U.S. Senator Richard Shelby (R-Ala), ranking member of the Commerce, Justice, Science and Related Agencies Appropriations Subcommittee (CJS), recently announced that the U.S. Department of Commerce’s Economic Development Administration (EDA) has awarded $408,110 to Auburn University to support geospatial mapping of critical utility infrastructure, such as electricity, natural gas, water, and telecommunications, located on Alabama’s coast. 

Led by Chetan Sankar, a professor in the Department of Management, the project team also includes David Mixson, director of Auburn’s EDA University Center program, Amitava Mitra, Associate Dean, College of Business, and P.K. Raju, director of the Auburn Engineering Technical Assistance Program.

In the aftermath of a natural disaster, it is necessary for communities to be able to quickly locate critical utility infrastructure in order to preserve essential resources.   This project, the first known of its kind, will develop a regional model for data-sharing as well as for the creation, storage, and retrieval of digitized infrastructure data pertaining to utilities.

For more information, contact Dr. Sankar at sankacs@auburn.edu or co-PI, P.K. Raju at rajupol@auburn.edu.

James Barth, Lowder Eminent Scholar in Finance and Milken Institute Senior Finance Fellow, was interviewed about various financial issues by NPR's MarketPlace on September 1, by the American Banker on September 8, and the Associated Press on September 8. He also recently held a video conference on the financial crisis for Dhaka, Bangladesh at the request of the State Department and will do the same for Mumbai, India on September 30. Barth will also be participating in a Financial Innovation Lab on "Scaling Enterprise Finance: The Future of Biofuels," sponsored by USDA on September 23 in Washington DC as well as giving a talk on his new co-authored book The Rise and Fall of the U.S. Mortgage and Credit Markets, John Wiley & Sons 2009 at the USDA on September 22.

Kevin Mossholder, the C.G. Mills Professor of Management, was a finalist for the annual Rosabeth Moss Kanter Award for Excellence in Work-Family Research. His paper was selected by a committee of 35 leading scholars from 12 countries who examined over 2,000 articles published in 74 leading English-language journals around the world. The award is given to the author(s) of the best research papers published in a given year. Five papers were considered as finalists after three rounds of review. The award is a joint project of the Center for Families at Purdue University and the Boston College Center for Work and Family.

Torchmark Professor and Chair of the Marketing Department, Rajan Nataraajan continues his long service as executive editor of Psychology & Marketing. In a recently published study on click responses to journals’ tables of contents (a new utility index), Psychology & Marketing ranked 8th among 165 journals listed in ELMAR [J. of the Acad. Mark. Sci. (2009) 37:238-247].

Herbert Jack Rotfeld, Professor of Marketing, the longest serving editor in the history of Journal of Consumer Affairs (since 2002), has started his third term as editor. The latest Journal Citation Reports of the ISI Web of Knowledge impact score for Journal of Consumer Affairs now places it among the leading 17 (of 77) business journals.

The Auburn University College of Business continues an active presence on three professional and social networking sites.  If you are already a member of Facebook, Linkedin, or Tiger2Tiger, look for the Auburn College of Business alumni group.  If you are not a member, use the links below to establish a profile.

Facebook - Set up a profile here.
LinkedIn - Visit http://www.linkedin.com/ to join.
Tiger2Tiger - Access to Auburn Tiger2Tiger is restricted to Auburn University alumni. If you are not already a member, click here to verify your status and set up an account.

Also, we want to keep you connected to all the wonderful things happening in the College of Business. If you have moved or changed jobs recently, please take a minute to Update Your Record.

The College of Business honored nearly 300 students at the 2009 Scholarship Awards Ceremony, held on Friday, Sept. 11 at The Hotel at Auburn University and Dixon Conference Center.  As a result of the generosity of private donors, corporations and foundations, the college awarded more than $560,000 in scholarship and fellowship dollars for the 2009-2010 academic year.  Special thanks to Everett Stewart '76 for speaking at the event. 

Candace Schepperle advanced to the quarterfinals in the 2009 U.S. Women’s Amateur, held Aug. 3-9.  Conducted by the United States Golf Association, the U.S. Women's Amateur is a combined stroke and match play event taking place at Old Warson Country Club in St. Louis, Mo. More than 150 players competed in 36 holes of stroke play with the top 64 moving on to match play.   Schepperle, a Birmingham native and a current senior in business administration, fell 5-and-4 to Jennifer Johnson of La Quinta, Calif.

The Office of Advancement acknowledges the following gifts and pledges to the College of Business:

- $25,000 addition to existing scholarship endowment from Everett & Lissie Stewart
- $150,000 gift and pledge for a new professorship endowment from an anonymous donor

The Auburn Technical Assistance Center (ATAC) has launched a new web site – complete with its own ATAC “virtual community.”  Still accessible at www.auburnworks.org, the new web site is better organized, more user friendly, and capitalizes on video and other social media technologies to more effectively interact with clients and potential clients.  Additionally, ATAC is tied into a virtual community that includes a presence on “Facebook,” “Linked In,” “Twitter” and “You Tube.”

The Lowder Visiting Executive-in-Residence Program welcomes Ron Sanders, President, Warner Home Video, Inc. on Thursday, September 17. While on campus, executives speak to a number of undergraduate and graduate classes in the College of Business. If you are interested in attending one of these lectures, please contact Betty Weldon at 334-844-4832 or weldobc@auburn.edu for availability.

Auburn University has been closely monitoring the H1N1 influenza outbreak and planning for the possibility of increased cases of the illness during the 2009-2010 academic year. Since late August, the Auburn University Medical Clinic has been consistently seeing approximately 15 to 20 cases per day of H1N1 flu and 60 to 90 cases per day of other respiratory illness.  For more specific information on Auburn University's response to the H1N1 influenza outbreak, please visit our frequently asked questions (FAQ) page regularly.  This information is being updated at least weekly.

The Auburn University College of Business is accredited at the undergraduate and graduate levels by AACSB International, the highest standard of achievement for business schools.