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Bei Dong - Bei Dong comes to USF from the doctoral program at Michigan State University. Bei’s research interests are in empirical financial reporting. Specifically, she’s interested in areas including causes and consequences of alternative accounting choices, accounting regulation, voluntary disclosures, and capital markets. Her primary teaching responsibility will be in the area of financial accounting.

Dahlia Robinson - Dr. Robinson earned her Ph.D. from the University of Georgia. Her primary teaching responsibility is in financial accounting and reporting. Her research interests includes the capital market use of financial disclosures with particular focus on the use of accrual information, as well as corporate governance and how governance potentially influences managerial actions and disclosures. Dr. Robinson comes to USF from Arizona State University.

Ilene Berson - Ilene R. Berson, Ph.D., NCSP is an Associate Professor of Early Childhood Education in the Department of Childhood Education. Her research focuses on prevention and intervention services for young children at imminent risk for behavioral and mental health challenges associated with child maltreatment and other traumatic events. She leads collaborative reform initiatives, forging linkages between early childhood, child welfare, and health care systems, as well as international studies on the socio-emotional impact of cybervictimization of children. Dr. Berson has extensively published books, chapters, and journal articles and has presented her research worldwide. She has been the principal investigator on funded grants totaling over $2.1 million.

Jolyn Blank - Jolyn Blank will be joining the Department of Childhood Education as an Assistant Professor. She received her Ph.D from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. Research interests include arts and inquiry-based approaches to teaching and learning and early childhood teacher education. Recent work has focused on understanding school micro-cultures, exploring early childhood teachers’ theories about what constitutes good teaching and the personal, cultural, and institutional contexts that shape and reshape these perceptions.

Danielle Dennis - Danielle Dennis completed her doctorate in literacy education at the University of Tennessee. Her research interests include struggling adolescent readers, literacy assessment, and educational policy. In addition, Dr. Dennis is interested in the role of teacher talk as it pertains to both facilitating children's learning and as used to demonstrate change in teacher expertise of literacy instruction.

Yicheng Tu - Yi-Cheng Tu received his PhD from the Computer Science Department of Purdue University in 2007. His main research interest is in the area of database systems and distributed systems. His dissertation addresses load management in data stream processing. In addition, he is also interested in the application of control theory in self-tuning databases, performance analysis of peer-to-peer systems, and data placement in multimedia databases. \

Sylvia Diehl - Dr. Sylvia Diehl received her master’s degree, educational specialist degree and Ph.D. from the University of South Florida.. Her research and publication interests focus on consistent frameworks to support children with developmental disabilities in classroom settings. She has served as a consultant in the area of autism spectrum disorders for the National Educational Association and the American Speech Hearing Association (ASHA) along with numerous school districts. Dr. Diehl has created on-line coursework for ASHA and the Florida Department of Education, as well as, a master clinician series for ASHA. She has published numerous articles in peer reviewed journals related to communication disorders in children with developmental disabilities.

William Black - Dr. Bill Black earned his Ph.D. from the University of Texas at Austin in December, 2004. Previously, he worked as a community educator, bilingual elementary teacher and principal in Florida and Texas. While in his doctoral program, he served as the managing editor of The International Journal of Qualitative Studies in Education (QSE). For his dissertation inquiry, he employed ethnographic methods and a multi-level critical policy analysis framework to analyze ways in which high-stakes accountability and bilingual education policies intersect and inform multiple and conflicted school-level practices. He has drawn from his dissertation research to publish in edited books, Educational Policy, and the International Journal of Leadership in Education. Previous to arriving at USF, Dr. Black was an Assistant Professor in the Department of Educational Leadership and Policy Studies at Indiana University. He worked with his colleagues at the Indianapolis campus to develop community-based research approaches through the Center for Urban and Multicultural Education. While at Indiana, Bill served as the principal investigator of a report for the State of Indiana that comprehensively portrayed and analyzed educational leadership preparation in the state of Indiana. From this line of research, he published in the NCPEA 2007 Yearbook, the Journal of Research on Leadership Education, and has several articles in process. Dr. Black currently serves on the editorial board of Educational Administration Quarterly and the Journal of School Leadership, and is a Book Review Editor for the International Journal of Qualitative Studies in Education. He also participates on the UCEA/AERA Taskforce to Evaluate Educational Leadership Preparation Program Effectiveness. Dr. Black teaches classes in Educational Leadership, Politics of Education, Organizational Theory/Systems Thinking, and Dissertation Preparation. Current areas of research activity include principal preparation program evaluation, distributed leadership theory, accountability policy and English Language Learners, and ethnographic approaches to policy and leadership.

Zorka Karanxha - Zorka Karanxha has an Ed. D. and M. Ed. in Educational Leadership from Lehigh University. She has been a public school teacher at both middle and high school levels. She has conducted workshops for the PA PTA and NAESP. Her research interests include charter schools, parent involvement, teacher and principal preparation, and education law.

