Wake Forest honors three MBA professors

Three professors at Wake Forest University’s Babcock Graduate School of Management were honored for their teaching and research excellence on Tuesday during the university’s Founder’s Day Convocation.

Charles R. Kennedy Jr., received the Kienzle Teaching Award for representing the highest standards of teaching excellence, and Patrick McMullen and Robert Nash shared the Cowan Faculty Research Prize for meeting the highest standards of excellence in research.

Kennedy, associate professor of management, has received other Babcock School teaching awards, including the Babcock Educator of the Year in 1992 and teaching awards for the Charlotte Evening MBA program in 2002 and Charlotte Saturday MBA program in 2006. He is the author of two books on international lending and investing and managing the international business environment. Kennedy’s expertise is in strategic management and international business.

McMullen, associate professor of management, has worked as an industrial engineer, and his research has been published in leading scholarly journals. His area of expertise is in optimization of production and logistical systems, industrial engineering simulation, applied quantitative methods, mathematical modeling, scheduling issues, and production and operations management.

Nash, associate professor of finance, was awarded the Orr Fellow in Finance at the Babcock School in 2005. He has taught at executive development programs such as the School of Banking and the Savings and Loan School at the University of Georgia. He
also worked as a consultant and auditor for a major national accounting firm. Nash’s work focuses on corporate finance and capital markets.

Babcock alumni select the winner of the Kienzle Award in a survey taken two years after their graduation. Babcock alumnus Charles Kienzle (’80) provided a gift that established the award, which was first presented in 2000. The Cowan Prize was established in 2001 through a gift from Thomas V.E. Cowan, current chairman of Babcock’s Board of Visitors and a 1972 graduate of Wake Forest.