New Faculty Join Smeal

In July 2006, Dean James Thomas joined the Smeal College of Business. Thomas was dean of the College of Information Sciences and Technology at Penn State since its inception in 1999. He is a specialist in strategic management, organizational decision-making, and information technology. Previously, Thomas served on Smeal's faculty for twelve years, culminating in appointments as senior associate dean and professor of management and organization. He is the author/co-author of more than 100 articles, book chapters, reviews and numerous presentations on information sciences education before scholarly, industry, and government groups including the U.S. Congress.

Along with the new leadership of Thomas, these are some of the faculty members who have recently joined our community:

Brent Ambrose, Jeffrey L. and Cindy M. King Fellow in Business and Professor of Real Estate. He has served as a fellow for the Real Estate Research Institute, a non-profit organization created to stimulate high-quality research on real estate investment performance.
Jean Helwege, Associate Professor of Finance. Helwege served as a senior economist for the Federal Reserve Bank of New York and as an economist for the Federal Reserve Board.
Michelle Liu, Assistant Professor of Accounting. She was an auditor for the Private Equities and Leverage Buyout Group at the World Financial Center in New York.
Qiong Wang, Assistant Professor of Marketing, Marketing Department. Wang received a Ph.D. in Marketing from the University of Florida and has research interests in inter-organizational relationships, business-to-business marketing, and experimental economics.
Xiaotong (Vivian) Wang, Assistant Professor of Finance. She received her Ph.D. in Financial Economics from Yale University and received the Yale Fellowship from the School of Management.

Additional faculty members that have also joined Smeal are:

Matti Aistrich, Clinical Assistant Professor of Marketing
David Cantor, Visiting Assistant Professor of Supply Chain & Information Systems
David Cather, Clinical Associate Professor of Insurance
Robert Macy, Clinical Assistant Professor of Entrepreneurship
Carl Ullrich, Visiting Assistant Professor of Finance
Donghong Zhang, Visiting Assistant Professor of Finance

Smeal's faculty leaders are ranked among the top-twenty business schools in the world for research excellence according to the UTD Research Contribution Database. In the past two years alone, the college has welcomed more than a dozen new faculty members from across the academic spectrum.

For more on the Center for Supply Chain Research, visit www.smeal.psu.edu/cscr.

REPORTERS & EDITORS: For more information, please contact Victoria Fryer in the Smeal College of Business Media Relations Office at 814-863-3798 or mediarelations@smeal.psu.edu.

Penn State's Smeal College of Business offers highly ranked undergraduate, MBA, executive MBA, Ph.D., and executive education opportunities to more than 5,500 students at all levels. Featuring academic departments of accounting, finance, management and organization, marketing, risk management, and supply chain and information systems, the college is also home to major research centers such as the Center for Supply Chain Research, the Institute for the Study of Business Markets, the Farrell Center for Corporate Innovation and Entrepreneurship, the Center for Global Business Studies, and the Center for the Management of Technological and Organizational Change.