New faculty bring wealth of experience, insights to Fisher
New faculty bring wealth of experience, insights to Fisher
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Underscoring its commitment to providing its students with the very best in thought leadership, Fisher College of Business proudly welcomed its new faculty members for the 2016-17 academic year.
These new additions will further enhance the blend of theory and practice that distinguishes the Fisher curriculum and elevate the college as a leading source of academic research.
Department of Finance

Benjamin Bennett
Visiting Assistant Professor
Benjamin Bennett joined Fisher in 2016 as a visiting assistant professor after earning a PhD in Finance from Arizona State’s WP Carey School of Business. His research interests include executive compensation and corporate governance. Ben teaches Investments at the undergraduate level at Fisher.
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Tell us about your current research and your research interests.
Executive compensation and corporate governance.
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What makes for a great classroom experience for students?
Two-way interaction and real-life experiences,
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What attracted you to Fisher?
The Finance Department at Fisher is excellent, and I grew up in Ohio.
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What are your interests or hobbies outside of work?
Triathlons, coffee, pizza, movies and books.

Mary Beth McCormick
Senior Lecturer
Mary Beth McCormick joined the Finance Department as a Senior Lecturer in 2016. She has extensive industry experience in institutional investing and commercial real estate. Mary Beth was responsible for directing the real estate investments for Ohio Public Employees Retirement System for many years.
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Tell us about your current research and your research interests.
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What makes for a great classroom experience for students?
In my field, I believe students benefit from a practical discussion based on real experiences.
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What attracted you to Fisher?
Fisher is the gold standard in the field, and I am a lifelong Buckeye. I am thrilled to be part of this team.
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What are your interests or hobbies outside of work?
I love being in the outdoors and spending time with family. This summer I had the chance to hike in Glacier National Park. That was a special treat.

Kennia Papadakis
Senior Lecturer
Kennia (MBA '03) spent 18 years working in a variety of industries. She started her career as an Industrial Engineer specializing in process improvement and operations management in Venezuela’s Oil & Gas and Petrochemical industries. She later joined Emerson Electric Corp – a multinational, diversified industrials corporation, where she held positions in logistics management, international business development, marketing and product management, new product development and corporate development and strategic planning. Her areas of expertise include business and corporate strategy, corporate finance, new product/new service development and business development in mature and emerging markets.
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Tell us about your current research and your research interests.
My focus is on teaching corporate finance concepts and tools directly applied to real-life business events.
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What makes for a great classroom experience for students?
I believe students benefit greatly when there is opportunity for discussion, interaction with the instructor and peers in a open and dynamic environment.
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What attracted you to Fisher?
I am a Fisher MBA, honored to be back sharing my expertise and giving back to this wonderful community of bright students.
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What are your interests or hobbies outside of work?
I like to cook for my family and shop for ingredients. I like to stay fit, so I run and do yoga. I love to read fiction. And I also love to travel and visit a new place every year.

Michael Schwert
Visiting Assistant Professor
Mike Schwert joined the finance faculty from Stanford University where he pursued his PhD in Finance. Mike’s research spans corporate finance, banking, and credit risk. In his research to date, he explores the ways credit market frictions affect behavior of borrowers and lenders, market equilibria and the pricing of securities. Mike will be teaching Undergraduate Corporate Finance.
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Tell us about your current research and your research interests.
I'm interested in how credit market frictions affect the pricing of securities and the behavior of borrowers and lenders. In past work, I've studied how firms and banks match in the loan market and the implications on the provision of credit, and how municipal bond prices reflect liquidity and default risk.
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What makes for a great classroom experience for students?
An engaging professor who encourages students to voice their questions and concerns.
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What attracted you to Fisher?
The outstanding academic accomplishments of the finance faculty, their friendliness and desire to have me here, and the location in Columbus.
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What are your interests or hobbies outside of work?
I like to play golf and go to concerts.

