Kelley Indianapolis welcomes five new faculty members

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INDIANAPOLIS – The IU Kelley School of Business Indianapolis is proud to welcome five new faculty members to its roster this fall. They bring with them a variety of expertise and passions that will enhance the school’s record for collaborative, interdisciplinary scholarship and teaching.

“We are excited at the opportunity to welcome new faculty to conduct research and teach in the areas of finance, marketing, management and accounting. The new faculty members bring excellent research capabilities that will complement and build on the strong research background of our existing Kelley Indianapolis faculty,” said Ken Carow, associate dean for faculty and research and professor of finance at the Kelley School. “Their research and teaching excellence ensures Kelley will continue to be recognized as a top research business school and that our academic programs will provide excellent instruction for graduate and undergraduate students.”

Helen Colby

Helen Colby will join the faculty as an assistant professor of marketing. Colby received her PhD in cognitive psychology and marketing from Rutgers University, where she also received her master’s degree. She holds an undergraduate degree from the University of Chicago in economics and psychology. Most recently, Colby worked as a post-doctoral research fellow at UCLA Anderson School of Management.

Colby’s research interests include consumer judgment and decision-making (both financial and health decision-making), information effects, self-control and goals. She has published in Psychological Science, Medical Decision Making, Judgment and Decision Making, The Journal of the American Medical Association and Design & Test of Computers. Her research in The Journal of the American Medical Association considers flu vaccines and appointments, finding that giving people a default appointment time to get their vaccines largely increases the number of people receiving flu shots.

“I chose the Kelley School of Business Indianapolis because there are so many people here doing exciting research on topics that interest me,” said Colby. “I am looking forward to furthering my research this semester by applying for grants to complete larger scale projects in regards to research on financial decision-making and financial literacy training. I think this has the biggest potential impact in terms of how we are conducting financial literacy training. A large meta-analysis showed that financial literacy training, as it currently exists, changes knowledge, but it generally has no effect on behavior. My work is a new way of looking at why this might be, which I then hope to use to find more effective ways of training to change both knowledge and behavior.”

Greg Durham

Greg Durham joins the Kelley Indianapolis faculty as a clinical associate professor of finance. Durham previously worked at the University of Texas at Dallas as a clinical associate professor and the director of the finance undergraduate program. Before that, he spent 11 years at Montana State University and eight years at Arizona State University. Durham received his PhD in business administration, with an emphasis in finance; his MBA from the University of Texas at Austin and his undergraduate degree in electrical engineering from Montana State University.

Durham’s scholarly interests include behavioral finance, asset pricing and sports wagering markets. His research has been published in The Journal of Finance, Quarterly Review of Economics and Finance and Journal of Sports Economics. He also wrote a chapter on behavioral finance and point-spread wagering markets for the Oxford Handbook of the Economics of Gambling.

“I have already worked and published with other faculty members here at the Kelley School in Indianapolis. Being on the same campus with these talented colleagues and having access to the resources the Kelley School provides its faculty will only help to enhance my research productivity,” said Durham. “I chose to join Kelley Indianapolis for three primary reasons: to work with highly capable, highly collegial colleagues; to work with and teach an impressive group of MBA students from the Indianapolis-area business community (and worldwide, in the case of the Kelley Direct program) and to live and work in the wonderful city of Indianapolis.”

Dave Farber

Dave Farber is an associate professor in accounting. He joins the Kelley faculty from the University of Texas at El Paso, where he was a professor and the Paul L. Foster and Alejandra de la Vega Foster Distinguished Chair in International Business. Farber has also worked at McGill University, the University of Missouri and Michigan State University. 

He received his PhD in management, with an accounting concentration, from the Johnson Graduate School of Management at Cornell University. He received his MBA from the City University of New York/Baruch College and his undergraduate degree in economics from State University of New York at Stony Brook. Before beginning his career in higher education, Farber worked as an auditor for Deloitte and as a corporate controller.

Farber’s research interests include corporate governance, financial reporting and managerial characteristics. He has been published in The Accounting Review, Contemporary Accounting Research, Journal of Accounting Research and Accounting Horizons. Farber says much of his research is motivated by financial matters happening in the world today.

“I look at the financial press broadly to inspire my research: What is going on in the real world that matters?” said Farber. “At the Kelley School, I’m looking forward to collaborating with world-class scholars and teaching outstanding accounting students.”

Wei Shi

Wei Shi will begin his career with Kelley Indianapolis as an assistant professor of management. Shi received his PhD in strategic management from the Jesse H. Jones Graduate School of Business at Rice University. He has an MBA from the A.B. Freeman School of Business at Tulane University and received his undergraduate degree in English literature from Beijing Foreign Studies University in China. Prior to pursuing his academic career, Shi worked for a large chemical firm in China.

Shi has published in Strategic Management Journal, Global Strategy Journal, Journal of Corporate Finance and Academy of Management Perspectives. His research focuses on three categories: corporate governance, strategic leadership and corporate strategy. Shi’s dissertation examines how CEOs’ social peers influence these CEOs’ acquisition decisions. In a study published this year in Strategic Management Journal, Shi and his co-authors consider how a board director’s death would influence a CEO’s acquisition decisions.

“Some of my research looks at how firms and their board of directors make decisions; it considers how different types of owners influence a firm’s strategic decisions. I’m particularly interested in factors that influence the firm’s top managers and whether they engage in fraudulent behaviors,” said Shi.

“I chose Kelley Indianapolis because of the interdisciplinary nature of the faculty research,” he added. “The unique structure of Kelley Indianapolis allows me to collaborate with colleagues from other disciplines.”