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New faculty: Spotlight on two of the seventeen new professors who joined the college in the fall of 2007

Monica Chiarini Tremblay

Monica Chiarini Tremblay connects with cultural diversity on campus.

As a new assistant professor in the Department of Decision Sciences and Information Systems (DSIS), Monica Chiarini Tremblay felt an immediate affinity with her students.

“Many students have a background very like my own. That’s why I feel so at home here.”

—Monica Chiarini Tremblay, assistant professor, Department of Decision Sciences and Information Systems (DSIS)

“My father’s engineering career took our family all over Latin America,” she said. “I was born in Mexico of Italian parents, and grew up in Venezuela, Brazil, and the Dominican Republic. Many students have a background very like my own. That’s why I feel so at home here.”

Tremblay’s own career path has taken her from positions as an engineer and systems analyst with ExxonMobil to doctoral student to faculty instructor with a strong interest in ongoing research in the areas of data mining and business intelligence.
 
In one of her undergraduate courses, Introduction to Business Information Systems, Tremblay was one of three instructors to implement a simulated teaching tool to train and test students.

“I’m seeing students learn so much more with this tool,” she said.

At the graduate level, Tremblay teaches a new course in business intelligence. And she recently learned that she and several colleagues received two grants from the U.S. Veterans Administration Health Services and Research Department to use text mining to search electronic medical records.

Asked to sum up her first year at the college, Tremblay is quick to answer: “Busy and happy to be in Miami!”

William Newburry’s interest in things international started at a young age.

William Newburry

Most children like to hear stories from their grandparents, but the tales don’t always open a lifelong love for a particular subject. However, for William Newburry, a new assistant professor in the Department of Management and International Business, accounts from his travel-agent grandparents helped shape later choices.

“My grandparents brought back stories of many other cultures.”

—William Newburry, assistant professor, Department of Management and International Business

“My grandparents brought back stories of many other cultures, including those in Europe, Israel, and Australia,” Newburry said. “Later, when I was in high school, my father was transferred to Japan for two years, which allowed me to experience an international environment first hand.”

Newburry later traveled to Australia as a Graduate Rotary Scholar, studying international relations and Japanese. He continued his language studies during a six-year stint at McDonnell Douglas Corporation, receiving certificates in Japanese and Mandarin Chinese through language programs offered by Berlitz at the company, while also pursuing a master’s degree in international affairs at Washington University.

Choosing an academic career, Newburry eventually earned a PhD, co-majoring in international business and management, at New York University. However, he has kept his sights on the corporate world—focusing his research on the relationships between headquarters and their subsidiaries.

“I often start with the local employee perspective and look up, whereas most scholars examine strategic issues from perspective of headquarters’ management down,” he said.

Drawn to the College of Business Administration because of its reputation in international business, Newburry also felt the location was a “central research place to study Latin America,” which is the focus of his current research project on employee attraction to domestic versus foreign firms.