Dr. Lakisha L. Simmons, assistant professor of Information Systems Management, has published an article in the August 2013 edition of the peer-reviewed The DATA BASE for Advances in Information Systems. The journal has a 15 percent acceptance rate. Her article is titled “Extraction of Financial Information from Online Business Reports.” Continuing in this research stream, Simmons also is preparing a manuscript for publication that details the creation of a system that accurately extracts security information from online government reports.

The Center for Medicare and Medicaid Innovation has selected Assistant Professor of Nursing Kathy Jordan, also program chairwoman for undergraduate nursing, to serve as a registered reviewer to evaluate proposals for the Health Care Innovation Awards.  The center will provide up to $1 billion in funding for projects that develop new payment and service delivery models that will reduce costs while preserving or enhancing the quality of care for beneficiaries in Medicare, Medicaid and the Children’s Health Insurance Program.  The review process will begin Oct. 1.

The Belmont University College of Business Administration (COBA) has given Dr. Jeffrey W. Overby the inaugural Edward C. and Helen J. Kennedy Chair of Excellence. Overby is an associate professor of marketing and serves as the director of the Center for International Business.

The Chair of Excellence was created through a generous gift from Helen J. Kennedy. The Edward C. and Helen J. Kennedy Chair of Excellence provides funding for a permanent chair in a business discipline within the College of Business Administration. The chairman must demonstrate proven success in the classroom, high quality scholarship and meaningful service to the Belmont community and beyond. The chairman also is expected to be a positive role model and mentor for the professional development of his or her colleagues.

Overby’s responsibilities include teaching marketing and international business at the undergraduate and graduate levels, expanding Belmont’s international business major, establishing study abroad relationships with foreign universities, and promoting internationalization within the College of Business Administration and the greater Nashville community.

He regularly teaches in international study programs, which includes recent study abroad trips to Spain, France, United Arab Emirates, Poland, South Korea, South Africa and Botswana. He serves on the Board of Directors of the International Business Council of the Nashville Chamber of Commerce, Sister Cities of Nashville, Round Table Inc., and the Tennessee World Affairs Council. Overby was the lead author and administrator on an $189,000 grant from the Bureau of International Education to internationalize the curriculum and to develop international-oriented co-curricular activities in COBA.

Overby obtained a Doctorate of Philosophy in Business Administration from the University of Tennessee, Knoxville, a Master of Business Administration from Millsaps College, and a Bachelor of Science in French from Mississippi State University. He has also studied at Odense University in Denmark, Birbeck College in England, Clemont-Ferrand, France and the Najafi Global Mindset Institute at the Thunderbird School of Global Management. His academic research interests are in the areas of international marketing, international business strategy, cross-cultural consumer behavior and the ethics of globalization. He has published in a number of leading journals, including the Journal of Consumer Marketing, Journal of the Academy of Marketing Science, Journal of Business Research, Industrial Marketing Management, The CASE Journal, Marketing Theory, and the International Marketing Review.

Dr. Jim Al-Shamma, assistant professor of theatre, has published an article in the spring 2013 edition of the peer-reviewed Journal of Dramatic Theory and Criticism. It is included in the special section, “Witnessing History, Performing Trauma” and addresses a play by contemporary Iraqi playwright Jawad Al Assadi ; the article is titled “Staging Baghdadi Bath on the Western Stage: Toward a Theatre of Trauma.”

Al-Shamma facilitated and participated in a panel on Arabic drama on Aug. 3 at the annual conference of the Association for Theatre in Higher Education. Panelists included Jordanian director Mohammad BaniHani, who spoke on censorship in his country. Al-Shamma’s paper explored the social function of the bathhouse in Arabic drama and was titled, “’You are my blissfulness and my hell’: The Bathhouse in Two Arabic Plays.”

The video of the production of A Midsummer Night’s Dream directed by  Al-Shamma at Texas A&M University-Commerce in February 2013 has been posted to MIT’s Global Shakespeares website, which is an educational archive of productions of Shakespeare from around the world.