Program Faculty

Innovating Teaching for Making an Impact

SYNOPSIS OF THE PRESENTATION

Typically, higher education institutions and faculty focus on teaching innovation outcomes, overlooking difficulties and learning opportunities in the teaching innovation process. Educators may refrain from innovating teaching for various reasons (e.g., institutional pressures, fear of failure, potentially bad student feedback, etc.). Aušrinė will present multiple paths to innovative teaching and will share her experiences with the innovating process, drawing on several examples of successfully implemented teaching innovations.

BIO

Aušrinė Šilenskytė (Ausrine Silenskyte) is a Researcher and a Program Manager (Bachelor in International Business) at the School of Management, University of Vaasa, Finland. She also serves as a chair at the Academy of International Business Teaching and Education Shared Interest Group. Šilenskytė holds a PhD in the area of international management, and her research centers around strategy implementation in MNCs, technology (e.g., blockchain, SaaS) adoption in International Business (IB) management, and teaching IB. She has published in the journals such as Journal of Business Research, Critical Perspectives on International Business, Journal of Teaching in International Business. Aušrinė teaches various topics related to international management for undergraduates, master’s degree students, as well as professionals in continuous education. She served as a digital mentor supporting teacher-colleagues in adopting recent technologies in their courses. Aušrinė is an alumnus of prestigious Nord-IB program, she has also received several international awards for her research and as an educator.

 

Dr. T. Cuneyt Evirgen serves as Senior Academic Professional at the J. Mack Robinson College of Business, Georgia State University. Cuneyt is also a faculty member at the Institute of International Business and the Faculty Director for GSU-CIBER. Cuneyt is a seasoned executive, educator, scholar, and mentor in international business and executive education. He is an independent board member with experience and expertise in marketing and retailing strategy.

Cuneyt holds BSc degrees both in Electrical Engineering and Mathematics, an MBA degree from Bosphorous University in Istanbul, and PhD degree in Marketing and International Business from Michigan State University. In 2010, he received the Outstanding Alumni Achievement Award given by the Eli Broad College of Business at Michigan State University.

Prior to joining Georgia State University, Dr. Evirgen was the Director of the Executive Development Unit (EDU) at Sabancı University in Istanbul (ranked 42^nd in Financial Times Executive Education Custom Programs 2022 Global Ranking, www.edu.sabanciuniv.edu) and practice faculty member at the Sabancı Business School for almost two decades. At Sabanci University, his responsibilities included management of custom and open enrollment non-degree programs in executive education as well as professional non-thesis graduate degree programs. His more than three decades of professional experience also includes extensive project and consultancy work with international partners. Cuneyt was the general manager of a leading market research agency that operated in Turkey, Caucasia, and Central Asia.

Cuneyt also has over 4,000 hours of graduate and executive teaching experience, along with publications in academic and trade journals, and has written book chapters and company cases.

Over his career, Cuneyt accumulated 26 years of corporate board-level experience with leading retailers listed in Borsa Istanbul Stock Exchange — including Teknosa (www.teknosa.com) and Carrefoursa (www.carrefoursa:com) and Cilek Inc. (www.cilek.com). He currently serves as an Independent Board Member at Teknosa Inc. Cuneyt was also an academic advisor to the Retailing Sectoral Assembly of the Union of Chambers & Commodity Exchanges of Turkey between 2010-2020.

 

Gary Knight is Professor of Global Management and the Helen Jackson Chair in International Management at Willamette University in Salem and Portland, Oregon, USA. A Fellow of the Academy of International Business (AIB), he also recently served as an AIB Vice President, a three-year term. He has co-authored several books, including two textbooks on international business. He has won awards for teaching at Willamette University and at Florida State University (FSU). He directed FSU’s International Business Program for 15 years. He created and has been lead instructor of 20 study abroad programs in Asia, Europe, and Latin America. He has been a keynote speaker or invited speaker at more than 30 conferences or universities worldwide.

Gary’s research emphasizes ‘born globals’, international entrepreneurship, internationalization, international marketing, and technology’s role in international business. He has authored more than 100 refereed articles in journals and conference proceedings, including JIBS, IBR, JWB, and JIM, among numerous others. He and co-author S. Tamer Cavusgil won the 2014 JIBS Decade Award for their article on born global firms. Gary is ranked one of the top 15 most cited scholars in International Business at Google Scholar (more than 28,000 citations), and one of the most cited scholars in International Marketing.

Prior to joining academia, Gary was an executive in international business for several years, focusing on Europe, Japan, and Mexico. The U.S. House of Representatives invited him to provide expert testimony on international business.  Gary earned his MBA at the University of Washington and PhD at Michigan State University. He also attended the University of Paris in France and Sophia University in Japan.

 

John Riesenberger

John Riesenberger has served as a domestic U.S. and International Business executive and as an educator of International Business.  John was the Vice-President of a leading pharmaceutical company and served as the Corporate Vice-President and Chief Commercialization Officer of a biotechnology firm.  John’s academic affiliations include serving as a Clinical Professor of Executive Development with the Thunderbird School of Global Management. He has served as an Executive-In-Residence at the Michigan State University CIBER.  He has co-authored numerous articles, books, and textbooks on International Business. John has served on the editorial boards of the Journal of International Marketing and the Rutgers Business Review.

 

 

 

 

Leigh Anne Liu is a Professor and Director of the Institute of International Business. She studies how culture and cognition influence intercultural interactions, including negotiation, conflict management, and collaborations at the individual, organizational, and national levels. Her research appears in the Administrative Science Quarterly, the Journal of Applied Psychology, and the Journal of International Business Studies, among other outlets. Her research teams have received grants from the World Health Organization, the U.S. Department of Education, the Department of Defense, the Research Grants Council of Hong Kong, and the European Commission. Leigh Anne was awarded the Fulbright-Hanken Distinguished Chair in Business and Economics in 2020 by the U.S. Department of State, Fulbright Foreign Scholarship Board, and Fulbright Finland Foundation. She has been a visiting professor at the University of South Australia, Toulouse Business School in France, Peking University, and Nanjing University in China. Professor Liu has taught courses and workshops for undergraduate, MBA, MIB, Ph.D., executives, and high school students on topics of international negotiation, intercultural competency, cross-cultural management, and research methods. She has consulted for Fortune 500 companies and the non-profit sector on conflict management and multicultural competency programs. She served as an associate editor for the Journal of Business Research and Cross Cultural & Strategic Management and a guest editor of three special issues. She has served on the editorial boards of the Journal of International Business Studies, Academy of Management Review, Management and Organization Review, and International Business Review.

 

Dr. Mourad Dakhli is a professor of International Business and holds a Ph.D. from the Moore School of Business at the University of South Carolina. His research centers on the value-generating processes of human and social capital across different cultural and institutional settings and the implications on learning and innovation. Prior to joining GSU, he served as a faculty member at the American University of Kuwait. He taught at various places, including the University of South Carolina, Azerbaijan State Oil Academy (Azerbaijan), the Caucasus School of Business (Republic of Georgia), and others.

His prior work experience includes developing and marketing industry training programs, managing capacity development projects at a number of academic institutions, and directing the activities of a bi-national chamber of commerce responsible for the promotion and implementation of a wide array of international trade and investment initiatives.

Nicole Coviello, PhD, DSc (econ) hc, Wilfrid Laurier University (Waterloo, Canada)

Nicole Coviello is a Professor of Marketing and the Lazaridis Chair of International Entrepreneurship & Innovation at Wilfrid Laurier University (Waterloo, Canada). She co-founded the Lazaridis Institute for the Management of Technology Enterprises and its inaugural Research Director. Nicole holds a Ph.D. in Marketing and International Business (University of Auckland), an MSc in Technology Management (University of Saskatchewan), and a BComm Hons Marketing (University of Saskatchewan). In 2010, she also received an honorary doctoral degree from the Turku School of Economics (Finland).

Nicole’s research intersects international business, marketing strategy, and entrepreneurship. She has multiple publications in the top journals of all three of these disciplines. She is co-editor of the Handbook of Measures for International Entrepreneurship Research (with Helena Yli-Renko). In 2018, an international study showed her to have four of the most influential publications in International Marketing – more than any other scholar in the world. She was named a Fellow of the Academy of International Business in 2020 and is repeatedly ranked in the top 1% of Business and Management scholars in the world. Nicole sits on multiple editorial boards and, from 2009-2022, was a Field Editor at the Journal of Business Venturing.

 

 

Dr. Nukhet Vardar is the Director of Brands Whisper’g® Consultancy Ltd, UK, a London-based consultancy, developing innovative online teaching tools and adapting them to international markets. Following her MSc and Ph.D. in International Marketing from Univ. of Manchester Institute of Science &Technology (former UMIST), UK, Vardar pursued an academic career while working for the industry since 1985. Her last appointment was as a marketing professor (2004) at Yeditepe University, Istanbul, Turkey. Her research interests are in international marketing/communications, and brand development, with a special focus on case writing and new pedagogy development for business studies. She is the author of 12 books.
https://elizi.net/nukhet-vardar/; https://orcid.org/0000-0002-3043-0410

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Pinar BUYUKBALCI is an associate professor at Yildiz Technical University – Dept. of Business Administration, Istanbul. Her research spans international entrepreneurship, entrepreneurial ecosystems, innovation strategies, and interfirm collaborations. She is an active member of the entrepreneurial ecosystem in Turkey, acting as a consultant to entrepreneurship programs of science parks in Istanbul and running active affiliations with NGOs and business associations to support entrepreneurship projects. Over the last ten years, she has also been involved in several national and international projects on case study writing and teaching. She is a member of Case Study Alliance Turkey (led by Middle East Technical University) and also a member of the Endeavor Turkey Case Campus Program. She is a Fulbright Scholar, a British Academy Scholar, and a member of the Academy of International Business.

