October 11, 2013
Volume 4, Issue 37
PDC Winners Circle Program
SBE Faculty Holds Book Launch
Pg. 1 A Message from Dr. Suresh Gopalan
Pg. 2 Human Judgment and Decision Making
Professional Development Center’s (PDC) Winners Circle Program
Makes a Difference
Pg. 1 RAMS SHRM Receives Award
Pg. 3 “Where in the World” Reminder
A Message from Interim
Dean Suresh Gopalan
Pg. 2
Pg. 3
At first it seemed a bit corny to participate in a responsive reading program, but soon the atmosphere turned contemplative as students grasped the meaning of the reading entitled, “I am now what I am becoming.” This was the start of the fourth Winners Circle program of the
Fall Semester 2013—Winning the
Interview Game! Twenty students participated in an energetic, laughfilled, candid discussion of how to approach interviews in today’s competitive job market. The forum, cosponsored by the student organizations: National Association of
Black Accountants, Beta Alpha Psi and
Pi Sigma Epsilon, featured a panel composed of WSSU HR specialist
Donna Braswell-Bray; 2010 WSSU graduate Brandon Murphy, a recruiter for the staffing company Aerotek; and
Gary Klutts, Senior Recruitment
Don Wood, Donna Braswell Bray, Brandon Murphy and
Gary Klutts speak about Winning the Interview Game
Manager for Aerotek. According to Don
Wood, Director of the Professional
Development Center, “This is the third time we’ve done Winning the Interview
Game and this had to be the most interactive and exciting discussion ever.” During the session, students learned to look at the interview from the employer’s perspective. They discovered key strategies for making good first impressions and identified
“red-flag” mistakes that can kill a candidate’s chances of getting a job before the first question is asked.
Overall, student feedback was strong.
In fact, three new students signed up to be a part of the Winners Circle program. These students see the connection between this program and their futures.
PDC has developed this special workshop series to provide a concentrated program of professional development and leadership activities to build confident and competent leaders for the global economy. Thus far PDC has held the Winners Circle
Info-Session on September 17, which invited SBE students to join the certification series. The workshops and activities lead to a pinning ceremony on April 17, 2014. The series provides more than workshops; it gives students a chance to live out the Winners Circle tagline: Connect!
Students get to meet and interact with professionals who give their time and energy to mentor and inspire young people to rise to the height of their ability.
On September 19, students met at
O’Kelly Library for the Second Annual
Internship Forum. LaMonica Sloan,
Director of Career Development
Services, ignited the group in preparation for the September 26
Career Expo. Sloan detailed important
I would like to take this opportunity to welcome all the SBE alumni who will
Suresh Gopalan be returning to our campus for the “Homecoming” celebrations this weekend.
As a faculty member who has taught on this campus for the last nine years, I have had the privilege of seeing many of my past students return as alumni. We feel proud of our alums who have forged successful careers and have ably served their communities.
It was a pleasure to have them make presentations in various classrooms this past week. They are a source of inspiration for our current students. We thank them for their service and look forward to a long and productive relationship in the years ahead.
I would like to express my appreciation to the department chairs, program coordinators, faculty, staff, alumni and students for their expressions of support and dedicated effort. It is your determination that makes me confident about the future growth and development of the SBE.
I look forward to working more closely with each of you in the coming months.
FOCUS is published weekly by the School of Business and Economics at Winston-Salem State University. This and past issues of the newsletter are available at wssu.edu/sbe/focus/default.aspx. For information concerning the newsletter, or to contribute an article, please contact Ben Greene at (336) 750-2330 or send an e-mail to greenebp@wssu.edu.

Page 2
The North Carolina Society for
Human Resource Management (NC
SHRM) presented its Distinguished
Student Chapter of the Year
Award to the RAMS Student
Chapter of SHRM at the
October 2, 2013 luncheon and general session of the organization held at Benton Convention
Center during the 2013 NC SHRM State
Conference. This recognition will be repeated at the Winston-Salem Chapter meeting on October 15 at the Wake
Forest Bridger Field House. Each year,
SHRM outlines a plan of action for success through the annual Merit Award program
Winners Circle
(Continued) resources along with do’s and don’ts regarding the internship process. PDC invited recent interns
Antwon Freeman, Mary-Nina
Ukariwo, Crystal White, Donte
Weston, and Tyler Kendrick to share their experiences and the value of internships. Sloan also made a strong appeal for students to apply for the Thurgood Marshall
Program.
D4CC: Dressing for Corporate
Culture, was the first professionalism workshop on
October 1. Nearly 30 students and recognizes those chapters that are leaders in the delivery of outstanding activities and programs. In addition to the award recognizing the accomplishments by the chapter, the statewide organization provides a check to the student organization to be used to further their purposes. This is the second time that WSSU has been a recipient of the award in the past five years.
Congratulations to each of our SHRM members, officers and advisors including the 2012-2013 President Damien Shell,
2013-2014 President Carlos Sawyer and faculty advisors Dr. William Carden and
Dr. Melissa Mann. Students who may be interested in learning more about the
Management Major with a concentration in Human Resources should stop by the
Management and Marketing Department
Office, RJ Reynolds building, Room 203-
A. Information about the student chapter may be obtained from Carlos Sawyer at csawyer111@rams.wssu.edu
.
