Fresh Faces on Campus: Professor Preview, Part I

We’re very excited to welcome several new(er) professors to campus this year. Here are some brief biographies and photos when available so you can spot them out around Worrell. Since there are so many professors, we are going to break this up into two posts.

Norma Montague

Assistant Professor of Accounting earned the Emerging Scholar Award at the KPMG Ph.D. Project Accounting DSA Conference earlier this month. She was a graduate accounting instructor at the University of South Florida while studying for her Ph.D. there. Montague taught courses in both English and Spanish as an instructor at Central Carolina Community College in Sanford. She has a B.A. and M.A. in Accounting from North Carolina State University. Her research interests are primarily in the areas of auditing with a behavioral decision making focus.

Patricia Swafford

Visiting Assistant Professor of Operations & Quant Methods comes to Wake Forest from the University of Texas at Arlington where she taught Operations Management, Resource Planning and Project Management. Patricia earned her Ph.D. in Operations Management from Georgia Institute of Technology and her B.S. and M.S. in Industrial Engineering from Clemson University. Her research interests include supply chain management, service operations strategy, empirical research methods and effective teaching methods. She has industry experience as a forecast analyst, production/inventory control manager and logistics engineer. To learn more, click here.

Cynthia Tessien

Reznick Group Faculty Fellow Professor of Practice, has experience as a CEO, COO and CFO during her 18 year career at Inmar Inc., a technology driven solutions provider for retailers, wholesalers and manufacturers. Inmar processes billions of returned and recalled products, promotional transactions and pharmacy claims each year. She is a Certified Public Accountant and member of the AICPA and NCACPA who earned her B.S. in Accountancy from Wake Forest University. Tessien serves on the Board of Visitors at the Wake Forest University Schools of Business and is also the co-founder of Enrich the World Inc., an educational support organization for school children and their teachers in an environmentally protected region of Honduras.

 

Jim Westerman

Visiting Professor of Organizational Behavior, completed his Ph. D in Business Administration and Management from the University of Colorado, Boulder, and received a B.S. in Finance and MBA from Florida State University. He is the author of the book, “Person-organization fit: Effects on employee attitudes and behavior,” and has been published in the “Best Paper Proceedings” of the Academy of Management in 2008, 2009, and 2010. In 2010, Jim received “Best Paper” recognition at the Academy of Management Annual Meeting for his paper, “Are Universities Creating Millennial Narcissist Employees?” Jim also serves on the Editorial Board of the Journal of Organizational Behavior.

Brianna Caza

Visiting Assistant Professor in Organizational Behavior has a M.A. and Ph.D. in Organizational Psychology from the University of Michigan. She previously held a faculty position at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign and served as a Visiting Scholar and Post Doctorate Fellow at the University of Auckland. Brianna is also affiliated with the Center for Creative Leadership in Greensboro. Her research focuses on the dynamics of power, identity, and resilience in the workplace.