Faculty Awards
School of Management Advisory Council Awards
for Outstanding Achievements
2016 Award Recipients:
Professor Sarah Fischbach was the recipient of the School of Management Advisory Council Award for Research. Our award winner in the category “Research” is an excellent academic scholar with
an impressive emerging track record and great promise. The winner has not only published
in a number of academic journals and presented at a variety of conferences in recent
years, but also has multiple projects in the pipeline for future publication, and
is a disciplined writer. The award recipient is also an outstanding colleague and
research collaborator. Together with other colleagues at the School of Management,
our winner in this category has submitted proposals to the Institutional Review Board,
collected data and jointly submitted to multiple conferences and journals. As I will
now read a selection of the journals our award recipient has published in, it may
become clearer as to who this individual is: the Journal of Business Ethics, the Journal
of Business & Entrepreneurship, the Journal of Consumer Research, the Journal
of Advancement of Marketing Education, to name but a few. Our winner of the 2016 School
of Management Advisory Council Award for Research is Dr. Sarah Fischbach, Assistant
Professor of Marketing.
Professor Harry Starn was the recipient of the School of Management Advisory Council Award for Teaching. Our next award recipient has been at the School of Management for around a decade.
During this time, this individual has become a member of the faculty who is respected
widely by his colleagues within and outside the School of Management. Looking at his
impressive list of activities, our award winner would have earned this respect in
many different categories and for a large number of reasons, but today we honor the
nominee’s achievements in the area of teaching. The nominee has developed several
curricula and a large number of courses, has brought didactic innovations to teaching
at the School of Management, and never stops to seek improvements - always with one
goal in mind: to improve the instructional experience and the educational outcome
for his students. Moreover, however, our award recipient is also an outstanding colleague
who has never failed to assist colleagues succeed in the classroom – always helpful
with invaluable advice, sharing of best practices, and countless hours of hands-on
support. In particular, this faculty member was the driving force between online instruction
at the School of Management and, by doing that, has laid the foundation for distance
learning at the entire university. Our colleague’s efforts and achievements also have
earned accolades from bodies outside the university, including the United States Distance
Learning Association and the Certified Financial Planner Board of Standards. The recipient
of the 2016 School of Management Advisory Council Award for Teaching is Harry Starn,
Program Director for the MBA in Financial Planning Program.
Professor Mary Jo Shane was the recipient of the School of Management Advisory Council Award for Service. More than a decade ago, one of the seeds of transformation at the School of Management
was planted – the School started to recruit international students. From the early
years where the School recruited only a handful of students, a whole team of helping
hands – some more visible than others – ensures that today, about 150 international
students start their graduate education at the School of Management annually. Some
of these students would not graduate, and many of them would not graduate in the time
they do if it weren’t for our award recipient. Over the last eight years, the recipient
has worked tirelessly to support our international student population in the MBA Program.
Not only has this individual created and managed an effective advising program for
international students, the award recipient has also led efforts to revise the orientation program
to meet the specific needs of international students, has worked across the university
and community to ensure resources take into account the needs of our international
students (writing center, communication café, grad events, etc.). This individual’s
dedication to support their success and graduate education experience is unparalleled.
This faculty member has not only contributed to the MBA program and the School of
Management, but has also impacted the lives of hundreds of students worldwide. The
recipient of the 2016 School of Management Advisory Council Award in the category
“Service” is Dr. Mary Jo Shane.
2015 Award Recipients:
Professor Bill Gartner was the recipient of the School of Management Advisory Council Award for Research.
Professor Gartner is a seasoned professional with many years of experience as a revered
and distinguished academic who enjoys nationwide recognition as a scholar in his field,
a field of academic inquiry for which he is widely recognized as one of the founding
fathers. Professor Gartner is a prolific writer who has designed and completed many
studies, published numerous papers and articles in academic journals, presented at countless conferences and – which is not the
norm for scholars of his caliber – is even sought after by practitioners. He is capable
of dazzling the most probing reviewers with the most complex of thoughts and then,
an instant later, reducing them to Haikus, probably the shortest form of literary
expression, using his own brand of poetic “witticism”. And not only is he well published
himself and a generator of unique ideas that have found a global audience, he is so
accomplished that peers worldwide not only cite his work, but write about himself
and his body of work. Both in quantitative and qualitative terms, the recipient of
the Research Award has set a high standard for us at the School of Management and
beyond.
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Professor Ed Julius was the recipient of the School of Management Advisory Council Award for Teaching.
Professor Julius is one of the longest serving faculty members at the School of Management.
He has a remarkable record of diligence, didactic craftsmanship, and excellence in
teaching. Over decades of teaching, he has trained and prepared thousands of graduates
who are the source of pride of the School of Management in many leading firms and
institutions in his industry. He brings excellence in teaching to his classrooms and deeply cares about how to prepare
the future generation of professionals in his field not only for our region but nationwide.
