ROCK HILL, SOUTH CAROLINA – Winthrop University will recognize the achievements of two business faculty members and a history professor during upcoming Commencement ceremonies in May at the Winthrop Coliseum.
During the 10 a.m. May 6 Undergraduate Commencement ceremony, which recognizes visual and performing arts plus arts and sciences graduates, President Edward Serna ‘02 will recognize Assistant Professor of History O. Jennifer Dixon-McKnight with the Outstanding Junior Professor Award, which is presented to a faculty member with a rank of assistant professor. Later that day, at 3 p.m. during a ceremony to recognize business and education graduates, Serna will acknowledge Marketing Professor Jane Thomas as the recipient of the Distinguished Professor Award, the highest recognition for faculty members. Thomas will be unable to attend the ceremony as she will be out of the country.
A third faculty award – the Jane LaRoche Graduate Faculty Award – will be given to Tracy Griggs, an associate professor in the Department of Management and Marketing in the College of Business Administration, at the Graduate Commencement ceremony on May 4.
Read more about the honorees:
Jane Thomas - Distinguished Professor
A marketing professor, Thomas is a highly productive scholar who is known for her
student projects with businesses, for-profit and not-for-profit organizations, totaling
more than 100 since 2003. She also is widely quoted on consumer behavior, particularly
her research with a colleague on Black Friday shoppers, completed before and then
updated after the pandemic.
Thomas joined the Winthrop faculty in 1986 as a one-year contract instructor and ended up staying to teach. She became an assistant professor of marketing in 1990 in the Department of Management and Marketing, was promoted to associate professor in 1995 and to professor in 2004.
Her department chair noted her willingness to embrace long distance and online learning, as well as her successful interaction with Winthrop’s French partner school in Montpellier and with Chinese exchange students from Liuzhou.
Each semester, Thomas’ graduate and undergraduate marketing classes partner with the business community and local organizations to help with student learning and to use new techniques to come up with marketing plans.
In addition to her scholarly and university work, Thomas has worked with Charlotte organizations such as Dress for Success and the Look at Her Power annual luncheon, both of which raised much needed dollars for charities.
More recently, Thomas served as a board member for Sutisana, a freedom enterprise business in Bolivia that gives jobs to women fleeing sex trafficking. She has traveled to Bolivia to meet the women to gain a better understanding of their plight.
Her students have developed recommendations for new products, and she will lead a team to the South American country in May to conduct consumer research and to assist in hosting a retreat for artisans.
Thomas has received other Winthrop faculty awards such as the Jane LaRoche Graduate Faculty Award in 2013 and the Kinard Teaching Award in 2008, as well as the business college’s William H. Grier Endowed Professorship in 2006.
She holds a Ph.D. in apparel marketing from the University of North Carolina at Greensboro, a master’s degree in clothing and textiles from the University of Georgia, and a bachelor’s degree in clothing and textiles from Meredith College.
O. Jennifer Dixon-McKnight - Outstanding Junior Professor
Dixon-McKnight started work at Winthrop in 2018 and has proven to be a remarkable
teacher, scholar and mentor to students.
An assistant professor in the Department of History, Dixon-McKnight has taken over as program director for the university’s African American Studies Minor program. She spearheaded a successful celebration this spring of the program’s 30th anniversary and one of its founders, the late Dorothy Perry Thompson of the Department of English.
During the pandemic, Dixon-McKnight launched Project 2020, which consisted of student-led oral history projects aimed at documenting local responses to COVID-19. She recognized it was an important moment that needed to be captured to show Winthrop’s and the community’s response to the issues surrounding the pandemic. The oral histories will be available for the public in the Louise Pettus Archives & Special Collections.
Dixon-McKnight is known for identifying gaps in curriculum and creating courses to fill the gap, such as the “Black Women in America” course. She also has worked with students to relaunch the Association of Ebonites chapter at Winthrop and to re-engage the society’s original founders. And she brings speakers to campus to give insight to present day issues.
Her scholarly research focuses on the 1969 Charleston hospital strike, one of the last campaigns of the civil rights movement in South Carolina, and she has secured a book contract. She also lends her expertise to address today’s social justice challenges, such as the Harvey B. Gantt Unmasked series.
She holds a Ph.D. in history from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, a master’s degree and bachelor’s degree in history, both from N.C. Central University, and a bachelor’s degree in African and Afro-American Studies from UNC Chapel Hill. She also has taught at Tidewater Community College in Virginia and at Old Dominion University.
Tracy Griggs - Jane LaRoche Graduate Faculty Award
An associate professor with the Department of Management and Marketing, Griggs possesses
talents that are multi-faceted in teaching, scholarly activity, university and community
service. She has devoted her time to enhancing the M.B.A. curriculum through course
development, innovations and service learning activities.
She first joined the Winthrop faculty from 2008-2011 as an assistant professor in the Department of Psychology. She left and returned to the university in 2015 to the business college, receiving a promotion in 2020 to associate professor. Griggs also has taught at the University of North Carolina Asheville and has worked as an independent human resource management consultant.
At Winthrop, Griggs teaches courses in the areas of human resource management, organizational behavior and organizational change. Her research, which has appeared in highly visible journals, focuses on employee health and wellbeing, career development and leadership development. Some of her findings address issues that impact low-income workers, often regarding areas where there has been little research.
She is active on the university’s Graduate Council, having served as its chair twice. She also has served on the team to develop Winthrop’s Quality Enhancement Plan, a requirement for the university’s accreditation reaffirmation by SACSCOC, chaired a task force on employee satisfaction, and helped develop recommendations with committees for faculty and staff recruitment and retention and strategic planning.
In this era of online learning, Griggs has been effective in teaching in-person, hybrid and online classes. Knowing that graduate students learn best through applying knowledge and hands-on experience, her classes are a mix of case studies, self-assessments, workplace projects and service learning. Over the years, her classes have helped nearly 35 businesses, local organizations and campus groups.
Griggs also has involved more than 30 students in her research or supervised their independent studies, resulting in presentations at regional or national conferences.
Griggs holds Ph.D. and master’s degrees, both in industrial-organizational psychology, from the University of Georgia, and a bachelor’s degree in psychology and a minor in statistics from James Madison University.
For more information, contact Judy Longshaw, news and media services manager, at longshawj@winthrop.edu.
