Michael Yates is a clinical associate professor of finance in the Haslam College of Business at the University of Tennessee, Knoxville. He currently teaches honors financial management and honors investments and portfolio management at the undergraduate level and investment analysis and portfolio management in the MBA program. He received his Ph.D. in finance at the University of Texas at Austin in 2007 and has previously held the position of clinical assistant professor and faculty director of the M.S. finance program at Georgia State University and assistant professor at Auburn University. His labor economics paper “Strike Three: Discrimination, Incentives and Evaluation” was published in the American Economic Review and has been cited in the New York Times, USA Today, Time.com and elsewhere.

Yates has amassed an impressive collection of accolades for his teaching effectiveness, and his research has been published in the International Journal for the Scholarship of Teaching and Learning. He received the Home Federal Excellence in Teaching Award in 2022 and 2023 and was a finalist for the Allen H. Keally Excellence in Teaching Award for each of the past three years. He won the MBA First-year Faculty Award in 2021 and was a finalist for the MBA Second-year Faculty Award in 2021 and 2022. Prior to joining Haslam, Michael received the J. Mack Robinson Faculty Recognition Award for Distinguished Contributions in Teaching at Georgia State and the Top Professor Award for the M.S. finance program. In addition, he has been awarded the Fischer Black Distinguished Finance Professor Award from the TFE Times and is a three-time winner of the Colonial Company Teaching Excellence Award, a four-time recipient of the Teacher of the Year Award from the Auburn University FMA student organization and the winner of the Fred Moore Assistant Instructor Award for Teaching Excellence from the University of Texas at Austin.

Yates married his wife, Mindy, in 2018 and is the proud father of two young girls.