CHRONICLE - FACULTY AND TEACHING

Innovation and Impact Beyond the Classroom

HAND IN HAND
Many ND Partners Collaborated to Build a New Childcare Center in Uganda

Wendy Angst has been known simply as “Mama Wendy” by the scholars at St. Bakhita’s Vocational Training Center since she took her first trip to northern Uganda’s Agago district in 2020.

Angst, a teaching professor of Management & Organization, is the director of the Powerful Means Initiative (PMI), an immersive undergraduate experiential learning program committed to supporting St. Bakhita students by helping them build better futures. The school was founded in 2007 to provide educational and vocational opportunities to women captured by the Lord’s Resistance Army.

Educational opportunities for St. Bakhita’s students are complicated by the fact that many of them are already mothers and lack a safe and educational daycare solution. In spring 2024, St. Bakhita’s opened the doors of its newest addition, the Early Childhood Development Center (ECDC), made possible by a generous gift made to Notre Dame.

The project was enriched by its collaborative nature as students, faculty, alumni and donors have been involved at every stage of the project’s development — working with St. Bakhita’s leadership and community to design the space, its curriculum and business model. The sunlit childcare center was co-designed by Notre Dame School of Architecture students and faculty and local stakeholders, while the self-sustaining business model was co-designed by Mendoza students with the Center’s leadership. 

“Most young women who have children in Uganda are forgotten,” said Angst. “There is no structure in place for them to go back to school. Having an intentional space for them to educate themselves and their little ones and gain the skills needed to support their families is what we envision for the ECDC,” said Angst.

Photo provided

MARKET RESEARCH

Mendoza is home to two of the top marketing researchers in the world, according to the American Marketing Association’s latest research productivity reports. Shijie Lu, the Howard J. and Geraldine F. Korth Associate Professor of Marketing, and Vamsi Kanuri, the Viola D. Hank Associate Professor of Marketing, ranked in the top 50 globally for their work.

They’re part of a talented group of Mendoza marketing faculty who have made important contributions to their field in the past decade. Overall, the College is ranked #32 based on publications in two premier American Marketing Association journals.

FTX EXPERT TESTIMONY 

Notre Dame Alumni Professor of Accountancy Professor Peter Easton testified in Manhattan federal court in one of the largest fraud cases in the history of the United States — the trial of disgraced FTX founder Sam Bankman-Fried.

Easton, who previously worked on other high-profile cases including Enron, WorldCom and Parmalat, was hired by the Department of Justice to provide a detailed analysis of the exchange of billions of dollars between FTX and its sister hedge fund, Alameda Research. The director of Notre Dame’s Center for Accounting Research and Education examined whether balances in actual bank accounts matched those in FTX’s internal ledgers in an effort to explain $9 billion in missing FTX customer funds. Bankman-Fried was found guilty of all seven fraud and conspiracy counts.

Photo from Getty Images

40 UNDER 40

Yixing Chen, assistant professor of marketing, was named to Poets & Quants “Best 40-Under-40 MBA Professors” in recognition of his teaching and research impact. Chen studies the social impact of marketing with an aim to measure and improve the effectiveness of marketing interventions for social sector organizations such as health care and education. His research has appeared in top academic marketing and medical journals including the Journal of Marketing, Journal of Marketing Research, and Clinical Gastroenterology and Hepatology.

LIFETIME ACHIEVEMENT

Finance professor Jeffrey Bergstrand was honored for his lifetime of research accomplishments and ongoing influence at a special conference “Gravity, Trade Agreements, and Policy: Celebrating the Contributions of Jeff Bergstrand” on April 4-6. 

Bergstrand’s research focuses on the drivers of international economic integration and the welfare consequences of such global integration. He has consulted with the U.S., European Union and Swiss governments on the impacts of economic integration agreements on international trade and foreign direct investment flows. His research impact is in the top 2% of economists in the world. The conference was sponsored by Mendoza, the Kellogg Institute of International Studies and the Department of Economics.

ACCOUNTING FOR GOOD

Andrew Imdieke, assistant professor of accountancy, received the 2023 Deloitte Foundation Wildman Medal Award, an honor bestowed by the American Accounting Association to highlight one research study published in the past five years that has “made or will be likely to make the most significant contribution to the advancement of the practice of public accountancy.” Imdieke and his co-authors received the award for their paper “The Revival of Large Consulting Practices at the Big 4 and Audit Quality,” published in Accounting, Organizations and Society.

CONNECTING THE DOTS 

Sandra Vera-Muñoz, associate professor of accountancy, was honored as part of Notre Dame’s 2024 Women Lead in celebration of International Women’s Day and Women’s History Month. With the theme of “Invest in Women: Accelerate Progress,” the series featured eight individuals “who are accelerating progress in their respective fields and advancing the University’s mission as a leading research institution that is a means for good in the world.”

Vera-Muñoz, who researches how accounting can incentivize sustainable business practices, tells her students that their future employers expect them to know the standard accounting rules, but they are really hiring them for their judgment.

“Once you connect the dots in accountancy, then you realize the way you do accounting affects decision making, affects behavior,” she said. “You start thinking about how we measure things and how sometimes there’s a gap between regulations and how rules are applied. What’s most important is professional judgment.”

Photo by Barbara Johnston