Faculty News

Accounting

Dr. Mark Segal retired on 1 January 2016.  Mark joined the faculty at USA on 1 September 1986.  Mark taught tax courses to thousands of students over his career.  Mark is most noted for his research and was twice named researcher of the year in the Mitchell College of Business.  Mark published 180 journal articles, three books and was the contributing editor for two books.  Mark was the recipient of a NSF grant in 1997.   Mark served as the interim chair of accounting for two years.    Mark earned his Master of Law in Taxation from Emory and his JD & MBA from Tulane.

Economics and Finance

The Economics and Finance Department welcomes new faculty member, Dr. Khandokar Istiak.  Dr. Istiak received a Ph.D. in Economics from the University of Calgary in 2015 and a Masters in Economics from the University of Arizona.  Dr. Istiak has published in several scholarly journals and his research interests include Macroeconomics, Monetary Economics, and Financial Economics.  He currently teaches Principles of Macroeconomics and Intermediate Macroeconomics.

Dr. Chris Lawrey successfully defended his dissertation and earned his Ph.D. from the The University of Mississippi in December 2015.  Congratulations, Dr. Lawrey!

Dr. Reid Cummings organized and moderated a panel discussion on November 4 for the Mobile Area Chamber of Commerce’s Business Retention and Expansion Committee.  Commercial real estate professionals Gavin Bender (Bender Real Estate Group), Angela McArthur (Stirling Properties), and Ralph Neal (Watson Realty) were specifically invited because of their respective specializations in the office, retail, and light industrial market segments.  The lively, spontaneous discussion was well-received by the 50+ area business people in attendance.

Dr. Reid Cummings reports that CREED recently completed a comprehensive regional study of the manufacturing industries operating in Southwest Alabama.  The Mobile Area Chamber of Commerce commissioned the project through its Advancing Southwest Alabama initiative, and provided funding for it through a federal grant.  The report was presented to the Chamber’s Executive Committee in late January, and Dr. Cummings will present it publicly in February.

Don Epley has a paper entitled "Constructing An Overall Local Capitalization Rate From the Internet Without Using Comparable Sales" in the current issue of the Journal of Real Estate Literature. The article presents a new approach for the valuation of local commercial property without the use of comparable sales.

Don Epley has a paper forthcoming entitled "Residential Risk By Location" in the Journal of Real Estate Literature. It examines rates of return by location for properties along the Coast and properties not on the ocean prior to the oil spill and afterwards. The research is among the first to illustrate rates of return by location in Alabama.

Don Epley made an invited presentation to the Mobile Sales Tax Study Committee chaired by Councilperson Rich on property taxes, sales taxes, and local real estate markets. The presentation included a recommendation for the future potential of additional revenue from each source.

Don Epley developed three new student workbooks for Real Estate students in the 2015-16 year published by University Readers, San Diego.  Each contains additional class review material, problems, weekly assignments, and exam review material.  Six commercial properties were used with the Real Estate investment software to assemble an analysis portfolio of rates of return to rank potential investments by profit potential and market risk.

Management

Kelly C. Woodford and Thomas J. Woodford, published an article in The Labor Law Journal titled "Avoiding Union Organizing of Micro Units Following Specialty Healthcare - A Management Perspective.," The article was published in the December 2015 issue. 

Treena Gillespie Finney and colleagues Bronston T. Mayes, Thomas J. Johnson, Jie Shen, and Lin Yi have an article forthcoming in the International Journal of Human Resource Management titled “The effect of human resource practices on perceived organizational support in the People's Republic of China.”