13 minute read
Jones College All-Stars
SAM ZAZA
ASSISTANT PROFESSOR, INFORMATION SYSTEMS AND ANALYTICS
Sam Zaza is passionate about serving and promoting diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI). Her research interests all reflect her role as an advocate. Whether she is exploring issues of social responsibility through innovation and sustainability, finding ways to encourage firstgeneration students and underserved populations to explore careers in STEM, studying gender inequality in STEM, or working toward DEI in the Global South and developing countries, it is clear Zaza has found her calling in helping others through her work. “My belief in DEI drives me to serve regionally and globally,” she said.
Zaza is a reviewer for half a dozen information systems journals and conferences, along with serving as president of the Social Inclusion special interest group of the Association for Information Systems (AIS). She works with her team to organize professional development symposiums with the goal of engaging with information systems scholars, educators, and practitioners about social inclusion practices related to research, teaching, and service.
“We deliver talks about various topics such as designing and conducting diversity-focused and socially inclusive research, cultivating an inclusive classroom, and designing inclusive curriculum,” she said. “We seek to empower academics and industry partners with actionable steps to enhance their diversity and inclusion practices.”
In recent years, Zaza has been internationally recognized for her efforts. Along with international grants and MTSU faculty recognition, she received the Leadership Award from the Middle East and North Africa AIS chapter and the Best Service Award from the Middle East and North Africa Conference on Information Systems in 2021.
Zaza believes one of MTSU’s greatest strengths is the diversity of the student body, with a substantial population being first generation and nontraditional. She wants to bring an even greater diversity of thought and experience to her students through virtual exchange and study abroad programs.
She is an advocate for disenfranchised groups and seeks to provide support and guidance for this population to accommodate their personal situations.
“I have a passion for teaching and advising on career choices and opportunities. Teaching is a journey of continuous improvement. While I know I can positively impact my students’ lives and careers, in every semester, they impact my life, too,” Zaza said. “When I reflect about my journey as a teacher since I joined MTSU in 2018, I realize how much I grew as a person. Being around our students made me more culture-sensitive and gender-bias cognizant. All of this is reflected on how I develop my course examples and syllabi to be more inclusive and more welcoming to a diverse spectrum of students. . . . I am always thankful to my students for making me who I am.”
Zaza and her family—husband Mazhar and children Sarah, 12, and Noah, 11—enjoy baseball, soccer, hiking, and traveling to experience other cultures, music, and food.
RALPH WILLIAMS JR. (’78, ’02)
ASSOCIATE PROFESSOR, DEPARTMENT OF MANAGEMENT
An elementary school visit to a Nashville printing facility fascinated Ralph Williams Jr. He then fell in love with printing after joining a high school vocational class because his new wrestling coach taught it.
Williams wound up a state runner-up in wrestling as well as with the cross-country team for that coach. He also fell in love with his wife of 45 years, Lesa, in high school.
After leading three commercial printing companies, with major ownership in two, Williams turned that career into another one, developing a love of teaching, particularly about small business management. Returning to MTSU for an M.B.A., he later became an adjunct professor and fulltime lecturer, then completed a Ph.D. in 2015 through intensive weekend classes at Kennesaw State University.
Williams considered joining another university but prefers the culture at MTSU.
“I have students that are working 50 hours a week and taking 15 hours,” he said. “I have a student now who’s taking 20 hours, works three days a week at a finance company and that’s going to be her position when she graduates in June, is working on the weekend some at a nursing home, and has three children.
With expertise running companies with 60–120 employees, Williams can share real-world examples, such as showing his Strategic Management class how “Dr. Ralph didn’t do this well” to obtain better business outcomes.
“The work ethic is so strong among our students.”
“For instance, I focused on our customers, our internal operations, and our sales so much that I didn’t have a very good 30,000-foot view of our competition or the general environment,” he said.
Likewise, he draws on experience for his Entrepreneurial Financial Management course.
