Zhengrui Jiang, associate professor of information systems, has been named the recipient of Thome Professorship in business.

Stated on the College of Business news release, Kenneth Thome, a 1969 graduate of the ISU business program, created this position to honor professors who demonstrate an understanding of and a commitment to undergraduate teaching.

Jiang is the first professor to receive this position.

According to Jiang’s professional homepage, he joined the information systems faculty at Iowa State in 2008. Before joining Iowa State, he was an assistant professor of computer information systems at the University of North Alabama for three years.

“I didn’t want to be a professor at first. My goals changed over time,” Jiang said.

Jiang had more than six years of industry experience in China and in the United States, encompassing international trade management and software development, before joining academia.

“Becoming Thome Professor has given me the ability to have more resources for training, researching, books and materials,” Jiang said. Becoming Thome Professor gives the ability to that professor to be able to do more researching, improve their teaching and getting materials needed faster.

Jiang will receive money without going through forms to receive the funding to do research. Jiang said, “I’m already Thome Professor, and I’m using the money I’m getting from being Thome Professor to buy books and equipment right now.”

Just like students, professors have goals they want to reach in their lives, too. The Thome Professorship will help Jiang achieve, or at least take steps toward achieving his goals.

“My goals for the future are to always improve at teaching, doing more research and always be able to provide help when needed,” Jiang said. The money that is provided with being Thome Professor will help with achieving some of these goals.

One of these goals that the funding will help Jiang achieve is doing more research. Jiang said the money he gets changes year to year, and currently the money that he receives will support his projects, such as public beta testing, market entry timing for new product generations, etc.

Jiang said that he will not teach any classes this summer and focus his time on doing research. Jiang doesn’t have a research assistant at this time, but he does have a graduate assistant who helps him with two undergraduate classes that he is teaching this semester.

Zhisong Pei is a graduate student who is in business administration.

“I have been helping Professor Jiang since August [2012], and I am helping him with grading homework and tests for business data networking,” Pei said. So far, Pei will only help with the classes that Jiang is teaching this semester and nothing more.

“The ceremony was supposed to be last week, and Kenneth Thome and his wife were supposed to attend, but because of the weather it is moved back to an unknown date,” Jiang said.