College of Business and Economics welcomes new faculty

Business students will see some new faces in the classroom and around campus this fall. During the summer, the College of Business and Economics was excited to welcome six new faculty members to its various academic units. See below for a brief biography on our new College of Business and Economics faculty.

Tirtha Dhar, Associate Professor
Department of Marketing and Consumer Studies

Prior to joining the University of Guelph, Tirtha Dhar worked as an assistant professor (marketing) at the Faculty of Business and Information Technology, University of Ontario Institute of Technology and at Sauder School of Business, University of British Columbia. Dhar is a marketing modeler with interest in both empirical and theoretical modelling with big data. He has worked extensively in food, movie and internet marketing.

Nikola Gradojevic, Associate Professor
Department of Economics and Finance

Gradojevic has worked at the University of British Columbia, Bank of Canada, Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis, IÉSEG School of Management, Lakehead University, and in the private sector as a consultant in the financial and mining industries. He is currently a Senior Fellow at the Rimini Center for Economic Analysis in Italy. Gradojevic’s research interests include empirical asset pricing, market microstructure, high-frequency finance, international finance, risk management, entropy, wavelets, artificial intelligence, technical trading, asset price volatility, bubbles and jumps.

Kalinga Jagoda, Assistant Professor
Department of Management

Kalinga Jagoda joins the College of Business and Economics with more than 12 years of industry and academic experience in the areas of management accounting, financial accounting and entrepreneurship. His main areas of scholarly interest include accountability, performance management, innovation and entrepreneurship. He serves on the boards of several national and international academic and professional bodies.

WooMi Jo, Associate Professor
School of Hospitality, Food and Tourism Management

Prior to joining the University of Guelph, WooMi Jo spent seven years at North Dakota State University in Fargo, North Dakota in the Hospitality and Tourism Management program. Her industry experience includes several years in lodging operations with exposure to all facets of the hotel industry from front desk to housekeeping and food services. Jo has researched numerous topics ranging from hotel brand and price sensitivity to food and tourism experience.

Jing Lu, Assistant Professor
Department of Management

As assistant professor in the Department of Management, Jing Lu will teach accounting courses while pursuing her research interests in financial accounting, corporate governance and sustainability. During her career in academia, Lu has been an MBA visiting fellow at the Sloan School of Management at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) and has presented papers at numerous conferences including The American Accounting Association (AAA), The Canadian Academic Accounting Association (CAAA), and The Administrative Sciences Association of Canada (ASAC).

William C. Murray, Assistant Professor
School of Hospitality, Food and Tourism Management

Murray has taught extensively in hospitality fields over the last 14 years at both Mount Saint Vincent University and New Brunswick Community College, specifically in the areas of hospitality operations and management. His experience in operations includes roles with Starwood Hotels & Resorts and Canadian Pacific Hotels & Resorts. His research interests include employee motivation, industry service and value creation, identity construction, and sense making.