Faculty Voices

LOU McNALLY

Assistant Professor of Applied Meteorology, Daytona Beach campus
Courses taught: meteorology, aviation weather, climatology, television weathercasting, field production, video editing

What did you do before you joined the faculty?

I did television weather in Buffalo, Des Moines, Providence, R.I., Portland, Maine, and Boston, Mass. I then hosted Made in Maine, which ran 19 years on Maine Public Television, Let’s Go Boating, Boating Today, Starting a Business in Maine, and other programs. I’ve won three regional Emmy Awards for my television work. My research activities and published papers deal with forensic synoptic analysis (reconstructing weather patterns from old diaries and other written works). One paper was presented in 2006 in Beijing, another was published last spring by the Royal Meteorological Society.

What do you enjoy most about working with students?

Embry-Riddle students are competent and focused on their work. They really enjoy learning, which makes it a pleasure to teach them. They never fail to amaze me with their confidence and excitement about their future.

How do you challenge them?

I treat my students as though they have already begun their professional careers. Challenging them with real-life situations gives them a great head start when it comes time to enter the work force. Preparation is important, of course, but here at Embry-Riddle they get professional experience, too. There is no substitute for having the confidence to act like a pro when it comes time for a professional position. To help them do so, we recently set up a new television weathercasting and video production facilities. As with everything Embry-Riddle does, the students have access to state-of-the-art equipment. There is already a sense of pride on campus for the projects we have underway.

What is one thing about you that people are surprised to learn?

I am a pretty decent musician. I’m a folk/rock guitarist, blues bassist, country singer, and rock and roll piano player, but I prefer the Hammond organ as the most versatile instrument out there.

ANKE ARNAUD

Assistant Professor of Management, Daytona Beach campus
Courses taught: organizational behavior and ethics

What do you enjoy most about working with students?

I love to interact with my students and see them grow. I enjoy being a positive influence in their lives. My goals are to raise their ability to interact effectively with others and turn them into learners for life. I want them to leave my class with a strengthened ability to lead and motivate others and a better understanding of human behavior. Also, I want them to learn to capitalize on their strengths and manage their weaknesses more effectively. I learn about their goals and struggles and what is important to this generation. They keep me current in my thinking and research. For example, the current economic crisis and ethical challenges that corporate America is facing raise many concerns. We discuss those in class and try to identify the causes for these problems and how to resolve them. The students are creative and innovative in finding solutions. I am the facilitator who helps them and guides them.

How do you challenge each other?

They do not like strict lectures. They want to participate in the learning process. You have to be flexible and find ways to engage them. That’s tough and challenging for me. I do not give them in-depth descriptions for their team assignments. I give them general outlines of team project requirements. Then I let them “run” with it. This introduces ambiguity, and they don't always like it. However, their work environments will be filled with ambiguity, and they will have to find ways to manage this.

What activities have you been involved with lately?

As the chair of the diversity committee, I was very involved in developing a panel discussion on diversity issues to raise cross-cultural understanding. We used our international MBA students as panelists and a moderator to discuss how to negotiate in different countries. Another project: with colleagues in the College of Business I have also begun to learn how to develop organizational cultures that support and promote ecological sustainability.

What are people sometimes surprised to learn about you?

I am pretty transparent. I have been snow skiing since I was three years old. I speak Spanish fluently. Oh, yes, I am a fan of the Harry Potter books.

NANCY LAWRENCE

Associate Professor of Safety, Prescott campus
Courses taught: industrial hygiene and lab, occupational safety, research methods

What did you do “pre-Embry-Riddle?”

I was a professor at Indiana State University, where I taught industrial hygiene, ergonomics, safety management, safety and health communication. Before that, I was an industrial hygienist at Northrop Corp. and an industrial health and safety specialist at the Metropolitan Transportation Authority in southern California.

Why did you choose the classroom?

Teaching is my passion. I enjoy interacting with students, and I enjoy their success. The students teach me how to do my job better. At the end of each semester, I ask students what I could have done differently or what else they wish they had learned. For example, they recently said they want to learn more about how to do research, so I’m going to incorporate better ways for them to do research.

How do you make education real for your students?

I take the students in my lab class out with me to survey a local company to look for their industrial hygiene and safety problems. We then put together a professional project and make a presentation to the company on how to correct the problems and improve. During the summer, when the students are gone, I visit the company to see if they’ve taken our recommendations – and they do. So far, we’ve done this project with two commercial printers and a manufacturer of airplane parts.

How else are you involved on campus?

I’m the coordinator of the campus’ diversity committee. We have two events each year for female students – a tea in the fall and a “mix-it-up” gathering in the spring. Every month we give honor the outstanding female student of the month. Last fall, we inaugurated Women in Engineering and Aviation Day, when we invite local middle school and high school girls to campus to learn about occupations for women such as pilot, engineer, and astronaut. I also oversee the internships for the master’s degree program in safety science. And I’m the faculty advisor for four student clubs: the Graduate Student Society, the American Society of Safety Engineers, Women in Aviation, and Future Black Leaders of America.

JAVAD GORJIDOOZ

Professor of Finance, Prescott campus
Courses taught: corporate finance, international finance, personal financial planning, international business, managerial economics, engineering economics

What did you do before you joined Embry-Riddle’s faculty?

I taught for about 15 years at Eastern Michigan University, University of Wisconsin, and Adams State College in Colorado.

What do like about working with students?

I see students grow from a high school mentality to mature individuals with confidence by the time they graduate. Some of them have out-skilled us. For example, one of our students, who wrote a computer program that determines the price of an option at any point in time before the settlement date, implemented it in his investment, with a return of over 200 percent in three weeks.

What do you learn from each other?

Well-prepared students challenge us by raising questions out of the box about issues such as the state of the economy, the credit crisis, the real estate market downturn, and their global impact. In return, I challenge them to sharpen their creative thinking and increase their curiosity in a particular field, and by giving them tools and direction to succeed in completing a task, a project, or group assignment.

What current activity are you excited about?

Students in my Personal Financial Planning course break into groups of three and invest in securities with $100,000 of imaginary money. Some of these groups’ portfolios have outperformed the S&P 500. I am also very proud that our Phi Beta Lambda business club won the largest number of awards at the 2009 PBL State Leadership Conference at Arizona State University in March. It was the third year in a row they have done that. (See story on page --.)