Raman Kumar, the Oliver Professor of Investment Management, has been appointed finance department head. Kumar, who has directed the finance Ph.D. program, served as interim head from July 2000 to December 2002. His teaching honors include the Teaching Excellence Award, MBA Outstanding Faculty Award, and the Holtzman Outstanding Educator of the Year Award. His research areas include investments, derivative securities, and financial markets. Kumar succeeds Vijay Singal, who returned to teaching and research after leading the department for more than six years.
Reed B. Kennedy has been appointed director of international programs. Kennedy was a management instructor and director of the department’s Small Business Institute. He has worked in hospital administration for 20-plus years, including three years in a Colombian mission hospital. He led a study-abroad program in China and helped set up medical clinics in Indonesia immediately after the 2004 tsunami. Kennedy succeeds Lance Matheson, who returned to teaching and research in business information technology after directing the program for two years.
Retired U.S. Air Force Gen. Lance L. Smith (BAD ’68), who served as commander of the U.S. Joint Forces Command in Norfolk, Va., and NATO Supreme Allied Commander for Transformation, gave the 2009 university commencement address. Smith has more than 12 years in command and flew more than 165 combat missions in Southeast and Southwest Asia. His military decorations include the Defense Distinguished Service Medal, the Air Force Distinguished Service Medal, three Silver Stars, the Defense Superior Service Medal, Legion of Merit, three Distinguished Flying Crosses, and the Purple Heart.
Gene Fife (BAD ’62), of Charlottesville, Va., received the 2009 William H. Ruffner Medal. Virginia Tech’s most prestigious honor, the Ruffner Medal is awarded for outstanding achievement in efforts to promote and develop the university’s land-grant mission. Fife worked for 25 years at Goldman Sachs before retiring as a general partner in 1995. He remains a senior director at the company and is also the founding principal of the Vawter Capital private investment firm. Fife is a member of the Virginia Tech Foundation board of directors and its executive committee. He chaired the quiet phase of the $1-billion “Campaign for Virginia Tech: Invent the Future” and, along with his wife Anne, is a member of the President’s Circle of the Ut Prosim Society, the university’s highest level of donor recognition. He received a Distinguished Alumni Service Award in 2005.
Henry Long (BAD ’59), of Warrenton, Va., co-founder of the Long and Foster real estate firm, received the 2009 University Distinguished Achievement Award. Retiring from the U.S. Air Force as a captain in 1965, Long later co-founded what would become the nation’s largest privately held real estate brokerage firm. After selling his half of the company in 1979, he started the Henry A. Long Company to pursue commercial development. His projects have included Westfields, the Washington, D.C., area’s largest office park. Long also worked as an urban development consultant in China and Vietnam in the 1990s and recently launched Chesapeake Potomac Building Group, to build homes. Long serves on the regional campaign committee for Northern Virginia within the Campaign for Virginia Tech.
Derek Klock (AHRM ’96, MBA ’05), an instructor in the finance department, received the university’s 2009 Award for Excellence in Career Advising. The award recognizes his creativity, communication skills, enthusiasm, and concern for students as a career advisor and his development of innovative career advising resources and outreach programs. Klock teaches the introductory-level finance course and is a co-trainer for the Virginia Tech Ameriprise Collegiate Financial Planning Invitational team, which has twice won the national competition.
Sandy Crigger, senior program support technician for the management department, received the 2009 Provost Award for Excellence in Advising. The award is given annually to a faculty or staff member who serves undergraduate advisees in exemplary ways. Recipients receive a $2,000 prize and are inducted into the university’s Academy of Advising Excellence. An administrative assistant, fiscal manager, and office manager, Crigger became the department’s main academic advisor in 2005 after performing this duty in an unofficial capacity since the early 1990s. She received the President’s Award for Excellence in 1997 for her outstanding abilities and exceptional performance.
Lynette Wood, assistant professor of accounting and information systems, was a semifinalist for the Ernst & Young Inclusive Excellence Award for Accounting and Business School Faculty. Her selection as one of 12 semifinalists is an indicator of her “tremendous commitment to diversity and inclusiveness on campus,” according to an Ernst & Young representative. Wood chairs the college’s Diversity Committee and helped establish the Virginia Tech student chapter of the National Association of Black Accountants, which she continues to advise. She coordinated a diversity case competition for Pamplin undergraduates last spring.
Norrine Bailey Spencer (Ph.D./EDRE ’89), retired associate provost and undergraduate admissions director, received the college’s Lifetime Contribution to Diversity Excellence Award, in recognition of her efforts to promote diversity and inclusion in the college, where she worked for more than 20 years as assistant dean and then associate dean for undergraduate programs. Spencer died Sept. 23.
Mary L. Connerley, former management associate professor and Business Diversity Center director, received the college’s inaugural Diversity Excellence Award. The award recognizes faculty members for their dedication to increasing diversity and inclusion through efforts that may include serving on the diversity committee, advising diversity-oriented student organizations, fostering a more welcoming classroom and college environment, and diversity scholarship. Connerley is now head of the management department at the University of Northern Iowa.
Print
Email
