The Lacy School of Business is pleased to kick off the Spring 2026 Research Speaker Series – an ongoing celebration of the scholarship, curiosity, and intellectual leadership that drive our community forward.
This spring lineup brings together faculty researchers who are exploring some of the most relevant questions in business today, offering students and colleagues a chance to engage with emerging insights that shape the way organizations and industries evolve.
We invite you to join us throughout the semester to learn, connect, and be part of the ongoing exchange of ideas shaping the future.
Friday, February 20 at 12:00 p.m.
Speaker: Dr. Matthew Lanham, Assistant Professor of Business Technology and Analytics
Location: Dugan Hall, Room 457
Title: Data4Good: A Ministry of Stewardship
Abstract: This research reveals how a national, points-based analytics competition can transform traditional “case competitions” into a scalable, service-oriented learning ecosystem. Founded in 2022, Data4Good replaces winner-take-all formats with short, skill-building deliverables that accumulate toward regional champion status, so more participants earn portfolio-ready outcomes beyond a single final presentation.
Each year, students apply analytics to mission-driven partners—captioning children’s Bible stories in low-resource languages (SIL Global), structuring clinical transcripts for healthcare (a Jesuit hospital system), supporting bereaved military families (TAPS.org), and improving the factuality of AI-generated educational content (Prediction Guard). Grounded in the biblical call to “use whatever gift you have received to serve others,” the talk frames analytic skill as stewardship and highlights how collaboration with experts, vendors, and professional societies accelerates both workforce readiness and real-world impact.
To date, the competition has generated $141,000 in student prizes and enabled 2,253 Microsoft certifications, demonstrating how stewardship-minded design can scale high-quality outcomes. Looking ahead, Data4Good will expand participation to industry practitioners, strengthening a growing community of data stewards who serve others through analytics.
Friday, March 27
Speaker: Dr. Xixi Li, Assistant Professor of Marketing
Location: Dugan Hall, Room 457
Title: Subtler but Powerful: How Brand Prominence Influences Collaboration Intentions
Abstract: Drawing on the stereotype content model, this research examines how and when brand prominence in luxury consumption shapes observers’ trait inferences, emotional responses, and collaboration intentions in task-oriented contexts. Results show that observers report greater collaboration intention with consumers displaying low (vs. high) brand prominence. This effect is driven by more favorable warmth and competence inferences, which in turn elicit higher benign envy.
Importantly, general brand conspicuousness does not produce similar interpersonal effects. Moreover, the indirect effects on collaboration intentions disappear when the luxury item is perceived as undeserved.
Friday, April 17
Speaker: Dr. Mario Marshall, Assistant Professor of Finance
Location: Dugan Hall, Room 457
Title: The Cost of Gambling Investors: Evidence from Reverse Stock Splits
Abstract: Reverse stock splits are typically followed by sharp valuation declines, even though they leave firm fundamentals unchanged. This study provides evidence that these losses reflect the unwinding of a speculative premium embedded in prices by a class of investors who value lottery-like features, such as low nominal share prices and highly skewed payoffs. Motivated by Robert Shiller’s framework in which speculative value is capitalized into prices with varying intensity, the analysis examines how investor composition shapes the sensitivity of valuations to changes in nominal share prices.
Using shareholder voting data from U.S. reverse stock splits, the study shows that firms with above-median opposition to reverse split proposals experience substantially larger post-split valuation losses, roughly ten percentage points more than firms with below-median opposition. These effects are significantly stronger in periods and locations associated with elevated gambling sentiment.
Overall, the findings suggest that reverse stock splits remove lottery-like attributes that had been capitalized into prices, and that valuation losses are larger when these attributes were priced with greater speculative intensity. The results contribute to ongoing debates over minimum price listing standards by showing that actions taken to meet these rules, such as reverse stock splits, can produce large valuation effects. At the same time, the findings suggest that investors should consider who else holds the stock, since valuation responses depend on investor composition rather than the corporate action alone.