Jones School honors five faculty members for excellence in teaching

Last weekend the students and alumni of the Jones Graduate School of Business recognized five of the school’s faculty members for their excellence in teaching. Honorees were chosen by the Rice MBA alumni group, as well as students from the school’s three MBA programs.

MBA for Executives Award for Teaching Excellence
Karen Nelson, professor of accounting

KAREN NELSON

A member of the Rice faculty since 2003, Nelson teaches financial accounting in the MBA and Executive MBA programs as well as several Executive Education courses. Her research focuses on financial reporting quality and earnings management, including the role of regulators, auditors and private securities litigation in monitoring financial reporting quality. Nelson has published her research in a number of top academic journals and has been invited to speak at more than 30 leading business schools in the U.S. and abroad. Her research has also been featured in leading financial press publications, including The Wall Street Journal, Businessweek and Forbes. She is on the editorial board of The Accounting Review and is an active member of the American Accounting Association, for which she serves on the Intellectual Property Task Force. Prior to her appointment at Rice, she was on the faculty of the Graduate School of Business at Stanford University and was a visiting professor at the University of Michigan.

MBA for Professionals Evening Award for Teaching Excellence
Sebastien Michenaud, assistant professor of finance

SEBASTIEN MICHENAUD

Michenaud currently teaches the core finance class to the professional evening and weekend MBA students. A member of the Rice faculty since 2008, he focuses his research on corporate finance and behavioral finance. He works primarily on the effects the stock market has on a firm’s financial decisions, such as corporate investment, financing, acquisitions and payout, through the market’s organization (short-selling constraints), its participants (analysts and investors) and its outcomes (stock prices). His research has appeared in the Journal of International Money and Finance. Michenaud has worked with Bankers Trust (now Deutsche Bank) in London and Madrid in the mergers and acquisitions department, with Schneider Electric in Chicago in the corporate strategy department and with Arkwright Ltd. in Paris as a strategy consultant.

MBA for Professionals Weekend Award for Teaching Excellence
Vikas Mittal, the J. Hugh Liedtke Professor of Marketing

VIKAS MITTAL

Mittal researches consumer decision-making, health care, customer satisfaction and organization strategy. In 2006 he received the William F. O’Dell Award for making the most significant, long-term contribution to the theory, methodology and practice of marketing. His research was also recognized with the FedEx Excellence in Service Research award at the Journal of Service Research. His research has appeared in leading marketing journals, including the Journal of Consumer Research, the Journal of Marketing, the Journal of Marketing Research and Marketing Science. He currently serves on the editorial boards of the Journal of Consumer Research, the Journal of Marketing, the Journal of Marketing Research, the Journal of Service Research, the Journal of the Academy of Marketing Science, the Journal of Interactive Marketing and the Journal of Retailing. Prior to joining the Jones School, he was the Thomas Marshall Professor of Marketing at the Katz Graduate School of Management, where he won the excellence in teaching award three years running. He was voted the best professor by the executives in the 2003-IEMBA program in Brazil.

Full-Time MBA Award for Teaching Excellence
Steve Crawford, assistant professor of accounting

STEVE CRAWFORD

Crawford joined the Rice faculty in 2007 and teaches financial statement analysis in the MBA program. His research focuses on financial reporting issues in both domestic and international settings. His dissertation examines how legal institutions and market forces affect cross-listed firms. His research also focuses on the role of financial analysts. He earned his Ph.D. in accounting from the Graduate School of Business at the University of Chicago. Crawford also holds bachelor’s and master’s degrees from Brigham Young University.

Jesse H. Jones Graduate School of Business Alumni Award for Teaching Excellence
Prashant Kale, associate professor of strategic management

PRASHANT KALE

Kale does research in the areas of corporate strategy, strategic alliances and acquisitions, and some of his current projects examine such issues as how companies choose whether to ally or acquire, how acquisitions create value in emerging markets and how companies build alliance capability. His research has received awards from the Academy of Management and the Strategic Management Society and has been published in the Strategic Management Journal, Harvard Business Review, MIT Sloan Management Review and other professional journals. Kale is also a research fellow with the Mack Center for Technological Innovation at the University of Pennsylvania’s Wharton School and a faculty associate at the University of Michigan’s William Davidson Institute.