1. Michelle Cowan, Gavin Fox and Keri Larson Receive Honors for Their Published Article

By Abby Harlan
March 12, 2026

Washington and Lee University business administration faculty members Michelle Cowan, Gavin Fox and Keri Larson recently received honors for an article published in the August 2025 edition of the Journal of Marketing Education.

The article, titled "Can AI Level the Playing Field? How AI-Assisted Assessment Impacts Gender Bias in Student Evaluations of Marketing Instructors," received an honorable mention citation for the journal's Outstanding Article of the Year. The recognition is awarded periodically to papers that contributed the most to marketing educational scholarship and were selected following a review and voting by the journal's editorial board members.

In the article, the W&L team identifies the role of artificial intelligence in developing efficient course plans and assessments for marketing instructors and the subsequent effects such methods have on student evaluations, which are commonly distorted by tendencies of students to judge their educators differently depending on their gender. The researchers studied these impacts through a quasi-experiment where university students were asked to observe student assignments and the provided instructor feedback under four experimental conditions. Under one condition, students were informed that the instructor personally wrote the grade and feedback, while in another, they were told that the feedback was produced by an AI tool trained by the instructor. In addition to these details, the gender of the instructor who administered the exams was also manipulated to determine if this factor influenced the students' evaluation of the educator's perceived agency and competence.

When AI tools were not implemented, the study showcased that student impressions of high competency and agency were applied to male instructors at a higher rate than that of their female counterparts. However, when these tools were utilized, the gender disparities were substantially reduced. These findings suggest that the introduction of AI within assessments of proficiency may mitigate gender bias to an extent where female educators are granted greater equality.

Cowan, assistant professor of business administration, joined the W&L faculty in 2023. She previously worked as an editor and senior writer for Mad Hat Haven digital marketing company prior to being an assistant director of first-year writing and peer mentoring at Texas Tech University. She holds a Bachelor of Arts degree in English and Spanish as well as a Master of Arts and Ph.D. in technical communication from Texas Tech University.

Fox, associate professor of business administration, has been a member of the W&L faculty since 2014. He teaches courses in marketing and served a tour in Iraq as a quartermaster first lieutenant prior to his time at W&L. Fox holds a Bachelor of Science in management science and information technology and an MBA from Virginia Tech. He also earned a Ph.D. in marketing from Florida State University.

Larson, assistant professor of business administration, has worked at W&L since 2017. She earned a Bachelor of Arts with a concentration in law, letters and society from the University of Chicago as well as a Ph.D. in management information systems from the University of Georgia. Prior to W&L, Larson worked as an assistant professor of information systems at the University of Alabama at Birmingham and Louisiana State University.