“We had two businesses grow at a pace of 25% a year, and we were profitable, and you would think that would create cash, but it absorbed cash,” he said. “And I was able to say to the class, ‘If you don’t see those numbers, it’ll sneak up on you.’ ”
Williams relishes his role in research, too, publishing 19 peer-reviewed studies the past three years alone. A project with MTSU colleagues looks at leader credibility, drawing on about 280 academic articles to define a concept that “is scattered all over the place.”
He’s also turned contacts in the printing world into practical assistance. Williams’ studies have resulted in industry reports on such topics as effective ways to deal with supply chain issues and the workforce shortage, as well as divisions of today’s diversified printing industry into strategic groups with benchmarks.
He exudes a passion for small business. Williams recalls hiring a temporary worker who lacked focus but became a press helper and now earns $50,000 as a press operator.
“I had the experience of running a small business and the joy of running a small business,” he said. “You make a contribution to life in that.”
EMILY MADISON
DEPARTMENT OF MARKETING EXECUTIVE AIDE
It’s easy to see that Emily Madison has a servant’s heart.
An executive aide for MTSU’s Department of Marketing since 2019, Madison often displays a desire to help others in both her personal and professional life. She’s a former teacher who spent two years in Southeast Asia as a missionary and later adopted newborn twins when she and her husband already had a preschooler.
Even something she’s now doing for herself—working on an M.Ed. in Higher Education—ultimately should benefit her family. She fits graduate studies around a jam-packed schedule of working full time, serving in church activities, helping a husband on disability with a neuromuscular disease, and caring for three sons, with one of her “little loves” on the autism spectrum and another with severe ADHD.
“Some people, when I told them I was going to start a graduate program, they were like, “Are you crazy?’ Somebody specifically asked me, “Are you a glutton for punishment?’ ” said Madison, mom to middleschooler Luke and 7-year-old Caleb and Joshua.
“But it’s good for me, even though it is work. It helps me to feel like I’m accomplishing something. . . . And I am the breadwinner in the family, so down the road hopefully I then can help our family more, too. I think it’s more of a benefit than a difficulty.”
Such willingness to do whatever it takes is part of Madison’s DNA and translates to her role assisting faculty and working with graduate students. Robert “Barry” Blair, interim chair for Marketing, says that he’s never heard a negative comment from faculty about Madison and that “she does everything well.”
“I do not recall her ever saying ‘I don’t know’ and letting the conversation end there,” Blair said. “She may say ‘I don’t know,’ but that is always followed by ‘but I will find out.’
“This makes her a rare jewel in today’s workforce.”
Madison has longtime ties to MTSU, where she sought opportunities after moving back from Mississippi. Her father worked as an engineer for WMOT-FM radio, the family has held football season tickets for decades, and she graduated in 2000 debt-free due to an MTSU Presidential Scholarship.
She didn’t realize higher education was a career option while in college. But she thinks her journey— from teaching to working with college students in overseas mission work and at The Very Idea promotional products company—all led to finding her calling.
“I enjoy doing what I’m doing behind the scenes to help faculty, whether it be in the classroom, with their research, or something with a student organization, just helping them to then help the students.”
Spoken like a true servant.
AMIE DONAHUE
ACADEMIC ADVISOR, JONES COLLEGE OF BUSINESS
Dedication is a key word to describe Amie Donahue’s work at MTSU.
The undergraduate academic advisor has worked in Jones College for over a decade. She notes the growth she’s witnessed in that time. “The biggest change I’ve seen was the increased focused on the importance of advising at the University,” Donahue said.
“When I started, there were three professional advisors for over 3,000 undergraduate students, and faculty were the primary advisors. We helped students as they scheduled appointments, and the process was prescriptive,” she added. “Eventually, the University hired more advisors, and we became primary advisors. This gave us the opportunity to be thoughtful in our approach to advising.”