Jim Sexton
Senior Lecturer
Jim Sexton joined Fisher after a 35-year career with JPMorgan Chase and acquired affiliates. At Chase, Sexton rose to managing director in the Asset Management division where he held positions as an equity analyst, equity portfolio manager, fixed income portfolio manager, supervised fixed income and counterparty risk and worked in multi-asset portfolio management.
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Tell us about your current research and your research interests.
Although I am not directly involved in research activities, my greatest interest is in the field of investment portfolio management.
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What makes for a great classroom experience for students?
Lecturers should provide practical applications and engage students in the learning process.
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What attracted you to Fisher?
Ohio State and Fisher have excellent reputations, and both are genuinely interested in achieving successful student experiences.
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What are your interests or hobbies outside of work?
I enjoy a wide variety of activities including managing my personal stock portfolio, cooking, dining, gardening, playing golf and visiting national parks.

Shaojun Zhang
Visiting Assistant Professor
Shaojun Zhang joins the Department of Finance faculty from the University of Hong Kong. She received her PhD in Finance from the NYU Stern School of Business in 2014. Shaojun’s research spans the areas of asset pricing, international finance and macro finance. She holds a B.A. in Economics and Finance from Peking University. She teaches Derivatives at HKU and will be teaching Undergraduate Investments, a required course for Fisher finance majors in Spring 2017.
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Tell us about your current research and your research interests.
My research lies in the areas of asset pricing, international finance and macro finance. In a current project, we construct a measure of aggregate default risk of the economy to capture the tail risks in the economy, and find that it predicts the aggregate market returns for various asset classes.
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What makes for a great classroom experience for students?
I think a great classroom experience needs high engagement of both the teacher and the students. I like it when the students start to join the conversation, start a discussion about the materials and relate it to our lives. It makes the learning more effective and fun.
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What attracted you to Fisher?
Fisher has a very lively academic environment and has a great team of researchers as current faculty. Also, the research group has a strong interest in international finance, which coincides well with my research interest. I believe this is the place for me to grow and develop my research.
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What are your interests or hobbies outside of work?
I enjoy playing piano (grade 10). I am also an amateur triathlon and marathon athlete.
Department of Management & Human Resources

Charles Buchanan
Senior Lecturer
Charles Buchanan (EMBA, Ohio State) joins MHR as a senior lecturer. Charles recently retired after 16 years with the Ohio National Guard where he rose to the rank of Major. Charles has extensive experience as a military leader and teaching leadership to military personnel. He will teach graduate and undergraduate courses in organizational behavior and leadership.
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Tell us about your current research and your research interests.
I strongly believe that leadership is a competitive advantage when applied correctly. I hope to help students embrace this and acquire an attitude of lifelong learning and leadership development.
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What makes for a great classroom experience for students?
When the student can participate in an experiential classroom. Using technology to get students involved in the learning process enhances their experience.
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What attracted you to Fisher?
The professionalism of the faculty and staff. Fisher has extraordinary faculty that are leaders in their respective fields and still really care about students and their education.
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What are your interests or hobbies outside of work?
In addition to teaching at Fisher, I am in the Ohio Army National Guard. My more than 16 years of service have been a blessing and helped me hone my leadership ability. I hope to be able to pass on the many lessons I have learned along the way. I am a huge sports fan and enjoy spending time with my family.

Trish Gorman
Senior Lecturer
Dr. Gorman will teach the core undergraduate strategy course and will serve as an Innovation Expert with the Center for Innovation and Entrepreneurship, where her focus will be on translating research that brings the Center’s rigorous academic insights to the attention of practitioners around the world. She served on the faculty at Columbia Business School, as academic director of the Global Consulting Practicum at the Wharton School, and dean of the Jack Welch Management Institute.
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Tell us about your current research and your research interests.
My research focuses on organizational growth and in particular examines the internal processes and analytical tools managers and leaders use to determine and evaluate their growth strategies. My work spans the boundaries between academia, consulting and business practice, and I enjoy translating rigorous academic research to make it more accessible to thoughtful practitioners.
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What makes for a great classroom experience for students?
A great classroom experience is engaging, interactive, challenging and useful. I emphasize the application of concepts to real problems and situations to help bring them to life, and approach my classes with different student learning styles in mind. Especially in teaching strategy, it is easy to discuss concepts at a theoretical level, so I strive to make connections with the real world and to demonstrate why topics like strategy, innovation, entrepreneurship, and growth matter in our daily lives .
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What attracted you to Fisher?
Fisher houses a community of scholars who are conducting first class research, and also are positively impacting the business community through the Center for Innovation and Entrepreneurship, the Center for Operational Excellence and many other connections. This emphasis on research and business impact, combined with their dedication to teaching and strong curriculum development--including initiatives to add new courses in data analytics and innovation--is very attractive to me.
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What are your interests or hobbies outside of work?
I enjoy running, tennis, skiing and other sports. Whenever possible I get outdoors to enjoy the changing seasons and to explore new places.

