It’s not unusual for Memorial professors to be recognized for the excellence of their teaching. Nor, is it unusual for them to be recognized for the quality of research. It is, however, unusual that they be recognized in the same time at the same place for these efforts, but this is exactly what happened to Dr. Alex Faseruk, professor of finance in the Faculty of Business Administration.

At the Awards Luncheon of the Academy of Finance in Chicago, no sooner had Dr. Faseruk sat down from accepting the Excellence in Teaching Award, then he was called upon to accept the Best Paper Award on behalf of his co-author Dr. Chris Deacon from the Department of Physics and Physical Oceanography. Fittingly, their paper was in the area of financial education and was titled “Enhancing Pedagogy in Teaching Option Strategies through the Use of Management Science Techniques.”

“Working with Chris Deacon is an absolute joy. He already had a PhD in Physics before graduating from our MBA program," said Dr. Faseruk. "As such, he was able to quickly see the application of mathematical programming and modeling to management situations and problems.”

Since 2000, Drs. Faseruk and Deacon have collaborated on several journal articles and conference papers, but this is their first best paper award.

Also presenting papers at the Academy of Finance Conference were current MBA students, Punit Anand and Dr. Jim Stacey. Last fall, Mr. Anand won First Place in the Canadian Institute of Chartered Business Valuators Student Research Paper Competition. His paper for the Academy of Finance, “Simulation-Based Modeling that Compares Cash Flow and Accrual Accounting for Use in Equity Valuation” was co-authored with Dr. Faseruk and is scheduled for publication in Management Research News.

These two authors also presented their paper, “Financial Applications for Neural Networks” at the 2007 Administrative Sciences Association of Conference (ASAC) in Ottawa in June.

Another MBA student, Dr. Stacey, who also already holds a PhD in Physics, presented a paper, “Unit-Variance Leptokurtic Fractal Normal Statistics” co-authored with Dr. Faseruk in Chicago.

Dr. Stacey’s single-authored paper, “Multi-Dimensional Risk and Mean-Kurtosis Portfolio Optimization” received the Best Student Paper in Finance Award at the ASAC conference.

“It is a testimony to the quality of our MBA program that our students are able to publish the results of their research at national and international conferences,” said Dr. Faseruk.

While he is better known for his teaching, Dr. Faseruk has always maintained that high quality teaching goes hand-in-hand with high quality research.