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K-State Today

January 20, 2017

Students and faculty from hospitality management department present at graduate student conference

Submitted by Anne Rubash

K-State Department of Hospitality faculty and graduate students at the conference.

Ten doctoral students and three graduate faculty members from K-State's hospitality management department attended the 22nd Graduate Education and Graduate Student Research Conference in Hospitality and Tourism Jan. 4-7 in Houston, Texas.

Graduate student attendees and presenters included Michelle Alcorn, Basem Boutros, Hyeong Jin Jeon, Juhyun Kang, Woohyuk Kim, Xiaoye Li, Hyung Hwa Oh, Eunhye Park, Chen-Wei Tao and Wenhao Zhang. Hospitality management faculty attendees included Jichul Jang, assistant professor; Junehee Kwon, associate professor and director of the graduate program; and Kristin Malek, assistant professor. 

Between students and faculty, there were nine standup presentations and three poster presentations. Out of 143 total standup presentations at the conference, eight were selected as best paper finalists and two of these finalists were papers authors by K-State students and faculty. One of the paper finalists, "Exploring consumer perceptions of green restaurants using structural topic models on consumer reviews," was authored by Park, Kwon and Bongsug Chae, professor of management at K-State's College of Business Administration. Finalists and winners of the Journal of Hospitality and Tourism Technology best paper award were Kim and Chae with their paper, "Understanding the relationship among social media use, resource capacity, and firm performance: the case of Twitter use by hotels."

At the conference, Malek presented a TED-style talk titled "Learning from emerging global hospitality educators." Kwon was recognized as a paper review chair for the restaurant management and food service track. She also earned her certification in hotel industry analytics, which is offered by the American Hotel and Lodging Educational Institute, and STR, formerly known as Smith Travel Research.