The Terry College of Business presented its annual awards for excellence in teaching, research and service to five faculty members in December. The award winners were chosen based on nominations by their peers.

Erin Towery, the KPMG-Atlanta Partners’ and Employees’ Professor in the J.M. Tull School of Accounting, received the Teaching Excellence Award. The award is given to tenure-track faculty in the Terry College for outstanding performance in the classroom. In her 11 years at UGA, Towery has taught both undergraduate and graduate courses in accounting and taxation, always receiving exceptional evaluations. She developed a First-Year Odyssey Seminar that engages students in exploring how the U.S. tax system influences behavior and stimulates economic growth.  

Towery recently received the J. Hatten Howard Award from the Morehead Honors College, which recognizes faculty who exhibit special promise teaching Honors courses early in their academic careers. She was also inducted into the UGA Teaching Academy and selected as a Senior Teaching Fellow by UGA’s Center for Teaching and Learning for the 2023-2024 academic year. Towery has been on a special leave this year to serve as a senior economist with the White House Council of Economic Advisors.

Troy Montgomery, a senior lecturer in the Department of Management, received the Instructional Excellence Award. Over the past five years, he has taught nearly 50 courses to over 2,000 students across multiple programs, including undergraduate, Full-Time, Executive, and Professional MBA. Montgomery seeks to bridge the gap between theory and practice by integrating his industry experience into his operations, supply chain, project management, and lean six-sigma courses. He will be teaching two new courses in Terry’s Online MBA program.

Outside of the classroom, Montgomery provides executive education for Fortune 500 companies through UGA Terry Executive Education Programs in Atlanta. He also serves as the faculty advisor to UGA’s Association for Supply Chain Management chapter.

John Campbell, the Herbert E. Miller Chair in Financial Accounting and head of the Department of Finance, received the Distinguished Research Award. The award is presented to tenure-track faculty for research that displays a history of excellence, longevity and impact within its field.

Campbell is one of the world’s leading academic experts in the area of financial regulation and disclosure in capital markets. His research productivity has ranked near the top of accounting faculty in his field since graduating with his PhD in 2010. He currently serves on the editorial board or as an editor of three of the top six research journals in accounting, and he’s received an Outstanding Reviewer Award from two of those same journals since 2021.

Additionally, Campbell has been an outstanding mentor to doctoral students and junior colleagues in the college. He served as PhD program director in the Tull School of Accounting for eight years. He’s also co-authored elite publications with more than a half dozen doctoral students, and his research productivity has increased since becoming a department head in 2023.

Terence Saldanha, the Becky and Howard Young Distinguished Professor in the Management Information Systems Department, received the Research Excellence Award. It recognizes tenure-track faculty for superior research conducted or published in the past five years.

Saldanha’s research looks at how investments in information technology can drive innovation and improve business performance. His work has positioned him as a leading scholar at the intersection of information systems and organizational performance. Over the past five years, Saldanha has published 16 papers, including 13 that were published in top-ranked journals.

In 2023, he was awarded the prestigious Sandra Slaughter Early Career Award by the INFORMS Information Systems Society. He is a senior editor for Production and Operations Management journal, and he served as a co-chair of this year’s INFORMS Conference on Information Systems and Technology, held in Seattle.

Elena Karahanna, the C. Herman and Mary Virginia Terry Distinguished Chair of Business Administration in the Management Information Systems Department, received the Faculty Service Award.

Karahanna has served in important volunteer roles at major research conferences, including as program committee co-chair of the premier academic conference of information systems researchers in the world and twice as co-chair of the MIS Academic Leadership Conference.

As the graduate coordinator of the MIS Department’s doctoral program for more than 12 years, she has elevated it into one of the most respected and sought-after PhD programs in MIS. At the university level, Karahanna has chaired the University Special Professorship selection committee for two terms, totaling six years. She’s been key member of the college’s Graduate Programs Committee since 2014 and has chaired the college’s faculty committee on promotion and tenure three times.