The School of Business recently honored some of its top faculty members for 2018, celebrating their achievements from the classroom to international research discoveries.

The winners include:

• Professor David Papandria, from the Accounting Department, was honored with the Undergraduate Teaching Award. Papandria teaches Assurance Services, an auditing course required for accounting majors that most will use in their first jobs. He uses his industry experience to develop real-world examples to keep students motivated, up-to-date, and prepared for licensing exams that they will face soon after they graduate.
• Professor Ram Gopal, department head in OPIM, was recognized with the Graduate Teaching Award. Gopal consistently earns top evaluations from his students, who say they appreciate his cutting-edge learning materials on business analytics. He has developed and taught several courses in the area, and graciously shares his materials with other professors.
• Leanne Adams, an instructor-in-residence from the Accounting Department, was honored with the Teaching Innovation Award. To engage student in her large lectures, she uses a combination of interactive technology and has refined the duties of her four teaching assistants, including greeting the students as they enter the classroom. Wrote one student: “Leanne has such high energy and she motivates every student to do their best. I really don’t like accounting, but I absolutely adore Leanne.”
• Professor John Mathieu, of the Management Department, was presented an award for Research Excellence. Mathieu has won three prestigious UConn awards, including the highest honor, the title of UConn Board of Trustees Distinguished Professor, and four lifetime achievement awards from national and international organizations. He has published 23 articles in the last five years, many in top journals, and his work has been cited almost 16,000 times since 2013. He has also given 36 conference presentations in the last five years, and written eight book chapters. He has placed four doctoral students and is chairing three dissertations now. In addition, he has been awarded more than $3.7 million in grants in recent years. “When we consider research excellence, long term impact, and building the UConn research brand, these numbers speak for themselves. I truly believe John Mathieu is deserving of this award,” wrote one nominee.
• The Best Paper Award was given to Professors Sulin Ba, Xinxin Li and Jan Stallaert and Brian Lee ’17 Ph.D., from the OPIM Department, for their work on “Salience Bias in Crowdsourcing Contests.” Ba is an associate dean; Lee is now a UMass professor. Crowdsourcing firms and platform designers may need to revisit their strategies because subtle biases in presentations may be skewing outcomes, the researchers found. Their work, uncovering new territory in the field of online business-problem resolution, has been published by Information Systems Research.
• Professor Nora Madjar, of the Management Department, received the award for Outstanding Service. Among her many accomplishments include strengthening the collaboration between the schools of Law and Business, showcasing students to business alumni, and coaching students for national and international competitions. She also runs a creativity brown-bag series, a creativity conference, and serves as a member of the Fulbright National Screening Committee. “I can think of no one more deserving than Professor Madjar,” one nominee wrote. “Over the last few years, she has demonstrated a relentless service commitment to the school and community.”

The awards were supported by generous donations from The Arnold S. & Ruth Zackin Faculty Excellence Endowment Fund and the Arnold M. Robin & Rochelle M. Robin Excellence Fund.