Timothy Judge
Professor and Joseph A. Alutto Chair
Tim Judge joins Fisher as the inaugural holder of the Joseph A. Alutto Chair in Leadership Effectiveness. Tim is one of the most prolific and influential scholars in organizational behavior and human resource management. He has published more than 150 journal articles and several dozen more book chapters on topics including personality, attitudes, selection, and of course, leadership. Tim will be working on the initiative to develop a leadership brand for Fisher's academic and research programs.
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Tell us about your current research and your research interests.
Leadership, personality, job attitudes, career success and staffing.
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What makes for a great classroom experience for students?
Experiential learning (we tend to retain only the material we apply while we are learning it); use of humor (positive affect facilitates learning); organization (the best students generally like to be able to plan and know what is ahead of them); relevance.
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What attracted you to Fisher?
The opportunity to build the new Fisher Leadership Initiative and the support of the dean and the administration; The chance to work with doctoral students again; and the growing strength of the college.
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What are your interests or hobbies outside of work?
An odd collection: hiking and climbing; baking; reading (particularly literature or history); classical music; golf; travel.

John Schaffner
Senior Lecturer
John Schaffner's career began on the tour bus of jazz musician Wynton Marsalis where he served as his tour manager for five years. From there he attended Columbia Business School and subsequently, Teachers College where he earned an MBA and Certification in Executive Coaching, respectively. Schaffner will be teaching an HR Survival course called Business Excellence 2, and three Organizational Coaching courses: Introduction to Organizational Coaching, Advanced Organizational Coaching and Developing Coaches and Leaders.
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Tell us about your current research and your research interests.
I'm keenly interested in coaching, culture and coaching cultures.
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What makes for a great classroom experience for students?
One in which students practice thinking differently and embrace the discomfort that can be learning something new, differen and opposable.
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What attracted you to Fisher?
While leading the Global Training & Development team at Abercrombie & Fitch, I got the opportunity to speak with Professor Ray Noe's class. Not only was I impressed, but I was drawn to the practitioner-academic environment of Fisher.
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What are your interests or hobbies outside of work?
My career started as a jazz musician Wynton Marsalis' tour bus in the 1990s. There I served as his road manager, taking his tours out globally as a naive 20-something. Getting that opportunity to see the world and be exposed to one of the greatest cultural thinkers (and practitioners) of our time inspired me to pursue excellence in many forms.
After leaving the road, I then went off to get my MBA, build a film start-up in New York City, run retail stores and build my leadership development skills. Ultimately much of my passions landed me back at Columbia's Teachers College, where I got my Executive Coaching Certification, which is the backbone of my teaching and passions today.
Department of Management Sciences

Peter Geier
Senior Lecturer
Peter E. Geier is a principal in P. Geier Consulting, LLC, and will serve as a senior lecturer and executive in residence at Fisher. As The Ohio State University’s Wexner Medical Center’s chief operating officer since 2001, he assumed the task of turning the organization around and improving financial performance. In 2003, Geier was asked to take on additional responsibility for the OSU Health System as chief executive officer and served in both positions until stepping down in early 2016.
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Tell us about your current research and your research interests.
My research interests are in the areas of the evolving nature of health care and strategy development and execution.
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What makes for a great classroom experience for students?
I think the more interactive you can make the experience, the better.
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What attracted you to Fisher?
I have been working at the Wexner Medical Center for the past 15 years. A few years ago I began teaching a summer class and found I really enjoyed the experience. When I stepped down earlier this year, the opportunity to do more at Fisher presented itself.
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What are your interests or hobbies outside of work?
I enjoy cycling and have participated in all eight Pelotonias. My family lives here in Columbus, and I enjoy spending time with them and my grandchildren.

