First Semester Faculty

Leonard Branson, Ph.D, CPA and CMA, professor of accountancy and chair of the accountancy department, was a management accountant and a manager for the Holiday Inn Corporation. He received a B.A degree from St. Louis Christian College, an M.A. degree from Lincoln Christian Seminary, an M.B.A. from Illinois State University, and a Ph.D. in business administration from St. Louis University. Branson has served as an instructor of accounting, finance, and management science at McKendree College.

Ranjan Karri, Ph.D. is an Associate Professor of Management in the College of Business and Management at the University of Illinois at Springfield. Dr. Karri teaches Strategic Management and Leadership and Organization Theory.
Ranjan Karri, Associate Professor of Management, received his Ph.D. in Strategic Management from the Washington State University in 2001. Prior to joining the faculty of UIS, Dr. Karri was a faculty member at Bryant University since 2000, where he received tenure and promotion to associate professor.
His research interests are in the area of entrepreneurship, business ethics, and strategic management. Dr. Karri's research has been published in top tier journals such as Entrepreneurship Theory & Practice and Journal of Business Ethics, as well as practitioner journals such as Business Horizons, Organizational Dynamics and Journal of Academic Ethics.

Nathan Steele, Ph.D. is an Assistant Professor of Management in the College of Business and Management at the University of Illinois at Springfield. Dr. Steele teaches Power and Negotiation and Managing Organizational Behavior.
He received his Ph.D. in Social Psychology from Indiana University in 2004. At Indiana University he primarily studied negotiation and bargaining with Dr. Jerome M. Chertkoff, and completed a minor in quantitative analysis.
Following the completion of his degree, he was awarded a postdoctoral position in the David Eccles School of Business at the University of Utah as part of their Organizational Behavior group. At the Eccles school, Nathan continued a line of research begun with his dissertation on perceptions of equity or fairness in negotiation scenarios.
His other research interests include a fascination with game theory, especially concepts related to coalition games and concepts of equity and utility within games. Nathan's research primarily centers on using game theoretic paradigms to investigate organizational situations in their simplest form.
He also conducts research along the lines of group processes and has consulted for non-profit attorney's organizations on these topics including team building and intergroup dynamics. His research has been published in refereed professional journals and presented at various refereed national and international conferences.
Nathan's teaching interests include negotiation, group processes, the fundamentals of organizational behavior, and teamwork. Prior to his academic career, Nathan worked as a business analyst for Healthcare Recoveries, Inc., an insurance subrogation firm, and he completed a B.S. at Murray State University.