College Announces 2021 Faculty and Staff Award Recipients

The Belk College of Business at UNC Charlotte has presented awards to faculty and staff in recognition of their accomplishments in teaching, research and service.

The 2021 Belk College Faculty and Staff Award recipients were recognized virtually by Dean Jennifer Troyer through video messages to faculty and staff. This year also marked the introduction of a new annual award, the Dean’s Award for Diversity, Equity and Inclusion.

Each recipient received a $1,000 award, which is funded through the Dean’s Excellence Fund.

Excellence in Undergraduate Teaching Award

Cheryl Kane, senior lecturer in management, is the recipient of the Excellence in Undergraduate Teaching Award. Since 2015, over 249 graduating seniors have identified her as “the one person at UNC Charlotte who has made the most significant, positive contribution to their education.”

Kane joined the Belk College in 2006. She was a commercial banker for 11 years and has been a management consultant for 20 years.

Excellence in Graduate Teaching Award

Ethan Chiang, associate professor of finance, is the recipient of the Excellence in Graduate Teaching Award.

Chiang teaches graduate courses in the Doctoral in Business Administration, Master of Business Administration (MBA), Master of Science in Real Estate and Master of Science in Mathematical Finance programs. He consistently receives strong teaching evaluations with an average of 4.8 on from all graduate classes. He also has helped to place doctoral students in well regarded academic institutions and business organizations.

Outstanding Service Award

Cindy Fox, a lecturer in marketing, has received the Outstanding Service Award for contributions of a faculty member in support of the college’s service mission. Fox has service as chair of the Undergraduate Curriculum and Assurance of Learning Committee (UCALC) and also serves on several college committees. She also serves as a faculty advisor for the Student Chapter of the American Marketing Association (AMA).

She also has served as a board member, president and vice president of the AMA’s Charlotte chapter, and as director of the Carolina World Trade Association.

She also shares her expertise as a go-to media source in interviews with local and national publications, including The Charlotte Business, The Charlotte Observer and Fox News.

Best Paper Award

Yongqiang Chu, director of the Childress Klein Distinguished Professor of Real Estate and Urban Economics and the Distinguished Professor of Real Estate and Urban Economics, received the Best Paper Award for his co-authored paper “The Causal Effect of Limits to Arbitrage on Asset Pricing Anomalies,” published in the Journal of Finance, one of the top three finance journals.

In his paper, he uses Regulation SHO to examine whether limits to arbitrage help explain several well‐known asset pricing anomalies. Regulation SHO relaxed the short‐sale constraints for a set of pilot stocks. They provide the first causal evidence that many of the asset pricing anomalies can be explained by limits to arbitrage rather than risk.

This paper was also featured by Yahoo Finance.

Chu, who received the award for the second consecutive year, joined the Belk College in 2008.

Distinguished Scholarship Award

Gene Lai, professor and James J. Harris Endowed Chair in Risk Management and Insurance, is the recipient of the Distinguished Scholarship Award.

Lai, who joined the Belk College in 2017, has more than 40 peer-reviewed publications addressing risk management, insurance and corporate finance in the insurance industry. A recent article ranked Lai no. 6 overall for the number of publications in the Journal of Risk and Insurance (JRI), considered the premier scholarship journal in the field. Lai has 15 publications in JRI. He is also the past president of the American Risk and Insurance Association and president of the Asia-Pacific Risk and Insurance Association.

Staff Member of the Year Award

Sabrina Brown, associate director of graduate student enrollment, is the recipient of the Belk College Staff Member of the Year Award. This award honors a staff member who exhibits exceptional job performance, a commitment to quality, a positive attitude, a focus on teamwork and a dedication to serving the students, faculty, staff and external constituencies of the Belk College.

During the pandemic, Brown took on a new role and also led her team, with, according to her nominator, “grace, understanding, strategy and perspective that make us feel safe, seen, heard and motivated.” Brown, a UNC Charlotte alumna, also is a member of the Council on University Community Working Group on Diversity, Co-Chair of the Joint Faculty/Staff Committee on Diversity and the president of the Belk College Staff Council.

Dean’s Award for Diversity, Equity and Inclusion

Janaki Gooty and George Banks, associate professors in the Department of Management, are the inaugural winners of the Dean’s Award for Diversity, Equity and Inclusion, which honors outstanding contributions by Belk College faculty or staff.

Gooty and Banks showed their commitment to DEI through in a number of ways, including:

• Through research and by delivering training sessions and talks.

• Incorporating conversations around diversity, equity and inclusion, the #MeToo movement, and Black Lives Matter into the classroom.

• Requiring students to read about race and gender differences in the workplace.

• Working with graduate students and over 58 local community organizations and offering free leadership-related consulting.

• Seeking out opportunities to promote careers of those from underrepresented backgrounds.

Criteria for this award was developed by the Joint Faculty/Staff Committee on Diversity as part of its goal to identify and implement the highest impact inclusion initiatives across the community.

Green and Gold Drive Business
Established in 1970, the Belk College of Business offers business education programs at the undergraduate, master’s, doctoral and executive levels. The Belk College is one of the Carolinas’ largest business schools, with more than 4,600 students, nearly 100 full-time faculty, and more than 33,000 alumni. Accredited by AACSB International, the college is committed to building strong partnerships in the greater Charlotte region and beyond as North Carolina’s urban research business school. Learn more about how the Belk College is driving business at belkcollege.charlotte.edu, and on LinkedIn, Facebook, Twitter and Instagram.