Prior to the end of the spring semester, Samford University’s Brock School of Business announced its annual faculty award recipients.

 

This year’s recipient of the Outstanding Undergraduate Teaching Award is Clif Eason, Ph.D., associate professor of marketing. Eason’s broad research portfolio includes numerous projects in the areas of customer experience, retail, sports marketing and sales. He is an active leader on campus and in the Birmingham community, having recently served as the president of the local chapter of the American Marketing Association. His experience, coupled with his passion for his discipline, lends well to his leadership of the professional sales program. Under his direction and guidance, Samford’s program has been regularly recognized as a Top University for Professional Sales Education by national nonprofit, the Sales Education Foundation. In addition, the professional sales competition team, mentored by Eason, has advanced to the final rounds of the AT&T B2B National Sales Competition in Dallas, Texas, two of the last three years.

 

Matt Mazzei, Ph.D., associate professor of strategic management, received the Outstanding Graduate Teaching Award. He has designed and taught Strategic Management, Project Management, Organizational Change, and Big Data Strategy courses at the graduate level. Mazzei’s research primarily focuses on corporate entrepreneurship, with secondary interests in new venture characteristics and big data analytics at the macro level. He has routinely had his research published in top tier journal outlets across a variety of specialty areas. His leadership as a fellow in Samford’s Center for Sports Analytics has had an impact on undergraduate and graduate students alike, including recent graduate Mathew Bennett, who has received numerous postgraduate opportunities to pursue his passion in the business side of baseball. In addition, Mazzei was recently appointed by the Samford Board of Trustees as the Brock Family Chair in Entrepreneurship, an endowed professorship most previously held by Dean Chad Carson.

 

Art Carden, Ph.D., professor of economics, was awarded the Outstanding Scholarship Award. Carden is a senior fellow with the American Institute for Economic Research (AIER) and several other research institutes, and also serves as the coeditor of the Southern Economic Journal. After being a regular contributor to Forbes and AIER for many years, Carden has become a sought-out economist by international outlets to discuss topics such as economic history, public policy and regulation, causes and consequences of economic growth, and more. Most recently his book, Leave Me Alone and I’ll Make You Rich: How the Bourgeois Deal Enriched the World, cowritten with world renowned economist Deidre Nansen McCloskey, topped the charts on Amazon. 

 

Sara McCarty, Ph.D., professor of economics and leader of the Brock Scholars program, received the Outstanding Service Award. McCarty chairs the school’s Undergraduate Education Process Committee and serves on the Scholarship and Awards committee. She was instrumental in helping establish the Finance and Economics Women (FEW) student organization, the first of its kind in the country, which has flourished since its formation in 2019. She has served as a member of the university’s Faculty Senate and is very active in service to the economics profession nationally. She was a leader for the Association of Christian Economists 2015-2020, serves on the editorial board of the International Review of Economic Education, and is an ad-hoc paper reviewer for seven different economics journals. Within the Birmingham community, she provides the annual economic outlook speech to the Institute of Management Accountants (IMA) organization. Most recently, she was an integral member of the national dean’s search committee for Brock School of Business. She also chaired the national search for a data analytics faculty member and served on the national economics instructor search.

 

“I am so proud to call these faculty members my colleagues and friends,” Dean Chad Carson said. “Their research, teaching and service is beyond outstanding. Our students, our business school and our university are better because of the work of these scholars.”