said Dr. Larisa Genin, dean of the Barton School of Business. “His keynote will be a powerful and eye-opening conversation for all attendees.”

After graduating from WSU, Sunil received a Master of Engineering in Computer Science from Cornell University and a Master of Business Administration Degree from the University of Washington. He has also worked for other prominent retailers, including Nordstrom where he serves as its senior director of customer technology.

“Our alumni are doing some amazing, game-changing things in their fields all around the world,” said Dr. Shirley Lefever, WSU interim executive vice president and provost. “I look forward to Sunil’s return as he shares his wisdom and inspires the next generation of Shockers.”

For more information or to attend the “Digital Transformation in Retail” event, contact jenn.lopez@wichita.edu.

The next Econ Bites on the Go will take place at noon on April 15 via Zoom (meeting ID 952 4019 5674, passcode 200). The episode will feature economist Dr. Ying Yang discussing how feedback design motivates the next generation of salespeople.

Yang is motivated by her own working experience in sales and is an assistant professor of marketing at the University of Iowa. She studies sales force compensation and marketing strategies. Her research combines theoretical game theory and behavioral economics, aiming to understand the motivation of the sales force and derive optimal strategy recommendations. She has published in the Journal of Marketing Research, Quantitative Marketing and Economics, and Marketing Letters.

Econ Bites on the Go was created by Wichita State’s Department of Economics and the Institute for the Study of Economic Growth to provide students and faculty members an opportunity to interact with top-tier economists.

Each talk lasts one hour. For the first 20 minutes, Siyu Wang, assistant professor of economics at Wichita State, asks students questions that provoke the guest speakers into a deeper examination of their work and how they see the world. The guest speaker then has 20 minutes to summarize his or her life-long research. The last 20 minutes is a question and answer session, with students and professors interacting with the guest speaker and asking any questions they have in mind.

The next “Econ Bites on the Go” will take place at noon March 25 via Zoom (meeting ID 919 8769 9546, passcode 200). The episode will feature economist Dr. Qihong Liu discussing an economic analysis of airline industry.

Liu is an expert of the field and a distinguished professor of economics at University of Oklahoma.

Abigail Devereaux, assistant professor of economics and Institute for the Study of Economic Growth research fellow at Wichita State’s Barton School of Business, was recently named a Public Choice and Public Policy Project fellow by the American Institute for Economic Research.

“Congratulations to all 21 individuals chosen as Public Choice and Public Policy Project fellows,” said Ted Bolema, executive director of the Institute for the Study of Economic Growth. “We all stand to benefit from their work. I’m especially excited to see the contributions of Abigail Devereaux. Her research and innovative thought leadership, as well as her numerous professional contributions, make her uniquely qualified for this exciting new AIER project.”

The Public Choice and Public Policy Project was established Dec. 21, 2021, and is modeled on the success of the Sound Money Project. The project creates a network of scholars that will offer regular commentary and in-depth analysis on public policy using the tools of Public Choice Economics. The innovative scholars who make up this project seek to understand the reality of government decision-making and the consequences those decisions have on the lives of everyone in society and to suggest alternatives to the romantic political notions that often dominate policy discussions.

“I am honored to be named as a fellow of the Public Choice and Public Policy Project,” said Devereaux. “Public choice is a subfield of economics that applies economic theory to the political world. Elinor Ostrom, the first woman to win the Nobel Prize in economics, won for her work in public choice. We’re just starting to introduce public choice concepts in our economics pedagogy at Wichita State. I cover it in my Principles of Microeconomics course and much more extensively in my Economies in Transition course. I look forward to advancing Public Choice Economics alongside these incredibly talented, capable and accomplished scholars.”

A member of the Barton School’s faculty since 2020, Devereaux is a frequently published scholar on the topics of Game Theory, Complexity and Computability Theory, Theory of Entangled Political Economy, Combinatorial Growth Theory and Systems Theory. She has published in the Journal of Institutional Economics, The American Economist, Review of Austrian Economics, Cosmos and Taxis and Journal of Private Enterprise.

She is also recognized as an effective classroom instructor and mentor as an assistant professor of Economics at the Barton School. Devereaux has earned several distinctions in her career and is also a founding member of the Entangled Political Economy Research Network, a research fellow at the Independent Institute and a faculty affiliate at the Ostrom Workshop. In 2021, Devereaux and her co-author Dr. Linan Peng received the Elinor Ostrom Award for their work on China’s Social Credit System.

Congratulations to Wichita State’s Dr. Stan Longhofer — director of WSU’s Center for Real Estate — who is the recipient of the 2021 Kansas Certified Commercial Investment Member (CCIM) Lifetime Achievement Award. The award will be presented to Longhofer at a luncheon hosted by the WSU Center for Real Estate and the Kansas CCIM Chapter at 11:30 a.m. Friday, Dec. 17 at the Marcus Welcome Center.

Stanley D. Longhofer holds the Stephen L. Clark Chair of Real Estate and Finance in the Barton School of Business at Wichita State and is the founding director of the Center for Real Estate.  In this role, Dr. Longhofer provides research services and educational programs to real estate professionals throughout the region, and is the author of the Center’s annual Kansas Housing Markets Forecast.