New College of Business Faculty

The College of Business welcomed three new faculty this fall.

M. Imtiaz Mazumder

Mazumder has taught at the Shahjalal University of Science and Technology, Auckland University of Technology, and State University of New York in Utica/Rome before joining St. Ambrose University. Mazumder has teaching interests in investment and portfolio analysis, corporate finance, and financial institutions and markets.

Mazumder presented numerous papers at internationally recognized conferences such as the Financial Management Association (FMA, including its top 10% paper session in 2006); Southern Finance Association (SFA); Mid-West Finance Association (MFA); Eastern Finance Association (EFA); South-Western Finance Association (SWFA); and in regional conferences such as Northern Finance Association, Australian Banking and Finance Conference, New Zealand Finance Colloquium, Asian FMA, etc. He also presented papers at Berry College, Missouri Western State University, Utah Valley University, Ohio Northern University, University of Alaska at Anchorage, Weber State University, University of Wisconsin at Whitewater, and University of the Pacific. Mazumder served as a chair/discussant/member of the program committee for the EFA, MFA, FMA, SFA, and SWFA conferences.

His research interests are in portfolio management, market anomalies, and international finance. His research articles were published in many referred journals including the Journal of Business Finance & Accounting, Financial Services Review, Managerial Finance, Studies in Economics and Finance, International Review of Financial Analysis, Journal of Financial Regulation and Compliance, among others.

M. Imtiaz Mazumder received his bachelor's (1993) and master's (1995) degrees in Economics from the University of Dhaka, Bangladesh, and his PhD (2004) in Financial Economics from the University of New Orleans.

Marianne Leonardi

Marianne Leonardi's research interests involve understanding how people articulate and communicate identities across cultures via social media. Specifically, she investigates how people negotiate personal, social, and work identities across cultures. For Leonardi, communication is all about social interactions and the meanings created through those interactions. She believes communication allows us to understand and participate in the world, and ideally, leads to social justice.

Prior to teaching at St. Ambrose, Leonardi served as a visiting professor at Portland State University in Oregon. At St. Ambrose, Leonardi teaches courses primarily in Principles of Public Speaking, Survey of Human Communication, and Communication and Technology.

Leonardi holds a doctorate in communication from the University of New Mexico, where she earned the 2009 Everett Rogers Doctoral Research Scholar Award from the Department of Communication and Journalism. She holds a master's degree in international/intercultural communication from the University of Denver.

Jim Bang

Jim Bang's research interests include immigration, institutional economics, economic growth, discrimination, and armed conflict. He is currently engaged in research projects linking the quality and stability of a country's financial and political institutions with the rate of emigration of skilled labor as well as linking security, conflict, and state failure with the rate of economic growth within a country.

In addition to basic courses in economic theory, Bang's teaching interests include the topics of Globalization, International Economics, Development Economics, and Institutional Economics.

Bang earned his bachelor's degree from Truman State University in Kirksville, Mo. He also earned an MS degree from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign.