Emily Lammers, Author at PhD Project Stories

Unlocking

The most severely impacted patients with spinal cord injury or brain disease are said to be “locked in.” Completely paralyzed, they can neither speak nor move, not even to shake their head. PhD Project Professor Dr. Adriane Randolph uses her technology expertise to unlock them. Through trailblazing research into brain-computer interfacing, she develops systems that enable these patients to communicate with their loved ones and…

Robots & Bingo

For 15 years, Dr. Laura Trevino, an Hispanic-American charter participant in The PhD Project, has exemplified paying it forward by taking her Information Systems students back—back to elementary school settings like those they once experienced. There, Dr. Trevino’s University of Texas at El Paso (UTEP) students use fun and games to introduce children as young as pre-K…

Saturday Mornings

Angélica Gutiérrez learned from experience, at age eight, how stereotyping and prejudice can deprive ethniccminorities of educational opportunity. Her mother was summoned to the elementary school principal’s office one day to hear that her daughter had a learning disability and would be transferred to a special education program. Fortunately for Angélica, her mother instantly recognized this assessment for the…

Anything in the World

The year was 1993, and the seeds that would become The PhD Project were just taking form as a new PhD went on the job market and interviewed for a management professor position. At many of the campuses she visited, Dr. dt ogilvie looked in vain for faculty members of color in the business school. Rarely did…

Three Women at a Table

The Gothic towers and rarefied intellectual atmosphere of Northwestern University in suburban Chicago envelop many a first-time visitor in a certain kind of imposing atmosphere. “Intimidating” is how some have described it. For a visiting young woman raised in one of the rougher precincts of that town, possession of an MBA from another top university…

An Unusual Promise

It is a challenging extra-curricular assignment that the University of Tennessee hands Professor Randy Bradley on Saturday mornings each spring. He is asked to stand up and face a room full of anxious high school seniors from underrepresented minority groups, most with uncertain parents at their side. These teenagers, many of whom will be first…

The Diner Dishes

Research is the raison d’être and lifeblood of the academic firmament’s upper strata, where doctoral candidates and professors reside. Undergraduates, it has been said, absorb and process knowledge and MBA students apply it—but PhDs. create it. One important outcome of The PhD Project has been the development of a generation of minority professors contributing increasingly…

Fulbright Scholar

The trail to one of the first Fulbright Scholarships awarded to a PhD Project participant* traces back to Toronto, Canada and the 2008 meeting of the Project’s Information Systems Doctoral Students Association, and leads to a lecture hall at Germany’s famed University of Potsdam. “Renée, when are we going to write our first paper together?” Dr.…

Four Directions

Long ago, Native Americans were clever and proficient entrepreneurs. Interacting with European trappers and traders, they engaged successfully in businesses of many kinds with the new arrivals. And then everything changed. In modern America, few Native Americans—living on the reservation or in the mainstream—study business or pursue management careers. Even fewer teach business. One reason is that…

A Secret Mover of the Needle

Tenured professor Dr. Jorge Pérez didn’t fully appreciate his decision to branch into senior administration at Kennesaw State University until one morning several months into his term on the university Cabinet, reporting directly to the president. Around 11:00 that day, he proposed a major new initiative to the president. By 2 P.M. the president had…