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Business Administration Division

Our Faculty and Staff

The mission of the Business Administration Division is to provide young adults with a superior business and liberal arts education that prepares them for lives of ethical service and professional achievement in a competitive world.

Our curriculum prepares students for careers or graduate school. Our academic work is rigorous; businesses seek our students; our best do well in top-ranked business schools. Perhaps the best indicator of a program’s quality is its faculty. Our professionally active faculty are excellent teachers committed to the growth and development of students. Below is a brief portrait of each full-time professor in the division.

Administration

Faculty

William Arnold is a visiting assistant professor of organizational behavior and management. Previously, he was a CEO and executive vice president of several national leading medical centers and health care systems such as Stanford; University of California, San Francisco; and the Hospital Corporation of America. Arnold has been featured in publications such as Fortune and has a master’s in hospital administration from UCLA. He received his EdD from Pepperdine in 2009 and has been teaching full-time here since 2010.

Dean Baim is a professor of economics and finance. He is an internationally recognized expert on professional sports stadium financing and the economic impact of professional sports teams on local communities. Lately his research has focused on Olympic studies, specifically the legacy of the Olympic Games on a host city’s infrastructure, economy, and culture. Baim received his PhD from the University of California, Los Angeles in 1988, and he has been a member of the University since 1983.

  Aaron R. Brough is an assistant professor of marketing. His research examines how the framing and construal of information influences consumer judgments, decisions, and behavior, especially as it relates to perceptions of a product’s monetary value. Prior to his doctoral training, he worked as a senior consultant at a Boston-based strategic marketing research and consulting firm serving Fortune 500 companies from various industries. His clients included American Express, Coca-Cola, Disney, IBM, Microsoft, and Novartis. Brough received a Ph.D. from Northwestern University (Kellogg) and joined the faculty at Pepperdine University in 2011.

 Jonathan Burke is a professor of economics. He has taught in Indiana, Texas, Spain, and Belgium. As a scholar, he strives for original and contrarian results. His most recognized research shows some conventional results about stock-market price bubbles are exceptions to the rule; his work is published in Econometrica, the leading economics journal. As a teacher, he updates business textbook applications of economics to apply modern decision, game, and information theories. He received his PhD from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in 1985 and joined the faculty here in 2007.

 Fattaneh Ghaneh Cauley, professor of management science and recipient of the Harriet and Charles Luckman Distinguished Teaching Fellowship, teaches statistics, quantitative analysis, and operations management. Cauley researches manufacturing process optimization and has pioneered in-classroom technology use. She is currently researching the effectiveness of agile and virtual learning environments. She has a PhD from the University of California, Los Angeles, where she was the recipient of the rarely given Jacob Marshack Award for academic excellence. Cauley joined the faculty in 1988.

 Ronald "Ron" P. Conlin is a visiting instructor of marketing and marketing research. Previously, he was a partner and chief research officer at J.D. Power and Associates and the director of market planning and research at the Goodyear Tire and Rubber Company. Conlin has a master of arts in mass communications research and an MBA focused on marketing research. He is the former chair of the External Advisory Board of the AC Nielsen Center for Marketing Research at the University of Wisconsin. Conlin joined the University in 2005.

John Elliott is a visiting assistant professor of international business law, business law, and real estate finance. He has served for over 20 years at Pepperdine University: first, as an independent consultant, then as director of real estate management, and then as assistant vice president. Elliott also directed the development of many buildings on campus, including the Drescher Graduate Campus. He received his JD from Loyola Law School in 1984, his DBA in 2003, and began teaching adjunct in 1999 and full-time in 2003.

 Carolyn Galantine is an associate professor of accounting and CPA. Her research interests include compensation, scale efficiencies, equilibrium convergence, taxpayer compliance and teaching. Her research paper on sales-force compensation won the James Comer Award for Best Contribution to Selling and Sales Management Theory/Methodology in 2004. She has a master’s in taxation. She received her PhD from the University of Southern California and joined the faculty in 2003.

 Farrell Gean is an associate professor of accounting. He is one of the principal architects of Seaver College’s undergraduate accounting program and has also recently conducted a national study of relevant curricula to help structure the soon-to-be-implemented master’s of accountancy program. He was one of the first faculty to be named a Harriet and Charles Luckman Distinguished Teaching Fellow. He received his PhD from Georgia State University in 1981 and came to Pepperdine University that same year.

 Levon Goukasian is an associate professor of finance and the John and Francis Duggan Professor of Business at Pepperdine University. He holds a BA from Armenia’s Yerevan State University and holds two master’s degrees from USC. Goukasian has been instrumental in building the finance program. Previously, he taught at USC, was a senior hedge specialist, and served as a consultant for various organizations in the field of financial risk management. His research interests include optimal portfolio allocation, monetary policy impact of asset prices, and corporate social responsibility. He received his PhD from the University of Southern California in 2001 and has taught at Pepperdine since 2004.

 Constance "Connie" James is a professor of management who brings planning and budgeting expertise from her experience with Benedix, Burroughs, and Pepperdine University. She has served at Pepperdine in a variety of roles, including assistant to the president and division chair for the Business Administration Division. She has an MBA in organizational psychology from the University of Michigan. Her teaching interests are corporate strategy, policy, organizational theory and management. She received her PhD from the University of California, Los Angeles and joined the faculty in 1997.