Rick Guba
Senior Lecturer
Rick Guba is an Executive in Residence in the Management Sciences department. He came retired from General Electric, where he worked for 35 years. While at GE, he held multiple manufacturing and design positions in multiple locations. His most recent role was to manage Lean transformation in the 87 Aviation division global facilities. These facilities included new make component manufacturing, assembly, and engine test and overhaul operations.
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Tell us about your current research and your research interests.
I am passionate about process improvement, operational excellence and Lean Six Sigma.
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What makes for a great classroom experience for students?
When the experience of learning in an collaborative environment allows all to learn faster together.
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What attracted you to Fisher?
I was a graduate of the MBOE program, and when I retired from GE Aviation, I repurposed my life to teaching others the experiences I obtained in my business journey.
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What are your interests or hobbies outside of work?
I love anything to that allows me to spend time with my wife and family. I am a second degree black belt in karate. I love to swim and participate in all water activities, and I love to work out

Shannon Harris
Assistant Professor
Shannon Harris, joins Fisher as an assistant professor, having earned her PhD from the Katz Graduate School of Business, University of Pittsburgh and a BS in Systems Engineering from George Mason University. Her research focuses on appointment scheduling optimization in health care settings.
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Tell us about your current research and your research interests.
My current research is on predictive modeling and optimization in healthcare. I am also interested in sports analytics.
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What makes for a great classroom experience for students?
The ability to relate the material to concepts they are familiar with.
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What attracted you to Fisher?
The size of the department and the high standard for academic research in health care that already exists in the department.
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What are your interests or hobbies outside of work?
I love to travel, read, and spend time with family.

Mi Kyong Newsom
Visiting Assistant Professor
Mi Kyong Newsom is a visiting assistant professor in the Department of Management Science. She rejoined Fisher in 2016 and is responsible for the coordination and teaching of the undergraduate core operation management courses. Dr. Newsom also teaches Lean Six Sigma in Fisher’s EMBA and MBOE programs.
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Tell us about your current research and your research interests.
Continuous improvement and dynamic capabilities.
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What makes for a great classroom experience for students?
Interactive discussions with students and sharing real-world experiences.
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What attracted you to Fisher?
I received my PhD at Fisher. All the professors and staff have treated me like family.
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What are your interests or hobbies outside of work?
I like to golf with my husband, Tom, and travel with my daughters.
Department of Marketing & Logistics

Joseph Goodman
Assistant Professor
Dr. Joseph Goodman joins Fisher from Washington University in St. Louis where he was an Associate Professor of Marketing. His primary research interest is consumer judgment and decision making, particularly how material and experiential consumption shapes consumer happiness and well-being, consumption over time and construal, and the role of variety and large assortments affect the decision making process. Joe will teach the undergraduate Principles of Marketing course.
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Tell us about your current research and your research interests.
My research area is consumer behavior, and my main research interest is in consumer judgment and decision making. Recently I've been spending a lot of my time investigated who consumers choose between material and experiential purchases (whether it is for themselves or a gift), and how these types of purchases affect consumer happiness.
I also look at how consumers make decisions when they are faced with too many choices (or what we call large assortments in marketing)--something that is becoming more and more common in the consumer world.
I'm also in the process of writing another paper on Amazon's Mechanical Turk--a crowdsourcing website that has become very popular in the social sciences.
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What makes for a great classroom experience for students?
That really depends on the class: the size, the topic, and even the setup of the classroom. Teaching drums is very different than branding, or even calculus to 300 people. But there are some commonalities.
One is passion. Whether I'm teaching the drums (which I don't) or intro to marketing, I have to love what I'm teaching and try to share that passion and excitement with students. The nice thing about a top research institution like Ohio State is that we have so many great research faculty that have literally devoted their lives to being experts in their area.
The other is engagement. This is much more challenging when teaching 300 people, but you have to find a way to have a conversation with everyone in the room individually.
The last is storytelling. Before books, human learning was passed down through storytelling, so humans have adapted to learn by story telling. This is why storytelling is to powerful in elections too. It's the same in the classroom. I always loved history because it was taught to me as one big long dramatic story (shout-out to Mr. Thompson at Valley High School!).
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What attracted you to Fisher?
I have two little kids (5 1/2 and 1 1/2), so they're my hobby outside of work these days. But I still find time to cook (you have to feed the kids), travel (even with the kids), and getting outdoors for live music, a bike ride or whatever is going on in the area.
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What are your interests or hobbies outside of work?
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Scott LaCross
Senior Lecturer
Scott LaCross has served as an adjunct lecturer at Fisher for several years, and beginning this fall, he will be joining Fisher full-time as a senior lecturer. Scott earned his MBA from Northern Illinois University and has previously held positions in brand management at Abbott Nutrition and Sara Lee Corporation. He will be teaching several courses in the undergraduate program including Marketing Strategy, Marketing Projects, and Promotional Strategy. He will also be leading the Consumer Packaged Goods section of the Industry Cluster program.
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Tell us about your current research and your research interests.
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What makes for a great classroom experience for students?
I think the best experience students can receive is one that translates outside of the classroom. I see my primary role as preparing the students to no longer be students. I always share with them on the first day that my main expectation is that they treat the course as if they were working for a real company. We should then give them opportunities to develop skill sets and a way of thinking that will better equip them for what lies beyond graduation.
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What attracted you to Fisher?
I started here as an adjunct lecturer and loved the atmosphere.
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What are your interests or hobbies outside of work?
I love going on walks or hikes with my wife and kids, reading, watching movies, and playing guitar.

