Dr. Malathi Srivatsan (right) is the campus lead for A-State's participation in a $20 million grant from the National Science Foundation.  The Experimental Program to Stimulate Competitive Research (EPSCoR) project also involves Dr. Brandon Kemp, associate professor of electrical engineering, and Dr. Shiguang Yu, research assistant professor at ABI. Their work at A-State is a component of the statewide Center for Advanced Surface Engineering (CASE), which involves 10 higher education institutions. The news release is online.

Dr. Stacy Walz, department chair and assistant professor of clinical laboratory sciences, has published an article titled "Capsule Commentary on Kantor et al Pending Studies at Hospital Discharge: A Pre-Post Analysis of an Electronic Medical Record Tool to Improve Communication at Hospital Discharge," in the Journal of General Internal Medicine. She also was co-author of two posters presented at the annual meeting of the American Society for Clinical Laboratory Science.

Dr. Russell Jones is the new chair for the Department of Accounting and the Department of Computer and Information Technology in the College of Business.  Jones, who joined A-State's faculty in 1989, also holds the Kathy White Endowed Professorship of Computer and Information Technology. He succeeds Dr. John Robertson, professor of accounting, who is returning to fulltime teaching.

Dr. Matthew Hill, assistant professor of finance, is first co-author of an article accepted for the winter 2016 issue of the Journal of Financial Research.  The article, "On the Diminishing Return to Trade Credit," is based on the authors' study that suggests the extension of abnormally high trade credit is associated with significantly lower stock returns for the selling firm. The takeaway for financial managers: aggressively monitor trade credit levels. 

Dr. Gregory Hansen, professor of folklore and English, recently presented papers at Nashville's International Country Music Conference and at the annual meeting of the International Society for Contemporary Legend Research in San Antonio.  Both presentations were on the fiddle tune, "The Orange Blossom Special." His most recent article is "Computerizing Propp's Morphology: A Forward-Thinking Retrospect on Structuralism" in the online journal New Directions in Folklore.