Winter 2022

Jordan Gill

Moving Forward

Wheels and pedals have been Jordan Gill’s preferred mode of transportation since childhood. In high school, he’d bike to friends’ houses, the gym, and around the neighborhood as a way to stay in shape for the wrestling team. As an undergraduate student, he pedaled everywhere—to the grocery store, to class, and to parties.

Lisa and Greg Smith

Giving Students the World

Greg (HCB, ’85) and Lisa Smith share a passion for helping students succeed and experience the world. The couple became interested in supporting the Global Leadership Scholars (GLS) program at the Haslam College of Business about a decade ago. In 2016, they invested a naming gift, creating the Greg and Lisa Smith GLS program.

Scott Roe

Entrepreneur at Heart

Scott Roe (HCB, ’87) started his career with entrepreneurship in mind. With encouragement from mentors, he pursued a degree from the Department of Accounting and Information Management, thinking he’d work with a Big Eight firm for a few years before starting his own business venture.

In This Issue

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Full Magazine

Varun Rangnekar

Student Uses Research Grant to Improve East Knox Clinic

New Endowed Chair in Accounting Created to Honor Dean Emeritus Jan Williams

12th Annual Alumni Gala

Lauren Porter

Finding the Right Ingredients for Career Success

Chad Sentell

Fishing and Finance

BRAD ROLL

Future Strength

Issue Gallery

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Thought Leadership

NBC News

Logistics companies are competing with Amazon for a tight supply of warehouse and distribution workers, and the online retailer is able to offer starting wages that exceed the market rate. “It proves difficult to woo that workforce,” said Thomas Goldsby, a professor of logistics at the University of Tennessee. Rapid test makers face the additional challenge of trying to forecast whether a massive capital investment for the capacity for sorely needed rapid tests will still pay off in eight years — or even eight months. “Those who 'figure this out' appear to be the smartest kids in class, but it’s really a game of chance,” Goldsby said. “No one wants to be left holding massive inventories when the music stops.”

Thomas Goldsby - Co-Executive Director, Global Supply Chain Institute; Dee and Jim Haslam Chair in Logistics

Forbes

Thomas Goldsby is the Haslam Chair of Logistics at the University of Tennessee’s Master's of Science in Supply Chain Management online program. He said, “I do think that the White House posture is a very positive demonstration of government attempting to address a real and pressing problem in collaboration with industry. “That said, it would be ideal to see a more holistic solution rather than addressing a specific bottleneck. The passage of the infrastructure bill would provide a foundation needed to support modern business and benefit every American."

Thomas Goldsby - Co-Executive Director, Global Supply Chain Institute; Dee and Jim Haslam Chair in Logistics

Wall Street Journal

“Employers don’t want to lay off somebody who might in some way be productive,” said Marianne Wanamaker, an economist at the University of Tennessee, Knoxville.

Marianne Wanamaker - George A. Spiva Scholar, Kinney Family Faculty Research Fellow, Associate Professor, and Fellow, and Global Supply Chain Institute

Forbes

“It is difficult to get the shipment of raw goods from other parts of the world because of COVID and shortages of shipping containers and delays in the shipping industry,” said Andrea Sordi, academic director for the executive MBA in global supply chain management at the University of Tennessee-Knoxville. “Adding on to that, the world had a huge increase in their consumption. With lockdowns, people were not going to restaurants and eating out. There has been a huge increase in demand of ready-to-eat and pickup food.”

Andrea Sordi - Clinical Assistant Professor

Supply Chain Dive

"It’s still a male-dominated industry. I can’t tell you how many times when I’ve been in meetings and I’m the only woman," said Wendy Tate, professor of supply chain management at the University of Tennessee, who also works with Nexxus Initiative — a campus group that empowers women in supply chain. "I think companies are making really good strides in looking around and saying 'oh we made a mistake.'"

Wendy Tate - McCormick Endowed Professorship; William J. Taylor Professor; Haslam Family Faculty Research Fellow

The Washington Post

“People left the labor market in droves during the pandemic and they’re not coming back,” said economist Marianne Wanamaker, a University of Tennessee professor, noting that the country’s labor force participation rate has been stagnant at 61 percent. “We are way behind the predicted employment recovery.”