Liliana Rodriguez-Campos - Dr. Liliana Rodriguez-Campos earned her Ph.D. in Evaluation, Measurement, and Research Design at Western Michigan University. Her research interests include meta-evaluation, multicultural and collaborative evaluation capacity building, organizational engineering and project management.

Michael Clune - Michael Clune. Dr. Clune will be joining the English Department. He received his B.A. from Oberlin College and his Ph.D. from Johns Hopkins University followed by two years as a Mellon Postdoctoral Fellow at the University of Michigan. His main specialties are Twentieth-Century American Literature and Literary Theory. He is particularly interested in the relation of economic theory and literature and in the trope of invisibility.

Tova Cooper - Tova Cooper. Dr. Cooper will be joining the English Department. She received her B.A. from UC Berkeley and her Ph.D. from UC Irvine. Her specialty is Nineteenth- and early Twentieth-Century American Literature. She is particularly interested in educational curricula and the Americanization of new citizens in relation to literature of the period.

Meredith Zoetewey - Meredith Zoetewey. Dr. Zoetewey will be joining the English Department. She received her B.A. from USF and her Ph.D from Purdue University. Her specialty is Rhetoric and Composition. She is particularly interested in the relation of rhetoric, composition, and professional writing to new digital media.

Kamal Alsharif - Dr. Alsharif interested in the interdisciplinary approach to the environmental decision-making process and water policy. Furthermore, he is interested in the human interactions with the environment and providing environmental benchmarks. He is also interested in non-point sources pollution impacts and management by embracing Best Management Practices (BMPs). Some of the topics he will be studying include the Total Maximum Daily Loads (TMDLs) and storm water management on different watershed scales. In addition, he will address the impact of population increase, especially in less developed countries, and ways to overcome water scarcity, and provide economically accessible water sources. He has a B.S. in Biology, and M.S. in Environmental Science (Water Quality and Watershed Management Emphasis), and Ph. D. in Water Resources Science.

Christopher Emrich - Christopher T. Emrich received his Ph.D. in geography from the University of South Carolina, where he specialized in geographic information science and hazards. His primary research interests are in the application of geospatial analysis techniques and applications to real world problems, including: emergency management, social vulnerability, environmental issues, and planning. In 2004, he worked for FEMA during the Florida hurricane response, where he conducted geographic information system (GIS)-based analysis of recovery operations and mitigation programs. Most recently, he directed all FEMA Florida GIS activities as the GIS Unit Leader of the Florida Long Term Recovery Office. He is currently a visiting assistant professor in the department of geography at the University of South Florida.

Carolyn Holton - Carolyn Holton is a Doctoral Candidate and Visiting Instructor in Information Systems and Decision Sciences at the University of South Florida. Her research interests lie in the area of computer mediated communications systems, including the impacts of system monitoring and user culture, the development of group norms, the spread of rumors and organizational responses to them, their use for detecting and deterring fraud, and pedagogical applications. She also examines information systems leadership issues. Carolyn was selected to attend the 2007 ICIS doctoral consortium. She holds an M.B.A. from Duke University and a B.B.A. from The George Washington University, both earned with high honors. Prior to recognizing her academic fate, her professional life led her to several novel applications of IT, some of which were featured in Fast Company and other business magazines in several countries.

Balaji Padmanabhan - Balaji Padmanabhan is the Anderson Professor of Global Management and Associate Professor of Information Systems & Decision Sciences at the University of South Florida. He received a B.Tech in Computer Science from the Indian Institute of Technology (IIT), Madras and a Ph.D. in Information Systems from New York University. Previously he was an Assistant Professor at The Wharton School, University of Pennsylvania. His research interests are in data mining and data-driven decision making with a focus on learning from Web clickstream data. His research addresses applications such as behavioral profiling, recommender systems and online fraud detection. His work has been published in leading venues in Computer Science as well as in Information Systems including Management Science, MIS Quarterly, INFORMS Journal on Computing, IEEE Transactions on Knowledge and Data Engineering, Decision Support Systems, ACM KDD, IEEE ICDM, WITS and AIS. He has served on the program committees of several ACM, IEEE, SIAM and WITS conferences and is an ad-hoc Associate Editor of Management Science and an Editorial Review Board member of the Journal of Database Management. He is also currently the Vice-chair of the INFORMS College on Artificial Intelligence and is a member of INFORMS, ACM and IEEE. He has designed and taught undergraduate, MBA and doctoral courses in Data Mining and Enabling (Information) Technologies.

John Gathegi - John N. Gathegi is the incoming Director of the School of Library and Information Science in the College of Arts and Sciences at the University of South Florida. Previously, he was an associate professor at the College of Information, Florida State University. His research and teaching interests are mainly in the areas of Information law and policy, and include intellectual property rights and emerging information technologies, First Amendment issues, and access to legal information for justice and government transparency. Born in Kenya, he moved to the United States to attend the University of California at Berkeley where he obtained several graduate degrees, including a master of library and information studies, a master of arts in political science, the doctor of philosophy degree from the University of California at Berkeley, and the juris doctor from Boalt Hall School of Law, also at Berkeley. He is a member of the California Bar and also admitted to practice before the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 9th Circuit. At Boalt Hall, he was articles editor on the Berkeley Technology Law Journal. Following the practice of law in California, he was Dean of the Humanities, Arts and Social Sciences Division at Merritt College in California. Dr. Gathegi is a Fulbright Senior Specialist and in 2004 visited Santiago, Chile to consult for the Justice Studies Center of the Americas. He is the immediate past chair of the Information Policy Special Interest Group of the American Society for Information Science and Technology, and is on the Editorial Board of Open Government: A Journal on Freedom of Information.

