NASHVILLE, Tenn. – The Vanderbilt Owen Graduate School of Management has announced four new faculty members to join the full-time teaching staff this fall.
R. Lawrence Van Horn, an expert in health care management and economics, has joined the faculty as associate professor of management and faculty director of the Owen School’s Health Care MBA program. Van Horn comes to the Owen School from the William E. Simon Graduate School of Business at the University of Rochester, where he has taught since 1996. He developed and directed the school’s health care MBA program, health care executive programs and the Institute for Health Care Management. Van Horn will teach courses in health care management and microeconomics.
Van Horn’s research focuses on corporate governance and objectives in health care organizations, the conduct of managed care firms and measurement of health care outcomes and productivity. Van Horn has consulted with numerous health plans and national consulting firms, and he co-founded Health Systems Innovation Network. He is a past recipient of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services‘ Ruth L. Kirschstein National Research Service fellowship. Van Horn is a member of the American Economics Association, the Association for Health Services Research and the Western Economics Association.
Van Horn received his bachelor’s degree in philosophy, his master of public health degree and his MBA, all from the University of Rochester, and his Ph.D. in managerial science and applied economics from the University of Pennsylvania’s Wharton School.
Steve Hoeffler, an expert in consumer products marketing, brand management and consumer behavior, joins the faculty as
associate professor of management. Hoeffler comes to the Owen School from the Kenan-Flagler Business School at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill where he has taught since 2000. He will teach the core curriculum course in marketing.
Hoeffler’s current research is in the marketing of “really new” or novel products and the development of consumer preferences. He also has worked in marketing for NCR/AT&T and has consulted for Procter and Gamble, IBM and Fujitsu. Hoeffler is a member of the Association for Consumer Research, the American Marketing Association, the Society for Consumer Psychology and the American Psychological Association.
Hoeffler earned his bachelor’s degree in information systems from San Diego State University, his MBA from the University of California, Davis, and his Ph.D. in marketing from the Fuqua School of Business at Duke University.
Richard H. Willis, a former corporate accountant and market analyst, has joined the faculty as associate professor of management. Willis, whose research focuses on accounting and earnings forecasts, comes to the Owen School from the Freeman School of Business at Tulane University, where he has taught since 2005. Prior to that, he was on faculty for seven years at the Fuqua School of Business at Duke University, and he also taught at the Kellogg Graduate School of Management at Northwestern University while working on his doctorate.
Before he began his academic career, he worked for Coopers & Lybrand, where he developed materials pertaining to accounting for stock-based compensation. He also worked as a marketing research analyst for both Warner-Lambert Company and E. & J. Gallo Winery. Willis will teach courses in managerial accounting and financial statement analysis.
Willis’ current research focuses on the effect of security analysts’ earnings forecasts on analysts’ performance evaluation, the determinants of persistence in analysts’ stock-picking ability and the effect of investor sophistication in interpreting analysts’ stock recommendations. He serves on the editorial board of The Accounting Review.
Willis earned his bachelor’s degree in mathematics from the University of South Alabama, his master of applied statistics degree from The Ohio State University, his MBA from Duke and his Ph.D. in accounting from the University of Chicago.
Mumin Kurtulus, who has been a visiting instructor at the Owen School for the past academic year, has joined the faculty as
assistant professor of operations management. Kurtulus will teach courses in supply chain management and operations management.
Prior to coming to the Owen School, Kurtulus taught at INSEAD in Fontainebleau, France, where he completed his Ph.D. in operations management. Kurtulus earned his bachelor’s degree in physics from Koc University in Istanbul, his master’s degree in industrial engineering from Bilkent University in Ankara, Turkey, and his master’s degree in management from INSEAD.
Kurtulus’ research interests include supply chain management focusing on manufacturer-retailer collaboration practices in the consumer goods industry, retail assortment planning and commodity procurement strategies. He is a member of the Institute for Operations Research and Management Sciences (INFORMS). Kurtulus’ recent research on manufacturer-retailer collaboration practices was awarded the 2006 Wickham Skinner Best Unpublished Paper Award by the Production and Operations Management Association.
The Owen Graduate School of Management at Vanderbilt University is ranked as a top institution by BusinessWeek, The Wall Street Journal, U.S. News & World Report, Financial Times and Forbes. For more news about Owen, visit www.owen.vanderbilt.edu.
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Media contact: Susanne Hicks, (615) 322-NEWS
susanne.hicks@vanderbilt.edu