 

 

 

Roberto Garcia is the Young-Jin Kim Clinical Professor of International Business in the Department of Management and Entrepreneurship at Indiana University’s Kelley School of Business. He also serves as Faculty Director for the Center for International Business Education and Research (CIBER). He currently teaches various International Business courses at the Undergraduate, Kelley Direct-Online, and Executive Education programs. Garcia holds a Ph.D. from the University of Michigan in International Business with a functional area minor in Organizational Behavior and an MBA from the University of Toledo, Ohio (International Business). He received his bachelor’s degree from the University of Missouri-Columbia in Psychology.

Before pursuing a Ph.D., Dr. Garcia gained significant full-time management experience. Garcia has worked as a consultant or has delivered executive education sessions for a number of well-known organizations, including GM, Ford, Chrysler, ALCOA, Philips, AT&T, Wendy’s International, Edwards Brothers Printing, Kimball International, U.S. Department of Justice, Manitowoc, Cummins Inc., Eli Lilly, etc.

Dr. Garcia has received several honors and awards for his contributions to international business teaching and service. For example, in 2021, he received the Dr. James E. Mumford Excellence in Extraordinary Teaching Award. In 2018 he was awarded the Kelley Service Award. In 2015 he received the “Elvin S. Eyster Teaching Scholar Award” and was a finalist for the “Innovative Teaching Award.” In 2013 he received the Indiana University Trustees Teaching Award for overall teaching quality. In 2010 he was the recipient of the Kelley Direct “Teaching Excellence Award.” He was also recognized for the 2010 “Kelley Service Award” for contributions to international business teaching and programming. In 2008 he was awarded the “Innovative Teaching Award” by the Kelley School of Business. He was also nominated in 2009, 2010, and 2011 for the “John W. Ryan Award” for Distinguished Contributions to International Programs and Studies. He has also been recognized several times as a “Favorite Professor” by several scholar-athletes at Indiana University.  Dr. Garcia is currently instrumental in the Global Foundations Core undergraduate program curriculum. Beginning in the Spring of 2013, he began teaching a required Global Business Environments course to all Kelley undergraduates. Garcia also regularly teaches several Kelley Undergraduate and MBA courses involving travel abroad.

Dr. Garcia’s previous research is strongly focused on Organizational Effectiveness in a variety of industries and settings. His past international research focused on Foreign Direct Investment and the management and organizational effectiveness of Multinational Corporations. His research has been field-based and oriented toward improving organizational practice in emerging economies and international restructuring in the NAFTA environment. He is interested in effective organizational learning that can improve a firm’s overall competitiveness. He has written and published on such topics as: Organizational Learning and Competitiveness in Mexico’s Automotive Industry, the diffusion of “lean production” at Ford, Nissan, and Volkswagen in Mexico, International Labor Migration, and Human Capital Investment and Competitive Advantage. He is also involved in computer-assisted teaching methods that incorporate the World Wide Web, video conferencing, and other internet sources to enhance his students’ learning.

 

 

Dr. Salomao DeFarias is a professor of Marketing and International Business and holds a Doctor degree from the School of Economics and Business, University of Sao Paulo, Brazil. Prior to joining GSU, he served as a tenured faculty member at the School of Business, Federal University of Pernambuco. He taught at other places as visiting faculty, including Breda University (Netherlands) and Central Piedmont Community College as a Scholar-in-Residence with a Fulbright grant.

His academic activities include coordinating the business graduate program at the university of Pernambuco (Ph.D. and MBA programs), member of the Marketing scientific committee for the Brazilian Academy of Management Meeting (ENANPAD), Area Committee member at CNPq federal Brazilian agency, Editor of BAR – Brazilian Administration Review, among others. Dr. De Farias was an exchange student at Vanderbilt University’s School of Management, Visiting Researcher at Auburn University’s College of Business and Georgia State University – Institute of International Business.

His prior work experience includes retail, developing executive training programs, designing research projects, study abroad programs, grant proposals, and coordinating a research center at UFPE University, Brazil.