A cohort of 10 new faculty members from the United States, Korea, Mexico and China have joined the University of Tennessee, Knoxville’s Haslam College of Business this fall. Spread across all departments, these new faculty members bring a combined 46 years of industry experience and 87 years of teaching experience to the college.
Business Analytics & Statistics
Chung Eun Lee has become an assistant professor in the Department of Business Analytics & Statistics. She comes to Haslam from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, where she wrote her dissertation on “Statistical Inference of Multivariate Time Series and Functional Data using New Dependence Metrics.” Lee has published in the Journal of the American Statistical Association (Theory and Methods) and the Journal of Business & Economic Statistics. Her research interests include: dimension reduction, functional and nonlinear time series, multivariate analysis and robust statistics.
Wei Zheng, whose major research interest is experimental design, comes to the Department of Business Analytics and Statistics as an associate professor. He joins Haslam from Indiana University-Purdue University Indianapolis, where he was an assistant professor. Zheng’s research has recently appeared in publications including: Annals of Statistics, Statistics and Probability Letters and the Journal of Statistical Computation and Simulation.
Economics
María Padilla-Romo joins the Department of Economics as an assistant professor. She comes to Haslam from Texas A&M University, where she completed her doctorate. Padilla-Romo’s research interests include applied microeconomics, public economics and development economics on topics including Mexico’s drug war and the effects of full-time schools on academic performance. Her work has appeared in English and Spanish publications, including the Cato Research Briefs in Economic Policy. She also has been quoted in Time magazine and Newsweek.
Finance
Ashleigh Eldemire-Poindexter, who is joining the Department of Finance as an instructor, comes to Haslam from the University of South Carolina’s Darla Moore School of Business. Eldemire-Poindexter’s research interests include empirical corporate finance, capital structure and fixed income securities.
Mark Taranto is now a clinical professor in the Department of Finance. He comes to Haslam from the University of Maryland’s Robert H. Smith School of Business, where he was a visiting assistant professor. Taranto’s career in finance started in 1986, before he turned to academics in 1996. Currently, his working papers include “Employee Stock Options and the Underpricing of Initial Public Offerings,” “Why Investment Banks Underprice IPOs: Because They Can,” and “The Effects of Existing Capital Structure on Equity Offerings.”
Marketing and Supply Chain Management
Melinda Micheletto has joined Haslam as a lecturer of marketing. Previously a professional specialist at the University of Notre Dame’s Mendoza College of Business, Micheletto holds a Ph.D. in marketing from Haslam.
Lance Saunders has joined the Department of Marketing and Supply Chain Management as an assistant professor. Most recently, he was an assistant professor of supply chain management and analytics at Virginia Commonwealth University, where he specialized in teaching operations management. Saunders has published in the International Journal of Logistics Management, the Journal of Purchasing and Supply Management and others. He received his bachelor’s, master’s and MBA at UT before completing his doctorate at Virginia Tech in 2013.
Accounting
LaTonya Jordan has joined the Department of Accounting and Information Management as a lecturer. She comes to Haslam from the Oak Ridge National Laboratory, where she was a project implementation manager. Jordan holds a bachelor’s degree in accounting from UT and a master’s in public administration from Tennessee State University. She also was an accountant and auditor for the Tennessee Department of Transportation.
Dana Parks is now a lecturer in accounting. Prior to joining Haslam, she worked in fraud investigation and dispute services for EY in Atlanta and also was a dispatcher and crime analyst for the Anderson County, Tennessee, Sherriff’s Office. Parks holds undergraduate degrees in sociology and business administration, as well as a master’s degree in accountancy, all from UT.
Management
Sara Williamson has joined the Department of Management as a lecturer. She previously was an adjunct professor of business and management at Pellissippi State Community College and Roane State Community College. Williamson holds a master’s degree in management and leadership from Webster University in St. Louis, a master’s degree in public administration from Barry University in Miami Shores, Florida, and a bachelor’s degree in business administration from Flagler College in St. Augustine, Florida.
