The Outstanding Scholarly Contribution awards recognize specific, distinct scholarly accomplishments by Bentley faculty each year. Overseen by the Teaching and Scholarly Activities Committee (TSAC), these awards are designed to encourage high quality scholarly work within the Bentley community, include a monetary award for each honoree (or a split among Bentley co-authors), and cover contributions made during the preceding three calendar years. Scholars are nominated by members of the Bentley community, and up to two honorees from the Arts and Sciences departments and two honorees from the Business Departments are selected.

TSAC Chair Professor Jeffrey Livingston, Economics, said each time the TSAC meets to decide the winners they “dread it because it is so difficult to choose among the many fine nominees [they] have each year.” Livingston said the award winners this year “showcase Bentley’s commitment to excellence in scholarship in a wide variety of disciplines.”

This year’s awards were given to:

Jennifer Gillian, professor of English and media studies, for her book Television Brandcasting: The Return of the Content-Promotion Hybrid. This book examines U. S. television’s utility as a medium for branded storytelling. It investigates the current and historical roles that television content, promotion, and hybrids of the two have played in disseminating brand messaging and influencing consumer decision-making. The book was a recommended title in the September 2015 issue of CHOICE—a publication of the Association of College and Research Libraries.

, assistant professor of finance, for her book Unmasking Financial Psychopaths: Inside the Minds of Investors in the Twenty-First Century. After the 2008 financial crisis and resulting recession, various media stories portrayed individuals in the financial sector as acting in a psychopathic-like manner. This book suggests that most financiers labeled as “financial psychopaths” by the media are not truly psychopathic. Rather, the book brings together academic research from a variety of disciplines including cognitive psychology and neuropsychology, psychoanalytic thought, psychiatry, behavioral finance and finance, history, and anthropology to draw a wider perspective of how well-meaning intentions led to unintended negative consequences.

Charles Hadlock, professor, mathematical sciences, for his book Six Sources of Collapse. This highly interdisciplinary book, growing out of an honors capstone group seminar, is an attempt to use the framework of mathematics to provide insight into the fundamental dynamics that can cause things to collapse. Examples include extreme weather events, technological disasters, the extinction of species, crashing markets and companies, the chaotic nature of Earth's orbit, revolutionary political change, the spread and elimination of disease, and many others. Professor Hadlock will give a plenary address to the joint national meetings of the three major mathematics societies in Seattle in 2016 on this subject.

Jane D. Tchaïcha, associate professor, modern languages, for “Tunisian Women in the Twenty-First Century: Past Achievements and Present Uncertainties in the Wake of the Jasmine Revolution,” published in the Journal of North African Studies in 2012, and “Governance, Women, and the New Tunisia,” published in Politics and Religion in 2014. These two articles represent a body of scholarly engagement over a period of more than five years in collaboration with Tunisian colleague and feminist researcher, Khedija Arfaoui. The first paper examines pre-revolutionary Tunisia to understand the importance and influence of the rising tide of conservatism and its potential impact on women’s rights since the Jasmine Revolution.  The second examines Tunisian women’s participation in democratic governance in the first three years of post-revolutionary Tunisia, then analyzes how women in Tunisia came together between January 2011-2014. The 2012 article has been continuously listed among the top 20 “most read articles” of the journal, and in 2014 it was selected by Routledge Publishers to be included in its series Women and Development, commemorating International Women’s Day.