The Belk College of Business welcomes the following new faculty members this fall 2015:
Accounting
Gregory Martin - Assistant Professor
Gregory Martin is an assistant professor in the Department of Accounting in the Belk College of Business at UNC Charlotte. Dr. Martin’s teaching and research focuses on financial accounting. Dr. Martin has won numerous teaching awards at both the undergraduate and graduate levels and his research has appeared in journals such as Strategic Finance and The Accounting Review. His current research interests include financial reporting quality, audit quality, and the implications of financial restatements. He graduated from the U.S. Air Force Academy in 1998 and served on active duty for eight years. During his active duty career he operated research and development programs and spent his final three years as a professor in the Air Force Academy’s Department of Management. After leaving active duty, Dr. Martin earned his Ph.D. in accounting from the University of Colorado at Boulder where his research focused on financial reporting quality and regulation. Dr. Martin continues to serve as an officer in the U.S. Air Force Reserves.
William A. Sofsky - Lecturer
William Sofsky is a new lecturer in the Department of Accounting in the Belk College of Business at UNC Charlotte.
Paul Tanyi - Assistant Professor
Paul Tanyi is an assistant professor in the Department of Accounting in the Belk College of Business at UNC Charlotte. Prior to joining UNC Charlotte, Dr. Tanyi was an assistant professor at the University of Nebraska – Lincoln where he taught auditing and assurance for four years. Dr. Tanyi’s academic and research interests include auditing and corporate governance. He is interested in examining the roles of external auditors and corporate governance in the financial reporting process. Dr. Tanyi has presented his research at a number of national and international conferences. His research has appeared in top-tier accounting journals including Accounting Horizons and Auditing: A Journal of Practice and Theory. He has also served as an ad hoc reviewer for Managerial Auditing Journal and Auditing: A Journal of Practice and Theory. Dr. Tanyi is a member of the American Accounting Association and the European Accounting Association. He received his MBA (concentration in finance) and MSc. in accountancy from Illinois State University and his Ph.D. in business administration (accounting focus) from Florida International University.
Marcia Watson - Associate Professor
Marcia Weidenmier Watson is an associate professor in the Department of Accounting in the Belk College of Business at UNC Charlotte. She joined the Belk College after working at Mississippi State University for 11 years. Before her academic career, she worked for four years as a Financial Systems Consultant for Price Waterhouse in Chicago. Dr. Watson’s primary teaching area is accounting information systems. Her research focuses on how information technology impacts internal controls, business processes and auditing. She has published in a variety of leading journals including Accounting Horizons, International Journal of Accounting Information Systems, Issues in Accounting Education, Journal of Information Systems, and MIS Quarterly.
BISOM
Vinay Vasudev - Clinical Assistant Professor
Vinay Vasudev is a clincial assistant professor in the Department of Business Information Systems & Operations Management in the Belk College of Business at UNC Charlotte. He has worked with IBM and Wells Fargo/Wachovia for more than 25 years in the areas of sales, management consulting, strategy, business/data analytics, and project/technology management including leading a consulting practice as a principal/partner with IBM Global Services. Dr. Vasudev’s research interests include Supply Chain Management, Operations Management, and Process Improvement. His teaching interests include courses in Operations Management, Information Management/e-Business, Business Analytics, Project Management, and Process Improvement including Lean and Six Sigma approaches. He received his Ph.D. in Industrial Engineering with minors in CAD/CAM and Computer Science from the Louisiana State University, Baton Rouge.
Finance
David C. Mauer – Hemby Endowed Professor of Finance
David C. Mauer is the Torrence E. Hemby, Sr. Distinguished Professor in the Department of Finance in the Belk College of Business at UNC Charlotte. Previously, he was on the finance faculties of University of Iowa, Texas A&M University, Southern Methodist University and University of Wisconsin at Madison. He has won numerous awards for teaching and research, including the prestigious university-wide Altshuler Distinguished Teaching Award at Southern Methodist University. Dr. Mauer’s research has appeared in Journal of Finance, Review of Financial Studies, Journal of Financial Economics, Journal of Business, Journal of Financial and Quantitative Analysis, Journal of Banking and Finance, Journal of Corporate Finance, Financial Management and many other finance and economics journals. He currently serves on the editorial boards of several finance journals. He has a B.B.A. from the University of Iowa and a Ph.D. from Purdue University.
Yilei Zhang - Assistant Professor
Yilei Zhang is an assistant professor in the Department of Finance in the Belk College of Business at UNC Charlotte. Her major research interests are security issuance, mergers and acquisitions, capital structure and corporate governance. She has previously served on the finance faculty of the University of North Dakota. Dr. Zhang’s research has appeared in Journal of Banking and Finance, Financial Management, Quarterly Review of Economics and Finance and other finance journals. She received her bachelor’s degree in management from Peking University (China), master’s degree in economics from Fudan University (China) and Ph.D. in finance from the University of Iowa.
Management
George Banks - Assistant Professor
George C. Banks’ research and teaching interests include strategic human resource management, leadership and team development, ethics, as well as research methods and statistics. Dr. Banks has over 20 publications in outlets such as Science, Journal of Management, Journal of Applied Psychology, Organizational Research Methods, Journal of Business Venturing, and Oxford University Press. Additionally, his work has been featured by popular media outlets, such as the Wall Street Journal as well as National Public Radio (NPR). Previously Dr. Banks worked as a consultant for HRinterax, Inc. and Human Technology, Inc. He has worked with diverse clients, such as the Missile Defense Agency, the Forest Service, the Transportation Security Administration, the Patent and Trade Office, as well as the Foreign Agriculture Service. Dr. Banks has also been an independent consultant and collaborator with organizations such as, Food Lion, LLC, Work Skills First, and The Center for Open Science.
Laura Stanley - Assistant Professor
Laura J. Stanley is an assistant professor in the Department of Management in the Belk College of Business at UNC Charlotte. Her work has appeared in such journals as Entrepreneurship Theory and Practice, Journal of Vocational Behavior and Human Performance. She currently serves on the editorial board of Journal of Vocational Behavior. Previously, she worked for Deloitte & Touche, Arthur Andersen and Aon Consulting as an auditor and later as a human resource management consultant. She received her Ph.D. in management from the University of Georgia.
Marketing
Nima Jalali - Assistant Professor
Nima Jalali is an assistant professor in the Department of Marketing in the Belk College of Business at UNC Charlotte. Dr. Jalali’s primary research interests include social media and digital marketing. In his research projects, he utilizes statistical modeling to gain marketing insights from customer’s online activities, which potentially helps brands enhance their social media and digital strategies and tactics. In his dissertation research, he empirically investigated retransmission of brand messages on social media. Insights from his research can be useful in composing messages that are likely to be retransmitted by customers, thus, helping brands take advantage of social media for marketing purposes. His other research area is in the context of brands using consumer-generated photos on social media, where he examines characteristics of such photos that affect visitor’s response on brands’ websites. Dr. Jalali received his Ph.D. in marketing from the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee, and he has an MBA from the University of Tehran. He also completed his bachelor’s degree in engineering.
Economics
Per Norander - Lecturer
Per Norander is a new lecturer in the Department of Economics in the Belk College of Business at UNC Charlotte.