Warrington PhD students honored with teaching awards
Ph.D. students Daniel Dong-Wook Kim (Ph.D. ‘25), Soo Yon Ryu (Ph.D. ‘25) and Xinyu Zang (Ph.D. ‘24) were awarded Warrington College of Business Ph.D. Teaching Awards for their exemplary teaching contributions across the fall 2022 and spring 2023 semesters.
The award is presented by the Teaching & Learning Center at UF Warrington to recognize outstanding graduate student teaching and instructional innovation. The recipient for each semester is selected by the Warrington Teaching Committee.
Kim is a Ph.D. student at UF Warrington, where he studies business administration. His research interests include leader experiences in the workplace, harmful workplace behaviors, interpersonal relationships at work and actor-centric research. Kim also received his bachelor’s in psychology from the College of William and Mary, where he graduated with honors in 2017.
Kim was very excited when he heard the news that he was awarded the Warrington Ph.D. Teaching Award.
“It feels great to see the hard work paying off, and I am grateful for the award,” he said. “Hopefully the students enjoyed and benefited from this course as much as I did. I would like to note my gratitude for all the guidance and support I received from my advisor, Klodiana Lanaj, as well as my fellow PhD students!”
Kim taught Organizations: Structures and Behavior in the fall of 2022. The course covered topics such as leadership, stress and well-being and team culture. This course was designed to provide students with an overview of important workplace factors that contribute to organizational performance and commitment. It also served to prepare students for the workplace and provide insight into becoming more effective leaders and followers at work.
Ryu is a Ph.D. student at UF Warrington where she currently studies marketing. Prior to joining academia, she founded and owned two small businesses in the fashion and arts industries. Her involvement in these fields led her to develop a curiosity for why consumers behave the way they do. Drawing together her academic interests and hands-on experiences, she joined the marketing department at UF in pursuit of exploring consumer behavior research. Currently, her projects circle three main topics of interest – visual and aesthetics, ethical consumption and inference making.
In collaboration with faculty and colleagues at UF, her recent work includes investigating the impact of visual simplicity and complexity on product attribute inferences and developing the Hypocritical Consumption Scale. When she is not working on research, she likes to scuba dive in the beautiful waters of Florida, practice and teach yoga and create artwork. She received her bachelor’s in business administration and bachelor’s in culture and design management from Yonsei University, and her master’s in art management from Seoul National University.
“Receiving this recognition fills me with a profound sense of gratitude,” said Ryu. “It’s incredibly rewarding to see the impact of my efforts in the classroom being acknowledged in this way. However, any achievement I had in the classroom was most certainly a group effort. I would like to thank my department chair, Richard Lutz, and my advisors, Aner Sela and Chris Janiszewski, for their unwavering support and motivation throughout this journey. Additionally, I’d like to acknowledge the commitment and engagement of the Teaching & Learning Center in nurturing Ph.D. student instructors. Lastly, my heartfelt thanks goes out to the diligent, dedicated and bright students I had the privilege of educating. Teaching has always been a passion of mine, and this award reaffirms my commitment to providing the best possible education and support to my students.”
Ryu taught Marketing Management in the spring of 2023. With a strong emphasis on research, teamwork and inclusiveness, the course entails analyzing real-life marketing issues, formulating problem-solving tactics, articulating these proposed remedies and evaluating solutions put forth by fellow students.
“Marketing Management is the capstone course to students majoring in marketing at the University of Florida,” said Ryu. “Tailored for students entering marketing careers, this class delves into practical marketing challenges, fostering the essential abilities needed for triumph as a marketing manager.”
Zang is a Ph.D. student from the Department of Information Systems and Operations Management at UF Warrington. His research interests include online platforms and the economics of artificial intelligence and blockchain. Zang graduated from the University of Minnesota Twin Cities with a bachelor’s in statistics and a bachelor’s in economics. He then received his master’s in statistics from Columbia University before embracing the Sunshine State.
“I am truly honored and humbled to have received this award,” said Zang. “It’s a rewarding feeling to know that my dedication to teaching and my commitment to my students have been recognized. I owe a great deal of gratitude to my advisors, Dr. Kenny Cheng and Dr. Liangfei Qiu, for sharing their teaching knowledge and expertise with me and who are recipients of numerous teaching awards themselves. Lastly, I would be remiss not to mention the invaluable Ph.D. teaching seminar offered by Professor Richard Lutz, which significantly shaped my approach to teaching.”
Zang taught Business Systems 1, which introduced the basic tools for building business systems using object-oriented and event-driven programming paradigms and aimed to provide fundamental knowledge of programming with Java.
“The top priority of this course is to learn how to think like a programmer and start to use programming to solve real problems, “ said Zang. “It is a core course for information systems majors and probably the first programming course for many of the students. To promote interaction and ground technical material in real-world examples and practical skills, I designed my course as a combination of lectures and labs instead of lecturing for a two-hour session.”
