Brandywine: What is your background and experience?
Yang: My background is in tourism and hospitality management. As a graduate student, I gained a lot of hands-on experiences from my professors. It's really interesting because hospitality and tourism are people-oriented industries. You have to know how to keep customers happy and how to manage employees so they stay motivated.
When I went to apply for the Ph.D. program, I decided I wanted to know more about management, because I really like the idea of using psychological and sociology theories to understand how people behave and work in teams. There’s always an inner mechanism of why people are making certain decisions and why people behave in certain ways. I think it helps to provide better employee training or provide better services at that point.
Brandywine: What has been one of your most challenging experiences as a professor? How did you overcome it?
Yang: Since I’m a new professor, my teaching style is still developing. When I started here, I realized that other than teaching and the research, there is more to the role I can explore. I feel the obstacle I’m facing right now is I want to learn more about what I can contribute to the campus.
At a broader scope, maybe I could contribute more to the University or to the community. If I want to overcome that, I think it would be helpful to talk to senior faculty members and participate more in the campus activities. I think the tricky part is how to contribute more to my community because the area is still unfamiliar to me. I’m not just moving here from Ohio, but I'm also an international immigrant from China.
Brandywine: What are your research interests?
Yang: My research interests can be categorized into two areas. The first one is CEO turnovers and CEO career opportunities. I was conducting studies about what conditions cause CEO turnover and what their career concerns are about. In my study, I was looking at what causes lead to board pressure on the CEO, and those pressures from the board, and the over-intervention from the board may cause voluntary CEO turnover.
Another research interest of mine is international business. I was interested in how history, like colonial history, affects indigenous business practitioners’ perceptions towards foreign direct investors, through their collective memory toward colonial history. So how would that affect their possibilities of collaborating with foreign investors, especially in the resource extraction sectors?
I want to keep exploring my research interest in those two big areas. Right now, I'm looking at systematic errors in the board decisions of assessing CEO's performance. I'm investigating conditions where the board members would systematically yield biased perceptions about the CEO's performance.
Brandywine: What made you interested in pursuing a degree and a career in business/tourism management?
Yang: I’ve always been passionate about contributing to society and making positive changes in the world. I know it's a big ambition, but I hope that with my contributions, I can make a change in my community, or in society at a bigger scope. I want to help make these changes by being an educator and teaching the next generation. I’ve always wanted to be an educator. I'm really happy that I'm where I am right now. I’m able to help to my students learn more and help them excel in whatever they're passionate about.