FOCUS News
SBE Launches Faculty
Publications
Don Wood and SBE Students attend the D4CC crowded into RJR 008 to discuss this important topic with Kimberly
Morris, Assistant Vice President for
HR, and Teresa Mackey,
Multicultural Markets Officer for
BB&T. Following the session, surveys indicated that students’ views changed about what professional dress means. The lively interaction inspired the presenters as well as the students.
The next items on the Winners
Circle agenda are the fourth annual
Dollars and $ense workshop conducted by Dr. Lynette Wood.
This is a two-session hands-on activity dealing with personal money and life management.
Students learn the connection between their personal finances and their careers. Also, Winners Circle candidates must hold two mentoring sessions with a mentor of choice and they must have a resume consultation to complete the professionalism section.
The action has begun and the connections are being made. PDC is in the business of steering SBE students into the heart of the
On Thursday, October 3, the School of Business and Economics honored members of its faculty who have made scholarly contributions to the international community through the publication of authored and edited publications. These include The US
Economy and Neoliberalism: Alternative
Strategies and Policies , edited by
Nikolaos Karagiannis, Zagros Madjd-
Sadjadi and the late Professor Swapan
Sen; Toward a Good Society in the
Twenty First Century: Principles and
Policies , edited by Nikolaos Karagiannis and John Marangos; Introduction to
Personal Financial Planning: A Practical
Approach (2nd Edition) , authored by
Alexander Kondeas, David Stewart, and
Nicholas Daves; Interpersonal Skills in
Organizations (4th Edition) , authored by
Suzanne de Janasz, Karen Dowd, and
Beth Schneider; and, Consistency and
Viability of Capitalist Economic Systems , authored by John Marangos.
Drs. Nikolaos Karagiannis,
Alexander Kondeas, and Zagros Madjd-
Sadjadi as well as Ms. Beth Schneider spoke at the event and responded to audience questions about their publications. Honored guests included
Provost Dr. Brenda Allen and Assistant
Provost Ms. Letitia Cornish, Interim
Dean Dr. Suresh Gopalan, faculty, staff and students.

Greetings to our readers — The following is the first of an Article
Series by Dr. Pronobesh Banerjee,
Assistant Professor of Marketing. In these articles, he will provide a look into studies of Human Judgment and
Decision Making. Future issues of
Focus will include the next offering in the series.
We have to make decisions every minute of our life, whether
I should go shopping today or tomorrow? Should I take my car to the local mechanic or the car dealer? Should I drop the class and take it next semester or accept a probable C? Should I use my smartphone in class when I am repeatedly asked not to? How should
I dress and talk if I am on a date? The list goes on and on and on!
Sometimes we are literally even exhausted to go over the list of things we need to decide. minutes away, by car. Would you make a trip to the other store? The majority of the participants said no.
Let’s tweak the question a little bit and see what happens: Imagine that you are about to purchase a jacket for
$125, and a calculator
Pronobesh Banerjee for $25. The calculator salesman informs you that the calculator that you
But have you ever wondered how we make decisions? Do we always behave rationally? Many will definitely argue that we are, of course, rational consumers behaving like well-organized machines churning out calculations every minute to maximize our utility. Doesn’t that sound obvious! Let’s think of surprising—a significantly greater number of participants answered yes to the lost cash condition versus the lost ticket condition? You may be wondering why? Let’s see one more example: Imagine that you are about to purchase a jacket for $25, and a calculator for $125. The calculator salesman informs you that the calculator that you wish to buy is on sale for $120 at the other branch of the store, located 20 wish to buy is on sale for $20 at the other branch of the store, located 20 minutes away.
Would you make a trip to the other store? The majority of the participants said yes. So what happened to a rational consumer who is presumably trying to maximize his utility? some examples. Imagine that you have decided to see a play where the admission is $10 per ticket.
As you enter the theater you discover that you have lost the ticket. Will you still pay $10 for a ticket for the play? If you lost $10 in cash, would your decision change? This question was indeed asked to thousands of research participants and the results were
Questions like these have perplexed researchers as there is no difference in monetary value across different conditions—in the play condition it was loss of $10 whether it was cash or ticket; while in the shopping condition it is the saving of $5 whether it was purchasing a jacket or calculator. So are we not behaving as rational consumers, who use logic to fluently answer such conundrums or are we really, behaving like “fools” when we can easily be tricked into a situation by just framing the questions differently? Recent research (though they do not say we are all fools) indeed shows that we do not always behave as rational consumers and are, under most circumstances, mostly influenced by the way we are wired as humans. In fact, a prodigious research stream in the past two decades conclusively shows that we tend to adopt two processing mindsets—a quick, instantaneous process, popularly known as System 1 processing and the other slow and deliberative, popularly known as System 2.
Vomit
Did it spontaneously evoke some emotions that you had had no control? This particular word has apparently no relation to what we are discussing here but still it induced a state of uneasiness and disgust that is usually associated with such a situation.
24 × 786 =?
Did you slow down a little bit, unlike in the previous situation where some thoughts spontaneously came to mind.
In this series we are going to deal with such situations and give explanations as to why we behave the way we do. So stay tuned and see how we really make decisions in everyday life.
Attention SBE Graduates:
We would like to include your information in future “Where in the World” sections. Please send updates, including your name, title, employer name, year of graduation and current city, and state/country to greenebp@wssu.edu
.