Extending Knowledge
Bauer Associate Dean for Research Spends Month in Indonesia as Part of Fulbright Specialist Program
Published on April 4, 2023
Associate Dean for Research and Marketing Professor Vanessa Patrick of Bauer College recently served as a Fulbright Specialist at a university in Indonesia, conducting a month-long project at the School of Business and Management at the Institute of Technology (SBM-ITB) in Bandung.
The Fulbright Specialist program is run by the U.S. Department of State and selects individuals to establish educational partnerships around the world and extend knowledge in a variety of disciplines.
Patrick is a consumer psychologist with expertise in self-regulation, personal leadership, everyday consumer aesthetics and inclusive design. She is the author of “The Power of Saying No: The New Science of How to Say No that Puts you in Charge of your Life.”
While in Indonesia, Patrick delivered a public lecture about the importance of leaders identifying and acting from their values and priorities, offering evidence-based tools and techniques for navigating personal and professional lives with more authority and authenticity. She draws from extensive research conducted over her career and as lead faculty for Bauer’s Executive Women in Leadership program.
“My Fulbright Specialist experience was immensely fulfilling on a personal and a professional level because it afforded me the opportunity to bring out the best I have to offer and share that knowledge, experience, insight and expertise with a receptive and eager audience,” Patrick said.
“My goals in applying to be a Fulbright Specialist were three-fold: To generate and disseminate knowledge via research and teaching, to gain international experience and experience cultural immersion and to attain professional and personal growth. I believe that I have successfully achieved each one of these goals. I worked with faculty and doctoral students to share the knowledge I have gained as a researcher and help them forge a pathway towards research excellence and publication in top scientific journals.”
“I also shared my knowledge by teaching a variety of topics in a number of different classes – from MBAs, to visiting summer school students from Australia, to bright and high-potential undergraduate students. I drew on my expertise in particular subject matter to make sure that each class I taught provided students with knowledge and insights that they would not typically get. From a holistic perspective.”
“On a personal level,” she added, “I gained immensely by learning about Indonesian heritage, habits, quirks and cultural nuances. I put myself ’out there’ to experience the music, the food, the natural environment, the museums, the shopping malls and learned a lot!”
Patrick’s research has been published in top-tier academic journals in psychology, marketing, and management, and popular accounts of her work have appeared in The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, NPR, Los Angeles Times, BusinessWeek, Fast Company, Forbes, The Huffington Post and The Washington Post.
She serves on editorial review boards for the Journal of Consumer Research, the Journal of Marketing Research and the Journal of Marketing and is an Associate Editor for the Journal of Retailing and the Journal of Consumer Psychology.
Patrick and co-author Candice Hollenbeck of the University of Georgia received the 2022-2023 American Marketing Association Consumer Behavior Special Interest Group (CBSIG) annual Research in Practice Award for their paper, “Designing for All: Consumer Response to Inclusive Design,” published in the Journal of Consumer Psychology.