He is a good example for how impactful teaching can be, what dedication to the profession
means. Professor Julius is a remarkable teacher, a highly respected colleague, and
an outstanding ambassador for his profession, the School of Management and the entire
university.
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Professor Paul Witman was the recipient of the School of Management Advisory Council Award for Service.
Professor Witman is a builder of bridges. Builders of bridges work hard, and so does
he. And they connect what has been separated, and so does he. With his remarkable
professionalism and his hard work, Professor Witman connects the undergraduate and
the graduate sides, he connects the School of Management with the rest of the university,
the closed community of the campus with the wider community around us. He not only believes in the vision and the mission of both the
School of Management and the university, he executes them by serving selflessly in
the interest of students, colleagues, and the organization, and by cooperating with
others. He has started and directed programs on the graduate and the undergraduate
side, he has chaired standing and ad hoc committees at the School and the university
level and he has done it with both extraordinary ease and remarkable efficacy. Most
importantly, we are certain that the recipient of this award doesn’t even see his
contributions as the fulfillment of some mandated service requirement, he is engaged
because he thinks it is the right thing to do.
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2014 Award Recipients:
Professor Vlad Vaiman was the recipient of the School of Management Advisory Council Award for Research (Right).
Professor Valeria Makarova was the recipient of the School of Management Advisory Council Award for Teaching (Middle).
Professor Harry Domicone was the recipient of the School of Management Advisory Council Award for Service (Left).
More About the Recipients:
Research Award – Vlad Vaiman: The recipient of our Research Award has been teaching courses in the MBA program as
an adjunct/visiting scholar at the School of Management for a number of years before
he joined full time in 2013. Vlad Vaiman is much more than an outstanding instructor
in the classroom – he is an excellent administrator and one of the most prolific scholars
not only at the School of Management, but in the fields of Human Resource Management
and Talent Management. His global mindset, intellectual curiosity, dedication to his
profession, and his hard work have resulted in a steady stream of publications in
highly ranked scholarly journals including the International Journal of Human Resource Management, the Journal of Human Resource Management, Global Business Perspectives, the Journal of Business Ethics, Thunderbird International Business Review. In addition, Vlad has edited a number of books and contributed chapters to books
that have placed him in the top tier of academics in global talent management. What
impressed the School of Management Advisory Council most about Vlad's publications
(beyond their sheer number year after year) is how he accomplishes building bridges
between the areas of research and practice, and rigor and relevance.
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Teaching Award – Valeria Makarova: With her doctoral degree in Biophysics, the recipient of the Teaching Award is an
unlikely member of the faculty of a business school. She is an engaged and productive
professor who brings dedication and innovation to her position. Teaching both in the
MBA and the MBA in Financial Planning programs, Valeria Makarova has been an early
adapter of online technology at the School of Management. She fosters intellectual
achievement by promoting student participation and direct application. She has pioneered
break-out moves in the online environment, and she always integrates applied projects
in her classes that students often implement in their daily practices. Valeria has
also always held CLU’s mission by focusing not only on student achievement, but also
by focusing on the greater good. She has not only built a professional track in Sustainable
Business for the MBA program, but she has also consulted with other instructors on
the integration of sustainability concepts into their classes. In addition, she teaches
courses on Sustainable Business in both the undergraduate and the MBA program, and
she is an active participant in campus-wide sustainability initiatives.
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Service Award – Harry Domicone: The School of Management would not be the same without the recipient of our service
award today. More than 15 years ago, he started to build partnerships with universities
abroad so that our students could experience first-hand what CLU’s mission statement
calls for – a global education for global leaders. Later on, these efforts were complemented
by short-term study tours for undergraduate and graduate students that led them to
various destinations in Europe and Asia. Many of the School of Management alumni owe
not only a global outlook on the world, but a global career to him. Building on student
exchanges, faculty exchanges were only the next step in the internationalization of
the School of Management and so it came that both full-time and adjunct faculty members
have had (and continue to have) opportunities to teach students in other parts of
the world. In the same way, the School of Management has received a steady stream
of short-term visiting scholars who have been teaching weekend compressed courses
in the School of Management. Most importantly, however, almost 15 years ago, he built
what is now one of the most effective and efficient international recruiting strategies
in higher education. As he would probably like us to say – supported by a lot of helping hands on the faculty and in administration on the Thousand
Oaks campus – he has explored foreign countries (where he has had to eat strange foods), built
relationships with partners abroad (some of which have become deep friendships), and
he has brought hundreds of international students to campus (and millions of dollars
in revenue) to the university. Harry Domicone has had a tremendous impact on the development
and expansion of CLU while touching and changing the lives of many people from China
to Thailand, Russia to Greece, and Austria to the United States.
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