Selin Malkoc
Assistant Professor
Dr. Selin Malkoc was most recently the Marcile and James Reid Associate Professor of Marketing at the Olin School of Business at Washington University in St. Louis. Selin earned her PhD in Marketing from the Kenan-Flagler Business School at the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill. Her research interests are consumer behavior, judgment and decision making, intertemporal preferences, scheduling, heuristics and biases. This spring, Selin will be teaching the undergraduate Consumer Behavior course.
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Tell us about your current research and your research interests.
My passion has always been to study "time." Anything and everything to do with time. How consumers perceive time? How consumers behave when they need to delay their products or experience to a later time? Do they make different purchase decisions if the party they are shopping for this weekend or next month? Does having a temporal separation between the product choice (e.g., adding a product to a basket) and the purchase decision (e.g., actual purchase) influence the ultimate product purchases? Does scheduling/allocating our time to leisure activities increase or decrease our enjoyment? Why do some "hours" feel shorter than others? What might be stopping consumers from balancing their time between fun and work tasks? These are some of the questions my current research is trying to answer.
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What makes for a great classroom experience for students?
I am a firm believer in learning by doing. While theories are useful frameworks for storing knowledge, I think actual learning takes place once students actively engage in their own learning. In the classroom, this often means lots of discussion and class exercises. To that end, I try to facilitate lively discussion during class and make sure to incorporate demonstrations/exercises to take theory to application.
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What attracted you to Fisher?
Consumer behavior research at Fisher has a long history and tradition. The marketing group has been very productive and is growing. So, it is exciting to be here at the right moment and join in the movement. In addition, I am thrilled to be a part of Ohio State -- a premier research institution, with a long standing research tradition. I hope to form collaborations with colleagues across the campus (the psych department come to mind). Finally, my husband has a huge love of college football!
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What are your interests or hobbies outside of work?
I have two kids: 21 months and 5.5 years old. So, a lot of my time is spent with them. It gives me an opportunity to play like a kid again and see the world from kids' eyes -- which is a lot of fun. As a family, we like to walk, listen to music (jazz is my go-to, if I can) and cook. I am originally from Turkey, so we like to cook a lot of Turkish food, but we also regularly try new recipes. We also love to travel -- domestically and internationally. Seeing new places, meeting new cultures and trying new cuisines might be our most favorite thing to do.

Daniel Zantedeschi
Assistant Professor
Dr. Daniel Zantedeschi joins Fisher from the Muma College of Business at the University of South Florida, where he was an assistant professor in the Information Systems and Decision Sciences Department. His research interests are in marketing and business analytics, mediating effects of technology on choice in emerging domains such as crowdfunding and crowdsourcing, statistical methodology and data science. Daniel will be teaching the undergraduate Marketing Research course, the graduate Marketing Research & Analytics course and a new elective, Data Driven Marketing.
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Tell us about your current research and your research interests.
Marketing analytics.
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What makes for a great classroom experience for students?
The combination of direct teaching and experiential learning.
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What attracted you to Fisher?
Its excellent resources and quality of the faculty, and the excitement about the new Translational Data Analytics Initiative.
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What are your interests or hobbies outside of work?
I enjoy jogging and tennis.
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