The Outstanding Scholarly Contribution awards recognize scholarly accomplishments by Bentley faculty each year. Nominated by members of the Bentley community and overseen by the Teaching and Scholarly Activities Committee, the awards are designed to encourage high quality scholarly work within the Bentley community, including a monetary award for each honoree. Up to two honorees from the Arts and Sciences departments and two honorees from the Business Departments are selected for the awards, which cover accomplishments from the past three years.
This year’s awards were given to:
P. Thompson (Thom) Davis, professor of Natural and Applied Sciences, for his essay, “Cosmogenic exposure age evidence for rapid Laurentide deglaciation of the Katahdin area, west-central Maine, USA, 16 to 15 ka,” published in Quaternary Science Reviews.
Davis’s article, along with two other recently published articles, represent the culmination of more than two decades of research. Each article deals with glacial melt chronologies based on cosmogenic nuclide exposure-dating of rock samples collected since the 1990s. (As glaciers melted off the mountains, rocks were exposed to cosmogenic nuclides.) This work is used to explain, for example, how Mt. Katahdin and Mt. Washington in New Hampshire remained covered for tens of thousands of years by the last continental ice sheet that overrode northern New England. All articles are published in top journals in Geology and the work recently led to the receipt of a three-year $280,000 National Science Foundation grant to further study the issue. This work carries implications for understanding the likely rate and mechanisms of current glacial melting caused by climate change. Read more about Davis’s work.
Bonnie Field, professor of Global Studies, for her book, Why Minority Governments Work: Multilevel Territorial Politics in Spain, published by Palgrave Macmillan.
Field’s book tackles central questions in political science: How well do minority parliamentary governments govern? How do they build majorities? Why do some perform better than others? Field conducted more than 50 interviews over a three-year period with Spain’s political leaders, including deputy prime ministers, ministers, parliamentarians and party leaders. She also created a dataset of 10,000 parliamentary votes on bills presented in Spain’s parliament during 15 years of minority governments. Her book has been endorsed by three of the leading scholars of political institutions in political science. Field is the only non-European to be invited to participate in a multi-year, Europe-wide research project on governments in Europe that the Swedish government funded, and her book was used by the Parliament of Ireland as a reference during negotiations to form a minority government.
Pat Flynn, trustee professor of Economics and Management, for editing Integrating Gender Equality into Management Education: Lessons Learned and Challenges Remaining, published by Greenleaf Publishing.
Flynn’s editorship on this book stems from the work of the Working Group on Gender Equality associated with the Principles of Responsible Management Education, a United Nations initiative with more than 600 business schools in more than 80 countries. Flynn is also the lead author of the book’s chapter, “Gender equality in business schools: The elephant in the room,” that documents significant gender gaps in business schools worldwide, especially at the levels of deans, department chairs, full professors and tenured faculty, as well as of doctoral students in several key business fields. The book and article have resulted in numerous speaking engagements for Flynn in the U.S. and abroad. Jonas Haertle, head of the Principles of Responsible Management Education, said of the book, “Achieving gender equality is a key concern of our time. This book makes a convincing argument for bringing gender equality into the center of the sustainability discussion in management education and provides important tools to do so.” Read more about Flynn’s work.
Jay Thibodeau, professor of Accountancy, for his article, “Simply Soups Inc.: A Teaching Case Designed to Integrate the Electronic Cash Confirmation Process into the Auditing Curriculum,” published in Issues in Accounting Education.
“Simply Soups Inc.” is a case that gives educators a way to teach students about electronic confirmations in the auditing curriculum. As more than 13,000 accounting firms and 3,500 banks now use an electronic confirmation platform (Capital Confirmation 2017), professors now must teach this topic in their classes. In the case, Thibodeau and his colleagues teach students how to use an electronic platform designed for this case by Confirmation.com--the market leader in electronic confirmations--to confirm the cash balances reported by Simply Soups Inc. Students are required to document their work in accordance with the latest standards. To date, this case has been completed by more than 10,000 students at 175 colleges and universities, and responds to the Pathways Commission’s call for the development of engaging learning resources that reflect the rapidly changing nature of practice and the role of technology.