Donahue displays incredible initiative and is always looking for new ways to connect with students. She keeps up with current trends and technology by looking at social media for business schools, reading advising articles, and sharing her observations with colleagues to provide Jones College students experiences they would get at any of the other top business programs.
“I always think things can be improved upon or done in new ways. I see so much potential in our students and our college,” Donahue said. “I get excited about the possibilities of it all. Sometimes all it takes is seeing a fun event on a social media account and thinking that we can do this too.”
She manages Business Advising’s social media accounts on Twitter, Facebook, and Instagram— the last with over 1,000 followers.
“We have so many impressive people in Jones College, so my priority is to highlight them. This includes students, faculty, advisors, administrators, and student organizations,” Donahue said. “Our favorite time of year for social media content is graduation. Who doesn’t want to share what they’ve worked so hard to achieve? We also promote all the professional development opportunities we afford.
“We develop a plan to promote course registration each semester and tackle any issues we see come up in our advising appointments. Connecting with students used to be as easy as sending an email, and now there are so many options. Social media is an important part of this.”
Donahue sees advising as a team effort, including dialogues with department chairs and faculty. She credits her ability to relate to students as individuals to her background in counseling.
Originally, her career plan was to counsel high school students. During her undergraduate education, she really enjoyed working with students already in college and shifted her master’s focus.
“I connect with my students by identifying something that is important to them and expanding on that. I use this to develop rapport from meeting to meeting,” Donahue said. “Each student is different and may need various kinds of help at different times. What works for one student may not work for another. I adjust my approach as the situation dictates.”
JAVIER HERNANDEZ
BUSINESS ADMINISTRATION MAJOR
Javier Hernandez is using undergraduate research to mix Business Administration with pleasure and to give back to an MTSU community he loves.
The junior from La Vergne has been making amateur videos for years, so when he enrolled at MTSU, he toyed with the idea of minoring in Video and Film Production. But as a first-generation college student who needed to take the straightest path to career success, he decided it wouldn’t be wise to take on the extra semester of coursework.
Instead, Hernandez has been feeding his creative appetite—and improving his skills—with the help of an Undergraduate Research Experience and Creative Activity (URECA) grant. In spring 2021, he used the funds to make a video promoting MTSU’s Charlie and Hazel Daniels Veterans and Military Family Center, one of the nation’s largest centers serving military-connected students.
Hernandez is part of the military community, having found his own place there through MTSU’s Army ROTC program.
“After the first semester, I loved it so much that I knew this was exactly what I wanted to do,” he said.
Between a B.B.A. degree and the Military Science minor he’ll earn through ROTC, Hernandez has his post-college future mapped out. He’s on track to graduate in May 2023 as a commissioned officer and plans to put in a few years of active-duty service with the U.S. Army before moving to the civilian workforce.
Judging from his ROTC training, he said, being a military officer is good preparation for a career in business.
“I think you could say it’s like being a manager,” he said. “You’re just managing to make sure that everyone else in your organization, your small unit, is doing everything right.”
During this spring semester, Hernandez landed a marketing internship for McKnight Advisory Group, a financial services firm. He also met the governor and provided video coverage when MTSU’s Student Organization for the Advancement of Research (SOAR) shared undergraduate research with the legislature at the state Capitol in February.
Although he doesn’t own much professional equipment, Hernandez loves making videos so much that one of his favorite pastimes is “watching videos on how to create better videos.” Another favorite pastime is watching movies, specifically superhero films. While he enjoys the action and adventure, it’s the overarching themes that really capture his imagination.
“Yeah, it’s entertainment, but in the background there’s always a purpose,” he said. “Something like Captain America—having loyalty, those high ethics and values.”
In his Daniels Center project, Hernandez wanted his work to convey a message about duty and camaraderie, the qualities that drew him to ROTC.
“It’s the environment, the culture—it’s just the values,” he said. “It’s like a big brotherhood. . . . In a military environment, regardless of your position, you try to give it your best.”
