Louisiana Tech University’s College of Business recently recognized two Doctor of Business Administration (DBA) candidates at the annual Doctoral Student Reception. Bao Duong was presented with the DBA Outstanding Teaching Award and Abdulah Bajaba was presented with the DBA Outstanding Research Award.

DBA Outstanding Teaching Award
The DBA teaching award is presented to the doctoral candidate with the highest average on teaching evaluations. Bao Duong is the 2021 recipient of the award.

“I am honored to earn this award. I would not have achieved this without the support and knowledge from the faculty and my fellow doctoral students,” said Duong. “I applied many techniques that were shared and demonstrated by the professors in our College of Business seminars. The teaching and research consortiums are precious opportunities to strengthen our skills, share our experience, and learn innovative and effective teaching methods and techniques.”

Duong is a fourth-year DBA student with a concentration in computer information systems. He earned an MBA with an emphasis in data analytics from Missouri State University. His research has appeared in academic journals including JSAIS, Criminal Justice Review, and IRMJ, and conference proceedings at several national and international conferences, including Americas’ Conference on Information Systems, Southern Management Association, Decision Sciences Institute, and Royal Bank International Research Seminar.

His current research interests include behavioral privacy and security, organizational resources, and research methods. Duong has five years of work experience as an associate consultant in advisory management consulting and market research.

“The DBA program and faculty at Louisiana Tech have not only trained me to become an effective scientist who is capable of leading research and making scientific contributions, but also become a teacher with the know-how to bring practical implications into classrooms,” said Duong. “More importantly, the current topics in teaching seminars create an invaluable environment for doctoral students and faculty to exchange and share knowledge and expertise in teaching effectiveness.”

DBA Outstanding Research Award
The research award is presented to the DBA student with the strongest body of work regarding published research articles and conference proceedings and/or presentations at conferences. Abdulah Bajaba is the 2021 recipient of the award. Bajaba also received the award in 2019.

“It was an honor to receive this award, especially among the high caliber of doctoral students that we have here in the College of Business,” said Bajaba. “Most importantly, this award does not only represent my achievements, but also those of everyone around me who supported me throughout my doctoral journey. I would like to thank Dr. Martin, Dr. McCumber, the faculty members, and the administrators for providing us with the resources and experience to achieve what we have achieved, which only motivates us to go even further.”

Bajaba is a fifth-year DBA student majoring in management and minoring in psychology and quantitative analysis. His primary research interests include leadership, personality and individual differences, and stress and coping in the workplace.

“I believe that every individual has the energy and capability to achieve whatever they want to achieve in their life, but they just have to release it through desire,” Bajaba explained. “Accordingly, I conduct research that explores the internal and external factors that release such hidden potential within individuals in the workplace while eliminating any hindering factors that might bury it.”

“More specifically, my research interests involve the role of leadership in the manifestation/burial of that hidden potential, the tendency of individuals to reap its benefits as predicted by their personality and individual differences, the role work demands and stressful events can play in assisting/hindering the release of such potential, and the manifested coping mechanisms as behavioral indicators of one’s current progress in utilizing that hidden potential.”

Six of his articles have been published and he has presented at numerous conferences. Most recently, he published a paper that explores the bottom-up impact of proactive individuals at work in shaping the leadership style of their leaders to be more empowering. His research found that this results in increased work engagement for the proactive individuals themselves, thereby, enhancing their tendency to engage job crafting behaviors.

He has also explored other constructs within the area of organizational behavior including adaptive personality, exploitative leadership, mindfulness, self-efficacy, adaptive performance, resilience, and organizational identification.

Bajaba graduated from Boston University in 2017 with a B.A. in psychology and minor in business administration, and he received his MBA from Louisiana Tech in 2019. He previously served as president of the College’s DBA Association.

For more information about Louisiana Tech’s Doctor of Business Administration program, click here.