 Scott A. Miller is an assistant professor of finance whose teaching portfolio includes Investments, International Finance, and Financial Management courses. He holds an MBA and has worked extensively with mutual funds at the corporate headquarters of Principal Financial Group. His goal is to help students develop the capability to address real world business problems. Miller received his PhD from the University of Arkansas and joined the Pepperdine faculty in 2009.

Marilyn Misch is a professor of accounting, coordinator for the Pepperdine Accounting program, and advisor for the Pepperdine Accounting Society. In addition to being a CPA, she has master’s degrees in accounting from the University of Illinois and in international management from Thunderbird. She has received both the Student Government Association Teacher of the Year Award and the Howard A. White Award for Teaching Excellence. She has published several accounting and finance pedagogical papers and instructional cases and conducts research related to the financing and legacies of the Olympic Games. Her PhD is from Arizona State University; she joined the faculty in 1997.

 Mike Mullen
Executive in Residence

Ben Postlethwaite is an assistant professor of management and organizational behavior. After earning his B.A. in religion at Seaver, he moved to London to complete his master’s degree in health management at Imperial College. His research interests include personnel selection, group dynamics, and ethical behavior. He has experience as a paramedic, a financial and operations manager, and an HR consultant. Postlethwaite received his Ph.D. from the University of Iowa in 2011 and joined the faculty that same year.

 Frank Sadighian is an executive-in-residence who teaches marketing and international marketing. He has extensive corporate marketing experience, including thirty-two years at Fortune 500 companies in which he held various managerial positions. During his twenty-eight years at the 3M Company in the US and abroad, he was responsible for identifying and commercializing over 150 successful new global products. He has published professional papers in academic journals and taught marketing and international business courses at the University of Texas at Austin, the University of St. Thomas and Pepperdine University. Sadighian received his PhD in marketing from California Western University in 1982; he joined the faculty in 2005.

 Regan Harwell Schaffer is an associate professor of management and organizational behavior, director of the Service Leadership Project, and the advisor of the nonprofit leadership program which includes a minor and the Nonprofit Leadership Institute. Her research interests include curriculum design and assessment, nonprofit management, and leadership development. She has been honored with the Center for Teaching Excellence Innovative Teaching Award and the highly selective Howard A. White Award for Teaching Excellence. She holds an MS and an EdD from Pepperdine University; she joined the faculty in 1999.

 Venkatachalam Seshan is a professor of management, the coordinator of the international management studies major, and teaches the capstone class, Business Policy, Strategy, and Ethics. Seshan has gained vast management and technological experience through working with a variety of leading American global corporations, such as IBM, DuPont, and ARCO. He was the inaugural winner of the Harriet and Charles Luckman Distinguished Teaching Fellowship and is actively involved in the Academy of Management and the British Academy of Management. He received his PhD from Leigh University in 1965 and joined the faculty in 1986.

 J. Goosby Smith is an associate professor of organizational behavior and management. "Dr. J" is an experienced management and IT consultant and trainer, having worked with various corporations and universities including Ford Motor Company, NASA, Cleveland Board of Education, and the Cleveland Clinic. She is program chair of the Academy of Management's Management, Spirituality and Religion interest group and the coordinator for American Mensa's M-African American Special Interest Group. She has a bachelor's degree in computer science as well as an MBA. Smith received her Ph.D. in organizational behavior in 2002 from Case Western Reserve University. She was a faculty member initially from 2002-2006, rejoining the faculty in 2011.

 Michael "Mike" Summers is a professor of management science who teaches statistics, operations management, and quantitative analysis. He has written a textbook in operations management, as well as numerous articles. His writing specializes in case studies in operations management and in applications of management science to interesting problems, such as sports. He is active in the Decision Sciences Institute and in the Applied Business and Entrepreneurship Association International. He received his PhD from the University of Illinois in 1978 and came to Pepperdine University in 1980.

 Nicole Forsgren Velasquez is an assistant professor of accounting. Her academic research interests deal with knowledge management, IT impacts, and cost allocation. Velasquez has several years of industry experience and consults with businesses in a variety of industries. While at IBM before joining the faculty, her research resulted in a patent for a new method to encrypt volatile data memory. She engages her students as collaborators in her active research projects. Velasquez holds a Ph.D. in management information systems and a master’s in accounting from the University of Arizona. She joined the faculty in 2010.

L. Keith Whitney is an associate professor of business law and served as division chair from 2000-2007. He has graduate education and experience in a variety of business disciplines including finance, accounting, and management, making him quite versatile in the classroom. His current research interests include corporate social responsibility and ethics as well as research related to ethical formation. Whitney received his JD from Texas Tech University in 1977 and began teaching at Pepperdine University in 1983.

Jere E. Yates founded the program in 1973. After leading the program for twenty-seven years, he did a mixture of teaching and fundraising for ten years before assuming the chair's role again in 2010. As a professor of management and organizational behavior, he teaches management-related courses. His book, Managing Stress, was selected by the American Management Association as its membership book in 1979. He has been a management consultant for over thirty-eight years, serving several Fortune 50 companies, including one for twenty-one consecutive years. He specializes in helping executives build effective teams. He received his PhD from Boston University in 1968 and has been at Pepperdine University since 1969.

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