Thought You Should Know, Spring 2022

Editors’ Note: This feature appears as it was published in the spring 2022 edition of UT Dallas Magazine. Titles or faculty members listed may have changed since that time.

Thought You Should Know

A paper co-authored by Dr. Soraya (Nadia) Fetehi, assistant professor of operations management in the Jindal School, was selected for the Urban Transportation Outstanding Paper Award by the INFORMS Transportation Science and Logistics Society. The study — “Crowdsourcing Last-Mile Deliveries” — investigates how companies can decrease delivery costs while maintaining time-delivery windows.

A paper authored by Dr. Guihua Wang, assistant professor in the Operations Management Area at the Jindal School, was named a runner-up for Financial Times’ Responsible Business Education Awards. His paper, “Does transportation mean transplantation? Impact of new airline routes on sharing of cadaveric kidneys”, was published in Management Science, an academic journal that is included among 23 others in the UTD Top 100 Research Rankings.

Paul Nichols
Paul Nichols

The Institute for Innovation and Entrepreneurship won the Excellence in Specialty Education 2021 award at the annual conference of the Global Consortium of Entrepreneurship Centers for its Innovate(her) program, which introduces middle-school girls to technology, finance, innovation, and entrepreneurship topics. In related news, Paul Nichols, executive director of the institute, was a finalist for the Innovation Advocate of the Year award in D CEO’s and Dallas Innovates’ 2022 Innovation Awards.

Dennis McCuistion
Dennis McCuistion

Dennis McCuistion, professor emeritus and former executive director of the Institute for Excellence in Corporate Governance, was recognized by the Dallas Business Journal with a Lifetime Achievement Award in its 2022 Outstanding Directors Awards for Excellence in Governance Advocacy. An event honoring this year’s recipients was held in Dallas on March 24.

In Memoriam

memorial flowers

Karen Baynham, a longtime UT Dallas professor who earned the President’s Teaching Excellence Award in Online/Blended Instruction in 2020, died unexpectedly in early 2022. She earned her degrees, both in Interdisciplinary Studies, at UT Dallas and, in 2005, started her campus work at UTD’s Career Center. In 2012, Baynham was added as an adjunct lecturer for Business Communications at the Naveen Jindal School of Management. She also was awarded the UTD Staff Council CARE Award (Celebrate Achievement, Reward Excellence) during her time at the University. She joined the School of Arts & Humanities in 2014 as a senior lecturer. She was a strong instructor and curriculum designer who developed the first-year communication courses for A&H students. Baynham, who was born in 1972, is survived by her husband, Scott Smith, her parents and sister, and many friends and relatives.

Padmaja Navaneethakrishnan

The family of Padmaja Navaneethakrishnan, a one-time administrative assistant in the Jindal School who passed away unexpectedly on June 6, 2020, has made a gift to the Jindal School that will allow at least two Jindal School undergraduate students to receive, in perpetuity, a scholarship each year in her memory. Her children Jyothi Navaneeth, BS’18, and Kiran Navaneeth, BS’17, and her hus- band Navaneethakrishnan Rengasamy fully funded the Padmaja Navaneethakrishnan Memorial Scholarship on May 14, 2021, on what would have been her birthday. The first scholarships will be awarded this coming fall.

Anna Rebecca (Becky) Nicodemus

Anna Rebecca (Becky) Nicodemus, a member of the advisory committee in the Center for Internal Auditing Excellence at the Jindal School, passed away on June 11, 2021. Her hus- band, Ivan Nicodemus, and the Dallas Institute of Internal Auditors established the Anna Nicodemus Internal Auditing Leadership Fellowship in her memory to provide scholarship support to internal auditing students at the Jindal School.