From 1999 to 2005, Jean Johnson received four grants from the Institute for the Study of Business Markets (ISBM) (ONLINE @ www.smeal.psu.edu/isbm), a consortium of companies that researches business marketing questions for its members. Two of those grants were especially meaningful, since they launched the careers of two talented doctoral students.
“Those two grants were dissertation awards,” explained Johnson, professor of marketing at the College of Business. “I worked with the students to refine and develop their dissertation questions and then asked ISBM to fund them.
“These are prestigious awards from the premier granting agency in this field, and critical for the students’ careers. And in both cases, we are still writing papers in the top-level journals on these topics.”
The doctoral students were Amit Saini and David Wallace.
Saini is an assistant professor of marketing at the University of Nebraska at Lincoln. Last year he received the Harold and Esther Edgeton Junior Faculty Award.
“That grant was extremely significant for me,” Saini said. “It was very important for my career and certainly helped me get my job.”
Wallace, an assistant professor of marketing at Illinois State University, agreed: “This was an award of national stature that both funded my dissertation and was very helpful to me in landing a job. It was a legitimizing signal to the academic community.”
Johnson’s grants funded by ISBM began in 1999 with her study of the impact of crisis on marketing relationships. Her second grant, in 2002, funded Saini’s dissertation on technology and her third, in 2003, funded Wallace’s dissertation on multichannel distribution. In 2005, ISBM funded her study of face-to-face relationships impacted by technology.
“These four were all competitive grants,” Johnson noted. “It is very rare for one professor to get four. I found that this builds a research reputation, a momentum, making it more likely to get another grant.”
She said her grant experience is also useful in her classes.
“I use the resources generated by the grants to research managers’ decisions on strategic marketing activities. I use the knowledge gained from these studies almost every time I stand in front of a class. It is the latest, most up-to-date information — and I believe it is key to my goal of delivering information to my students that will help them in their futures.”
