Lanzhou, China, native Dr. Xiaoni Zhang spent time in South Dakota, Missouri and Texas before she found her true calling and home away from home at Northern Kentucky University (NKU).
“After I got a college degree back home, I worked at a research institute for seven years,” she said. “It was an adjustment to come to America. I was an ordinary Chinese student who came here to apply to schools. It was hard when I started.”
In fact, Dr. Zhang did not have her sights set on a specific career until she was a Ph.D. in management information systems student at the University of North Texas (UNT). She majored in science and minored in economics during her undergraduate work.
“I started doing research in publishing and teaching while I was in the Ph.D. program,” she said. “I loved the occupation and thought that it would be the best one I could have.”
Bingo.
Dr. Zhang landed an assistant professor position at NKU in 2001, the same year she graduated from UNT. She became a professor 12 years later, an interim chair between 2018 and 2019, and director of the Master of Science in Business Informatics program in January 2021. She also teaches in the online Master of Business Administration (MBA) program.
“Before I started my Ph.D., I didn’t know what I wanted to do,” she said. “I thought I might go to work for a corporation and find a job there, but I didn’t. I love NKU. When I teach my students, I am transferring my knowledge and experience to them — especially the MBA students.”
Dr. Zhang has taught students at the undergraduate, graduate and doctoral levels. Her research topics include text mining, business intelligence, consumer health informatics and virtual community.
“Most of the MBA students have job experience,” she said. “We have different discussion topics asking them to expound. They all come from different walks of life, and my background is different from theirs. Some of them share their knowledge about their occupation and jobs to add to the discussion topics.”
Bluegrass State of Mind
Dr. Zhang has been teaching online courses for 10 years, but she had never taught in the accelerated five-week format until the 2019-20 year.
“In my past experience, I had never seen the intensity like that session,” she said. “Most of my classes were traditional 16- or 17-week sessions. The quality of the students and how committed they are to the degree program was impressive. They were devoted 100% of the time.
“Graduate students — especially MBA students — want to elaborate more and cover broader areas than the undergraduate students with the discussion topics. They want to get to the deep part of the topic and still have balance.”
During her tenure, Dr. Zhang has seen NKU embrace online education and grow immensely to make its business programs available in the format. She said that the MBA and Master of Science in Nursing (MSN) programs have the highest enrollments at the university.
“I like engaging with the online students,” she said. “I have office hours every week. Originally, my first office hours were about an hour. I only had 13 students, so I thought an hour was enough.
“I had to change to an hour-and-a-half because one hour wasn’t enough. Every week, there are four or five students who want to talk to me and ask questions. They are really serious. One student told me that she lives in the Louisville area and that online makes education possible for her.”
Uncommon Wealth
Dr. Zhang has taught courses in research methods in healthcare, health informatics, web development, data warehouse, database, data mining, text mining and data analytics over the course of her career. She especially enjoys hearing the success stories of those she has taught.
“I heard from a student who works for the Kentucky government,” she said. “He emailed me right after he finished my class and said that the class made him seek additional career opportunities. He saw an opportunity related to analytics and that he was going to apply for it.”
Dr. Zhang, who enjoys doing yoga in her free time, won the Outstanding Scholarship Award for the College of Business (2004) and the Sustained Excellence in Scholarly Activities Award (2010). Numerous journals have also published her work. In 2016, Taylor & Francis Group recognized Dr. Zhang for excellence in generating top citations during 2015 for the Journal of Marketing Theory and Practice.
Most of her family still lives in China, where she last visited two years ago. Whether she is in her native place or her home away from home, she loves talking about the joy she receives from her profession.
“I like to transfer my knowledge and get to know my students and learn from them,” she said. “My students and colleagues are great. I plan to keep on teaching.”
That’s great news for NKU.
Learn more about Northern Kentucky University’s online MBA program.
