The Lincoln Memorial University (LMU) College of Business recently hosted the 2026 Advances in Business Education (ABE) Conference. The event brought together educators, researchers, and business professionals for two days focused on innovation, collaboration, and teaching excellence in business education.
Award winners for outstanding presentations included:
• Dr. Jenae Matikke — Organizational Culture’s Relationship to Small Business Employees’ Attitudes Toward Artificial Intelligence (Business Research Track)
• Dr. Adam Brambley — Decentralized Cognition: A Framework for Enhancing Collective Sensemaking with BFCL (Student Track)
• Dr. Melinda Turner — Retrieval-Rich Course Design: Applying Learning Science to Improve Durable Understanding in Business Education (Pedagogy and Teaching Excellence Track)
• Dr. Bob Thomas — The Changing Face of Accounting (Regional and Community Development Track)
“Thank you to everyone who contributed to making this year’s ABE Conference such a tremendous success,” said LMU School of Business Dean Kelsey Metz. “We are excited to see this conference continue to grow and strengthen in the years ahead.”
The conference featured keynote speaker Dr. Allen Gorman, associate professor of management and chair of the Department of Management, Information Systems, and Quantitative Methods in the Collat School of Business at the University of Alabama at Birmingham, where he teaches human resource management and leadership. Gorman shared insights on innovation and excellence in higher education.
Conference attendees were also invited to the Abraham Lincoln Library and Museum (ALLM) for a guided tour led by the museum director Dr. Michael Lynch. The ALLM is one of the largest private collections of Lincoln and Civil War artifacts in the country, where visitors can also learn the story of LMU.
The ABE Conference sponsors included Bodyswaps, Peregrine, Cengage, McGraw Hill, Pearson, Ball Realty, and title sponsor TEC-USA.
Lincoln Memorial University is a values-based learning community dedicated to providing educational experiences in liberal arts and professional studies. The main campus is in Harrogate, Tennessee. For more information about the undergraduate and graduate programs available at LMU, contact the Office of Admissions at 423-869-6280 or email at admissions@LMUnet.edu.
