Indiana University East’s School of Business and Economics Business Speaker Series will begin at 11 a.m. on Wednesday, October 20, in Vivian Auditorium. The presentation is free and open to the public.

The Business Speaker Series is sponsored by the Charles Koch Foundation. Co-sponsored by Delta Mu Delta, IU East Center for Economic Education, and the IU East Business and Economic Research Center.

Sean Mulholland

The first speaker this fall is Sean Mulholland, professor of economics at Western Carolina University in Cullowhee, North Carolina.

Mulholland’s presentation is “Test-Optional Admissions and Student Debt.”

Applicants who forgo submitting standardized test scores signal that they have fewer enrollment options. Facing fewer competitors, test-optional schools can charge more. They find that private school graduates admitted under a test-optional policy borrow $1,410 (2016) more than those required to submit their scores. This amount represents about 5 percent of the average debt of bachelor’s degree holders.

As the number of test-optional schools have increased, each successive post-switching graduating class borrows less. They also show that the share of graduates with debt drops after the switch to test-optional admissions but rises as the number of test-optional competitors increases.

Mulholland has published research articles on a wide variety of topics, including human capital and economic growth, white supremacist groups and hate crimes, school competition and student performance, and Uber and drunk driving. His research has appeared in many journals, including the Journal of Economic Growth, Public Choice, Economics Letters, and Economics of Education Review. His co-authored paper, “Ride-Sharing, Fatal Crashes, and Crime” was awarded the Georgescu-Roegen Prize for the best academic article published in the Southern Economic Journal in 2018. His work has been covered by Ballotpedia, Politifact, National Review, and Tyler Cowen on marginalrevolution.com.

He was awarded the 2018-2019 College of Business Faculty Excellence Award, the 2017-2018 Honors College Board of Directors Faculty Excellence Award, and the 2017-2018 College of Business Excellence in Research Award. He has held faculty positions at Boston College, Stonehill College, and Mercer University. Mulholland has guided more than a dozen undergraduate research projects. He has served as a faculty mentor at seminars sponsored by the Institute for Humane Studies (IHS) and the Foundation for Economic Education (FEE) and led discussions at the Center for Excellence in Education’s Research Science Institute at MIT.

Born and raised in Anderson, South Carolina, Mulholland earned his M.A. and Ph.D. from Clemson University. He lives in Franklin, North Carolina with his wife, Western Carolina University economist Angela K. Dills, and their three children.

The Business Speaker Series will present its second speaker, Percy Menzies, president of assisted Recovery Centers of America, at 10:15 a.m. on Wednesday, November 10, in Vivian Auditorium. This lecture is co-sponsored with the IU East School of Nursing and Health Sciences.

Menzies will present “Treating the Addicted Brain:  Advances in the Treatment of Addictive Disorders.”

Percy Menzies

The treatment of addictive disorders, especially alcoholism and opioid addiction has a dark history of using medications, devices and surgeries that did more harm than good. This was primarily due to the lack of understanding of the neurobiology of addiction and failure to understand the reciprocity of using addicting drugs as cures. The result of this dark history is a mistrust of science and medicine and the dominance of self-help groups in the treatment of addictive disorders.

The advances in the understanding of neurobiology and behavioral sciences have led to the development of newer medications and therapies which will bring treatment in line with other chronic conditions like diabetes and hypertension.

The Assisted Recovery Centers of America, LLC, is a center for the treatment of alcoholism and drug addiction based in St. Louis, Missouri which was established in 2001.

Menzies’ interest and passion for pharmacological treatment of drug addiction and alcoholism goes back to the early eighties when naltrexone was first introduced for the treatment of heroin addiction. He worked for over 18 years for DuPont Pharmaceuticals in various positions and had responsibility for naltrexone as the associate product director.

Menzies has worked closely with drugs courts and provided training on the use of anticraving medications to reduce recidivism within the criminal justice population addicted to alcohol and opioids. He has conducted workshops for a wide range of audiences both in the U.S. and overseas on evidenced-based treatments for addictive disorders.

He has been invited to serve on expert committees to develop guidelines for the treatment of addictive disorders and alcoholism. He has been invited to serve on advisory boards both in the private and government sectors.

Menzies holds a master’s degree in pharmacy from India. Menzies immigrated to the United States in 1977.