Faculty and Staff Directory

Dr. Vikas Agrawal

Dr. Vikas Agrawal

Professor of Business Analytics

Biography

A native of India, Agrawal came from Fayetteville State University, where he served ten years as a tenured professor in the School of Business and Economics.

“I was looking for an opportunity to utilize all of my skills and felt like JU was a great match for my applied academic interests and passion for teaching,” said Agrawal.

He received his Ph.D. from the University of Toledo in Manufacturing Management and Engineering, with a dissertation entitled, “Data Warehouse Operational Design: View Selection and Performance Simulation.” Agrawal completed a Master of Science degree in Industrial Engineering from Toledo, following his completion of his MBA in Marketing and Finance and Bachelor of Engineering in Mechanical Engineering in India. His specialty lies in the area of employing optimization techniques to solve business problems, developing agent based simulation models and working with predictive models using advances statistics.

Agrawal also holds certifications in Certified Project Management Professional by PMI and Certified Supply Chain Professional by APICS. In addition, Agrawal is knowledgeable in many programming languages and simulation software, including but not limited to, Java, SQL (Oracle 9i, SQL Server, MySQL, MS Access) PL/SQL, T-SQL, VBA (Excel, Access), VB.Net, C Sharp, ASP.Net, JSP, Lingo, NetLogo (Agent based simulation), Arena simulation package and SPSS.

“So far I have met students here with a serious dedication and vigor to learn,” commented Agrawal. “It is great to experience the moment when the student truly understands the material.”

Agrawal is looking forward to teaching courses in the new Doctor of Business Administration and working on applied research with the doctoral candidates and serving on dissertation committees. Agrawal resides in Jacksonville with his wife Pragya and his two children Aryan and Ananya.

Education & Professional Qualifications

  • Ph.D. Manufacturing Management and Engineering, University of Toledo
  • Dissertation: "Data Warehouse Operational Design: View Selection and Performance Simulation"
  • MS Industrial Engineering, University of Toledo
  • MBA Marketing & Finance, Nagpur University, India
  • BE Mechanical Engineering, Regional College of Engineering, India
  • PMP- Certified Project Management Professional by PMI
  • CSCP- Certified Supply Chain Professional by APICS

Academic Experience

  • Associate Professor of Business Analytics, Jacksonville University, 2014-Present
  • Associate Professor of Management, Fayetteville State University, NC, 2011-2014
  • Assistant Professor of Management, Fayetteville State University, NC, 2005-2011
  • Instructor of Management, Fayetteville State University, NC, 2004-2005

Recent Research

Agrawal, V., Hartman, L., Rasberry, C., & Arbogast, G. (2018). The impact of gender and profit margin on the duration of hiring process for professional service firms. Evidence-based HRM: a global forum for empirical scholarship. (Accepted – in print)

Thatte, A., & Agrawal V. (2017). Exploring supply chain responsiveness effects on competitive advantage of a firm. Quarterly Review of Business Discipline, 4(3), 211-228.

Agrawal, V., Diamond, M. & Thatte, A. (2017). WAR: A predictor of MLB team’s salary and success. International Journal of Interdisciplinary Research, 6(2), 31-40.

Agrawal, V., Lightner, C., Lightner-Laws, C., & Wagner, N. (2017). A bi-criteria evolutionary algorithm for a constrained multi-depot vehicle routing problem. Soft Computing, 21(17), 5159-5178.

Lightner-Laws, C., Agrawal, V., Lightner, C., & Wagner, N. (2016). An evolutionary algorithm approach for the constrained multi-depot vehicle routing problem. International Journal of Intelligent Computing and Cybernetics, 9(1), 2-22. (Won best paper of the year award).

Agrawal, V., Bynum, K., Jinkner, J., & Lombardo, F. (2016). Mitigating Risk from Railcar Bearing Failure: A Predictive Model for Identifying Failures. The Business Review Cambridge, 24(2), 97-103.

Simak, J., Kelley, S., & Agrawal, V. (2016). Entrepreneurship, Innovation and Organic Growth within Vertical Software Firms. The Business Review Cambridge, 24(2), 81-88.

Cebula, R. J., Agrawal, V., Boylan, R., & Horner, D. (2015). The impact of the net percentage growth rate in the number of small firms on differential state-level employment growth rates in the US: an exploratory empirical note. Applied Economics Letters, 23(3), 167-170.