Monday Kudos: Bank Of The Ozarks Scores Top Bank Honor
by August 19, 2013 9:04 am 88 views
Banking and IT honors and a new move in state government lead Monday’s movers and shakers.
TOP BANK HONOR
Bank of the Ozarks has been named as the top performing bank in the nation by Bank Director magazine in the $1 billion and $5 billion asset category in Bank Director’s 2013 Bank Performance Scorecard Highlighting America’s Best Banks.
Bank Director’s annual bank performance scorecard includes five key metrics related to profitability, capital strength, and asset quality. The scorecard ranks publicly owned U.S. banks and thrifts. There are 289 institutions in this year’s ranking, divided into three separate asset categories.
The ABA Banking Journal named Bank of the Ozarks as the top performing bank in its asset size category in both 2011 and 2012. Bank Director is the premiere magazine written for senior officers and directors of financial institutions.
UA PROFESSOR WINS BIG DATA AWARD
David E. Douglas, a university professor of information systems in the Sam M. Walton College of Business at the University of Arkansas, is one of 14 professors worldwide to be recognized with a 2013 Big Data and Analytics Faculty Award from IBM.
The 14 professors singled out for the award will each receive $10,000 for top-rated curricula designed to develop the business and technical skills required for data-crunching jobs. The winning proposals include programs focused on computer science/electrical engineering, business administration, economics, strategic management and math and statistics.
Douglas received the award for continuing to develop business analytics course modules designed for teaching customer insights and discovery using a number of datasets hosted by the University of Arkansas, including demographic data provided by major corporations with a focus on data mining and visualization of big data — the 2.5 quintillion bytes of information generated daily from such sources as sensors, RFID networks, mobile devices and social media.
IBM is collaborating with more than 1,000 academic partners to develop curricula that reflect the mix of technical and problem-solving skills that is necessary to prepare students for big data and analytics careers, across all industries.
FRIEDMAN MOVES TO EDUCATION DEPARTMENT
Kimberly Friedman has joined the Arkansas Department of Education as its new Director of Communications. Friedman has worked for the previous 12 years as Communications Director for the Department of Workforce Services.
Friedman received a B.A. from the University of Central Arkansas in 1997 with a major in journalism and minor in history. She worked for local newspaper organizations including the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette, the Pine Bluff Commercial, and The Echo.
She assumes her new position Monday, August 19.