Marianne Wanamaker - George A. Spiva Scholar, Kinney Family Faculty Research Fellow, Associate Professor, and Fellow, and Global Supply Chain Institute

Salon

Thomas Goldsby, a professor of supply chain management at the University of Tennessee — Knoxville's Haslam College of Business, assigns his undergraduate student a "routine exercise" that frequently proves revelatory. Its purpose is to illustrate the complexity of the various trade routes that bring products from all over the world to consumers. The assignment is to figure out how far the students can trace the supply chain — if possible going back to the exact point when the raw materials were extracted. "When my students have had an opportunity to present their results to the companies and the products that they produce, the company executives learn something every time," Goldsby told Salon. "I just think it's remarkable that my undergraduate students can present news about the business or the products and the senior executives are like, 'Wow, we had no idea that a golf club manufacturer is wondering why they have a hard time getting titanium.' It's because there's not a lot of titanium that goes into a golf club, but there's a whole heck of a lot of it that goes into an aircraft to build the fuselage."

Thomas Goldsby - Co-Executive Director, Global Supply Chain Institute; Dee and Jim Haslam Chair in Logistics

Adweek

“Agility provides degrees of freedom—the ability to pivot away from bad situations and toward good ones,” Tom Goldsby, co-faculty director of the University of Tennessee’s Global Supply Chain Institute, told Adweek. “That was something of a luxury before the pandemic, but it’s a vital form of business resilience now.”

Thomas Goldsby - Co-Executive Director, Global Supply Chain Institute; Dee and Jim Haslam Chair in Logistics

POLITICO

“For each of us, the way that we think about our own health, and the way we want to interact with other people and how often we want to be in the office, and whether we do or don't want to be wearing masks around people who are unvaccinated, those elements of our preferences are important for our job match,” said Marianne Wanamaker, an economics professor at the University of Tennessee and former member of the White House Council of Economic Advisers.

Marianne Wanamaker - George A. Spiva Scholar, Kinney Family Faculty Research Fellow, Associate Professor, and Fellow, and Global Supply Chain Institute

The New York Times

Celeste Carruthers, a professor at the University of Tennessee’s Haslam College of Business who has extensively researched the state’s tuition-free programs, said Tennessee had done several things right. The first was keeping the program simple. “The crystal-clear message that college is free if you follow these steps and go to these places cuts through a lot of the clutter and opaqueness,” Dr. Carruthers said.

Celeste Carruthers - William F. Fox Distinguished Professor of Labor Economics and Haslam Family Faculty Research Fellow

New Faculty

Haslam proudly welcomed these 14 new faculty members in September 2021.

John-Patrick Paraskevas

Ruta Ruzeviciute

Nana Bryan

T. Allen Pannell, Jr.

Christie Ekern

Research

How Does Sales Tax Nexus Impact Business Activity? South Dakota argued that Wayfair and other huge remote sellers had significantly eroded the tax base and crimped funding for state and local services. Read article

People Holding Gold Coins Graphic - Winter 2022

Sources of Funds

Source of Funds Market Value Stats Graphics

Haslam College of Business started the year with increased enrollments and face-to-face courses. Challenged with COVID-19 restrictions, we continued year four of the “25 in 5” faculty hiring plan and successfully onboarded many new faculty in August. The Graduate and Executive Education team persisted through all the challenges related to Covid-19 and continued to make positive impacts on our community by offering many of the traditional face-to-face courses in an online classroom. The revenues continued to grow and be reinvested into the infrastructure and support of our student experience. Private philanthropy remains an important funding source allowing the college to implement new programming, expand current offerings and support our students in their time here at the Haslam College of Business. Increasing private philanthropy, launching successful new programs that attract additional students and controlling our costs are always important, and particularly so as we strive to slow the increase in tuition levels given the economic realities facing our students and their families. — BETSY ADAMS, ASSISTANT DEAN OF FINANCE AND ADMINISTRATION