Current Research in the College of Business & Technology

Dr. Bekkering is an assistant professor in MIS. He graduated from the MIS program at Mississippi State University with a dissertation named "Visual Angle in Videoconferencing: The Issue of Trust". When people participate in a videoconferencing session, the camera is generally placed on top of the monitor. Because the participants do not look into the camera but focus on the screen, an artificial effect of avoiding eye contact is created, as if they may not be telling the truth. In an experiment with prerecorded messages from different angles, the negative effect on trust was clearly demonstrated.

Other areas of research include security of information systems, adoption of new technologies, and systems development. Together with research partners at MSU, Dr. Bekkering developed a new password system that makes passwords easier to remember, and examined the user perceptions and preferences in adoption of Tablet PCs. Recently, Dr. Bekkering joined Dr. Deborah Stevenson in a study of the importance of certification of Project Managers in information systems projects.

Dr. Fritz Laux is part of a research team that has been awarded a multiyear Transdisciplinary Tobacco Use Research Center (TTURC) grant for a project entitled “Building the Evidence Base for Tobacco Control Policies.” This project is jointly funded by the National Institute on Drug Abuse and the National Cancer Institute and the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation. For the 2004-05 academic year, he was awarded a research subcontract from the University of Illinois at Chicago. Funded by the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, this study prepared estimations of the extent to which smokers in Canada, the United States, the United Kingdom, and Australia have been buying cigarettes from untaxed or lesser-taxed sources, such as tribal sales, out-of-state or country purchases, military PX sales, and internet or phone sales. In the 2003-04 academic year, Fritz's work was funded by grants from the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, for work on projects respectively entitled "Building an International Tobacco Evidence Network" and "Do National-Level Policies Decrease Smoking? A Four-Country Tobacco Policy Study."

Dr. John Schleede, Dean of the College of Business & Technology at NSU, has focused much of his more recent scholarship efforts on instructional development after a more traditional academic research agenda at the beginning of his career. Dr. Schleede participated in one of the first efforts to develop video cases serving as the primary author for several including a profile of advertising agency W.B. Donor and a case dealing with the national roll out of the Tommy fragrance for men by the Aramis Division of Estee Lauder. He was also the author of a number of widely used cases in advertising that were included in the best selling advertising case book in the United States.

In addition to his traditional research and instructional development, Dr. Schleede received a grant which started the LaBelle Entrepreneurial Center at Central Michigan University. The LaBelle Center offers the largest entrepreneurial program in Michigan and provides hands-on support for more than 100 small businesses each year. Through its program with Michigan Rehabilitation Services, more than 30 persons with disailities are enabled to start their own business. This grant was from the State of Michigan Research Excellence Fund. Recently, Dr. Schleede was coauthor of a grant from the U.S. Department of Education that provided small businesses with the expertise to export their products and improve graduate education in international business at Central Michigan University.