Freeman School promotes two, appoints four to faculty for 2011-12

Dean Ira Solomon is pleased to announce the following promotions and appointments to the faculty at the A. B. Freeman School of Business for the 2011-12 academic year.

Sheri Tice, professor of finance, has been named the A. B. Freeman Chair of Business. Tice joined the faculty of the Freeman School in 1998 as an assistant professor of finance and was promoted to associate professor in 2004 and professor in 2010. Prior to her appointment as the A. B. Freeman Chair, she had served as the Norman Mayer Professor of Business since 2005. Tice received her PhD in business administration from Michigan State University, her MBA from Kennesaw State University and her undergraduate degree from the University of Minnesota. Her research is primarily in the area of corporate finance and focuses on the effect of firm characteristics on the decisions and performance of firms and their competitors. She also conducts research in the area of financial market anomalies. Tice has published research articles in The Journal of Finance, The Journal of Financial Economics and The Review of Financial Studies. She is a referee of top finance journals, a frequent discussant at finance conferences and is regularly invited to the National Bureau of Economic Research Corporate Finance Meetings. As director of the Darwin Fenner Student Managed Fund, Tice supervises the management of $2.6 million of Freeman School endowment money by graduate and undergraduate students in two honors seminars. At the Freeman School, Tice has been the recipient of the Erich Sternberg Faculty Research Award, the Irving Lavalle Research Award, the Outstanding Young Researcher Award, the James T. Murphy Excellence in Teaching Award and the Outstanding Service Award.

Geoffrey Parker has been promoted to professor of economic sciences. Parker joined the Freeman School in 1998 as an assistant professor and was promoted to associate professor in 2004. Since 2006, he has served as director of the Tulane Energy Institute. Parker received a BS in electrical engineering and computer science from Princeton University and an MS in electrical engineering (Technology and Policy Program) and a PhD in management science from Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Parker is co-developer of the economic theory of two-sided networks. Recent research includes investigations of outsourced engineering projects, multiple studies of the economics of business platform strategy, and studies of the design and performance of electric power markets. Parker’s research is funded by grants from the National Science Foundation, the Department of Energy and multiple corporations. He serves as a National Science Foundation panelist, an associate editor of multiple journals, and on the Industry Studies Association board of directors. Parker has recently worked on projects with AT&T, ExxonMobil, International Postal Corp., Microsoft and SAP. Parker received the Freeman School’s Outstanding Young Researcher Award in 2002, the Production & Operations Management Society’s Wick Skinner Early Career Research Accomplishments Award in 2003, and the Tulane University Provost’s Research and Scholarly Achievement Award in 2005. Prior to beginning his academic career, Parker held positions in engineering and finance at General Electric in North Carolina and Wisconsin.

Peggy Huang has been appointed assistant professor of finance. Huang received a BS in finance from the University of Pennsylvania, an MA in economics from the University of Virginia and a PhD in finance from Indiana University. Prior to joining the Freeman School, she served as an instructor at Indiana University's Kelley School of Business. Her research interests include corporate finance, executive contracting, corporate governance and banking, and she has presented or co-presented research papers at meetings of the Financial Management Association, the Multinational Finance Society and the Northern Finance Association as well as at the 21st annual Conference on Financial Economics & Accounting. Prior to beginning her academic career, Huang served as a fund analyst with Ellington Management Group, a hedge fund company in Old Greenwich, Conn.

Jennifer Merluzzi has been appointed assistant professor of management. Merluzzi received a BA from Tulane University, an MBA from Washington University, and a PhD from the University of Chicago. Prior to joining the Freeman School, she served as an adjunct assistant professor of organizations and strategy at Chicago’s Booth School of Business. Merluzzi’s research interests include social networks in organizations, career mobility, and the role gender plays in career performance and patterns. She is currently working on research related to the career mobility of managers early in their careers as well as the study of negative work relationships and gossip and how these associations influence employee decisions to leave a firm. Prior to beginning her academic career, Merluzzi spent several years in management consulting, where she specialized in business process re-engineering and organizational re-design. Merluzzi also held a number of general management positions, including leading a large call center and managing warehousing operations for a privately held industrial supply distributor.

Daniel Mochon has been appointed assistant professor of marketing. Mochon received a BA from Brown University and a PhD from Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Prior to joining the Freeman School, he held academic positions at the Yale School of Management and the Rady School of Management at the University of California, San Diego. Mochon’s research focuses on consumer behavior and decision making, with an emphasis on how human biases inherent to people’s decision-making processes affect the choices they make. He has also worked on topics including online dating, contextual effects on choice and judgment, subjective well-being, and consumer perceptions of value. Mochon is also interested in how new online tools affect the way people communicate with each other and with businesses. He teaches a course on social and online marketing, and he has also consulted with various online companies to help those firms apply insights from consumer behavior research to improve their business.

Janet Schwartz has been appointed assistant professor of marketing. Schwartz received a PhD from Rutgers University. Prior to joining Tulane, she held a research faculty position at Princeton University’s Woodrow Wilson School of Public Affairs and then moved to Duke University’s Fuqua School of Business to work as a post-doctoral fellow with behavioral economist and psychologist Dan Ariely. Schwartz’s research focuses on health care delivery as a consumer experience and how marketplace environments can be designed to facilitate better health outcomes. Some of her recent papers include simple strategies for getting fast-food customers to “downsize” their meals, understanding the complexities of taboo trade-offs between health and money on decision making, and examining how relationships between doctors and patients lead people to be overly trusting of experts at the expense of their own health and financial well-being. Her research has been accepted for publication by The Journal of Consumer Research and The Journal of Marketing Research.