Dialog, UA Faculty and Staff News

C&BA's Lohrke Receives Award for Research on Small Businesses and Internet
UA Professor Awarded Ford Foundation Grant
Kellen Receives Award
UA's Diggs Honored at Women of Color Conference
Dates Scheduled for Crimson Winners Photos

C&BA's Lohrke Receives Award for Research on Small Businesses and Internet

Dr. Franz T. Lohrke

Dr. Franz T. Lohrke, assistant professor of management in UA’s Culverhouse College of Commerce and Business Administration has been named the winner of the Best Paper Award on Technology Applications for Entrepreneurship by the U.S. Association for Small Business and Entrepreneurship (USASBE). USASBE, formerly the International Council for Small Business, is an organization of researchers, scholars, teachers, administrators and public policy makers interested in entrepreneurship and small business.

"Entrepreneurship and small businesses are the heart of the nation’s economy," said Dr. J. Barry Mason, dean of the UA business school. "Applying today’s complicated technologies to these two critical areas is crucial and for Franz Lohrke to be recognized for his expertise in this area is immensely gratifying and underscores once again the fact that our faculty members are leaders in their fields."

The paper, titled "The Internet as an Information Conduit: A Transaction Cost Analysis Model of Small Business Internet Use" and co-authored by Dr. Geralyn McClure Franklin, professor of management and dean of the business school at the University of Texas of the Permian Basin in Odessa, explored the idea that small firms can use the Internet to reduce potential inefficiencies that arise from relying on other firms to perform key activities. The researchers hypothesized that because the Internet offers small firms a way to provide in-house customer support that complements or even replaces support provided by traditional outside intermediaries such as distributors, those firms facing potential inefficiencies would be more likely to use the Internet to provide this support. The researchers surveyed 41 small businesses across the country and found that the results generally supported their hypothesis.

UA Professor Awarded Ford Foundation Grant

Dr. Sandra Braman

A UA professor has won a $100,000 grant from the Ford Foundation to assist the Foundation in its media policy and technology efforts. Dr. Sandra Braman, UA’s Reese Phifer Professor in Telecommunication and Film, will use the grant in defining the field of media policy and technology and in developing a research agenda and a method for analysis in the field.

The philanthropic Ford Foundation lists its goals as strengthening democratic values, reducing poverty and injustice, promoting international cooperation and advancing human achievement. According to its Web site, the Foundation distributes more than $600 million annually to organizations around the world, primarily through grants and loans. It awards grants in the areas of asset building and community development; education, media, arts, and culture; and peace and social justice.

Braman joined the UA faculty in 1997 and has been doing research on the effects of the use of new information technologies and their policy implications since the early 1980s. Her work has been widely published in the fields of communication, economics, information science, political science, policy studies, and the arts.

Kellen Receives Award

Beverly Kellen

Beverly Kellen, assistant director of UA’s Russell Student Health Center, was recently awarded an Executive Director Advisor Award for 2000-2001 from Alpha Lambda Delta. ALD is a national honor society that honors academic excellence during a student’s first year at college. It has 225 chapters across the United States and has initiated more than 600,000 students who are among the top 15 percent of rising sophomores.

Kellen has served as ALD chapter advisor at UA since 1992. In that time she has guided the chapter to having a perfect track record in selecting ALD Trow Undergraduate Scholarship winners. The chapter has also seen a 40 percent increase in members in the last five years. For more information about UA’s ALD chapter, call or e-mail Kellen at 348-6447 or bkellen@sa.ua.edu.

UA's Diggs Honored at Women of Color Conference

Connie Diggs

Connie Diggs, assistant vice president for student affairs and director of UA’s Russell Student Health Center, has been recognized as a "Technology All Star" at the Women of Color in Health, Science and Technology conference and awards ceremony held recently in Nashville, Tenn. She will also be featured in the Women of Color Conference Magazine.

The "Technology All Star" award recognizes women of color who have significantly influenced the health community as a practitioner, administrator, scientist or technologist and whose contributions continue to advance technical career opportunities for other women of color.

Career Communications Group of Baltimore sponsored the two-day conference and awards program.

Diggs has served as director of the Russell Student Health Center since 1998. The UA center is the state’s only college health service accredited by the Accreditation Association for Ambulatory Health Care or the Joint Commission on Accreditation of Healthcare Organizations. In 2000, the center was re-accredited by AAAHC for a full three-year term.

Last year, Diggs was awarded the American College Health Association’s Hannibal E. Howell Award, one of the association’s top 10 national awards. The award honors ACHA members who have made "outstanding proactive contributions" to their campus communities and ACHA by promoting health care and ways to prevent health problems relevant to ethnic minorities.

Dates Scheduled for Crimson Winners Photos

The Crimson Spirit Award recognizes individual staff members who make extraordinary contributions and demonstrate a winning spirit. To nominate an employee, who must be a current non-faculty employee, contact UA Human Resources at 348-6690 or Human Resource Development at 348-7125.

Crimson Spirit Winners who wish to have their picture taken for Dialog and for office records may come to the photography department in G-5 Rose Administration Building on Wednesdays April 24, May 8 and May 22, any time from 2-4 p.m., to have photos made. No appointment is necessary. For information about photos, contact Jennifer Sanford at 348-8332. For information about Crimson Winner forms, contact Teresa Herndon at 348-8212 or e-mail to therndon@fan.ua.edu.