Each year since 2016, Georgetown shines a spotlight on an extraordinary group of faculty colleagues. In contrast to many occupations, academic faculty generally face only two promotions in their career, from assistant to associate, then from associate to full professor. Most other careers have more steps of progression.
We invented the Provost Distinguished Associate Professors as an antidote to such few moments of visible advance. Georgetown uses the designation to honor Associate Professors who are performing at extraordinarily high levels. The designation is term-limited, with a maximum duration of five years, or until promotion to full professor.
A committee of senior faculty including university professors and endowed chair holders (led by Chandan Vaidya, Vice Provost for Faculty) reviews the applicants.
As indicated below, their work exemplifies what makes Georgetown strong – faculty thoroughly engaged in pushing the envelope of knowledge in their field, and transmitting their passion for such work to their students and the general public.
The Provost Office is pleased to announce the 2022 Distinguished Associate Professors:
Jennie Bai is an Associate Professor of Finance at the McDonough School of Business. She has served as an economist at the Federal Reserve Bank of New York and has been an advisory council member in the Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System.
A Faculty Research Fellow and elected Research Associate at the National Bureau of Economic Research (NBER), Dr. Bai’s research focuses on credit markets, specifically asset pricing of debt and its link to corporate finance and the investment behavior of primary debt holders such as mutual funds and insurance companies. Her work appears in top-tier outlets such as Journal of Finance and Journal of Financial Economics, and she serves as Associate Editor at Journal of Financial Economics, Management Science, and Journal of Credit Risk.
Along with teaching courses in finance, she leads meditations for the Georgetown community as an active member of the John Main Center for Meditation and Interreligious Dialogue.
Simon Blanchard is the Beyer Family Associate Professor of Marketing
in the McDonough School of Business. Using field and lab experiments and novel statistical models, Dr. Blanchard’s research addresses how consumers make complex decisions, particularly financial ones such as debt repayment. Selected as a Young Scholar by the Marketing Science Institute, his work appears in top-rated journals in Marketing including Journal of Consumer Research and Journal of Marketing Research as well as in Psychology including Psychological Science. He serves as Associate Editor of Journal of Consumer Research and International Journal of Research in Marketing and on the Editorial Review Boards for the Journal of Marketing Research and the Journal of Marketing.
He teaches courses in Digital Marketing Strategy and Marketing Research and directs the MBA Certificate in Consumer Analytics and Insights. He was named on the Poets & Quants Best 40 under 40 list in 2021, which selects 40 of the best MBA professors under age 40 from across the world.
Shiliang (John) Cui is an Associate Professor of Operations and Information Management at the McDonough School of Business. His research uses analytical models, behavioral experiments, and empirical analysis, to tackle wide-ranging operations problems such as supply chain strategies with implications for system performance and social welfare. His research has been published in top-ranked journals such as Management Science and Operations Research and he has been recognized for his research by the Production and Operations Management Society with their inaugural Emerging Scholar Award. He has also been recognized for his professional service by the Management Science and Manufacturing & Service Operations Management with meritorious service awards.
His teaching includes core undergraduate and graduate courses and he will be teaching in the new joint MSB-SFS Business and Global Affairs (BGA) program.
Karah Knope is Associate Professor in the Department of Chemistry at Georgetown College. Dr. Knope’s research in inorganic chemistry addresses challenges in energy and sustainability. She focuses on radioactive elements important for nuclear energy such as uranium and light emitting metals such as bismuth (found in Pepto-Bismol), with the goal of developing less expensive and more environmentally friendly materials. She has been recognized as an Emerging Scholar by two top-ranked journals Inorganic Chemistry and Crystal Growth & Design. Her research is currently funded by an Early career award the Department of Energy. She is active in her professional community, serving as chair of the American Crystallographic Association’s small molecule scientific interest group and a co-editor for the journal Acta Crystallographica Section B.
She teaches large courses such as General Chemistry but also small seminars. She mentors graduate and undergraduate researchers in the Knope Lab.
Stephen Weymouth is an Associate Professor of International Political Economy at the McDonough School of Business. His research addresses questions about political environments of globalization and technological change. For example, his current book project examines how digital technologies are reshaping the global economy and creating policy impediments related to cross-border information flows and trade in digital products and services. His research appears in top interdisciplinary journals such as Economics and Politics, Business and Politics, International Organization as we well as in political science including American Political Science Review and British Journal of Political Science. He serves as Associate Editor of the journal, Economics and Politics.
Dr. Weymouth teaches courses at all levels in McDonough and in diverse areas including business and government relations, international economics and policy, and nonmarket strategy.
We congratulate this new cohort of Provost Distinguished Associate Professors for their accomplishments and look forward to their ongoing contributions to their fields. If you see one of these colleagues, please extend your congratulations.
Without taking anything away from the awardees, I really have to point out the lack of disciplinary diversity here. Four out of five are from the business school. Is the faculty talent across Georgetown really this concentrated, or is there something amiss in the process of selection?