Min Dong Paul Lee - Has a Ph.D. in Sociology from Cornell University. Prior to joining USF, Paul has taught at Cornell University. His main areas of research interest include corporate social responsibility, organizations and the environment, theories in organizational behavior (especially new institutionalism and social movement theories in organizational studies), stakeholder management, cross-cultural management and business ethics. Before embarking on his academic career, Paul has also worked in the field of international development with a focus on community-based research and participatory monitoring and evaluation.

Wonkuk Kim - Professor Wonkuk Kim received his PhD in applied mathematics and statistics with a statistics concentration from Stony Brook University in 2007. His research interests are biostatistics and applied statistics such as mixture models in statistical genetics and survival analysis and ICA error models in neural networks. Professor Kim graduated from Seoul National University in Korea with a BS degree in Nuclear Engineering and a MS degree in Mathematics.

Sherwin Kouchekian - Professor Sherwin Kouchekian attended the Royal Institute of Technology-Stockholm (1986-1992) and received his Master of Science degree in Engineering Physics and Applied Mathematics under Lennart Carleson. In September 1994, he entered the University of Tennessee at Knoxville to pursue the Doctor of Philosophy in Mathematics. He received his doctoral degree in August 2000 under John B. Conway. Also in August 2000, he accepted a two-years postdoctoral position at Virginia Tech University. He spent one year as a visiting assistant professor at the University of Louisville and , in 2003, accepted a tenure track position at University of South Alabama. His research interests include the study of certain operators, such as the Bergman operators, in abstract mathematical spaces and the study of nano structures in life sciences. His research is currently supported by an NSF grant.

Gangaram Ladde - Dr. Gangaram Ladde received his B. Sc. (First Class) in Chemistry, Mathematics and Physics, from People’s College, Nanded (India) in 1963, M. Sc. (First Class First) in Mathematics from Marathwada University, Aurangabad (India) in 1965, and Ph. D. in Mathematics from University of Rhode Island in 1972. Dr. Ladde joined the State University of New York at Potsdam in 1973 and was promoted to the Tenured Full Professorship in 1980; he relocated to the University of Texas at Arlington in 1980. Dr. Ladde’s research interests are Stochastic Time Analysis and Estimation Theory: Stability Theory, Control Theory, Differential Games, Filtering Theory, Oscillation Theory, and Qualitative Analysis of Competitive-Cooperative Process in Biological, Physical and Social Sciences under random environmental perturbations. He has published more than 150 papers, has co-authored 4 monographs, and co-edited 6 proceedings of international conferences, notably, (i) Stochastic Versus Deterministic Systems of Differential Equations, (with M. Sambandham), Marcel Dekker, Inc, New York, 2004 and (ii) Random Differential Inequalities (with V. Lakshmikantham), Academic Press, New York, 1980. Dr. Ladde is the Founder and Joint Editor-in Chief (1983-present) of an International Journal of Stochastic Analysis and Applications.He is also a Member of Editorial Board of several journals in Mathematical Sciences.Dr. Ladde is recipient of several research awards and grants.

Bill Campbell - Bill Campbell joins USF as an Assistant Professor in the School of Physical Education & Exercise Science in the College of Education. Dr. Campbell received his Ph.D. from Baylor University in 2007. His primary research interests are in the effects of exercise training and nutritional interventions on the physiological adaptations and biochemical mechanisms regulating skeletal muscle hypertrophy. Dr. Campbell is interested in the effects of exercise training and nutritional interventions on weight loss, weight maintenance, and metabolism.

Amber Phillips - Amber Phillips joins USF as an Assistant Professor in the School of Physical Education & Exercise Science in the College of Education. Dr. Phillips received her Ph.D. from the University of South Carolina in 2007. Her primary research interests focus on examining the content development skills and decision making processes of preservice physical education teachers and on the effects of National Board Certification on student learning.

Haichun Sun - Haichun Sun joins USF as an Assistant Professor in the School of Physical Education & Exercise Science in the College of Education. Dr. Sun received her Ph.D. from the University of Maryland in 2007. Her primary research interests are in students’ self regulated motivation and learning behavior related to the creation of student centered curriculums. For the past two years Dr. Sun has worked with the NIH funded “Be Active Kids! Project” where she supervised data entry, converting/managing databases, and data analysis.

Steven Downey - Steven Downey comes to USF from the University of Illinois at Urbana – Champaign. He received his Ph.D. in 2000 and since has taught and conducted research there. His research interests are: developing adaptive online knowledge sharing and e-Learning environments, examining cross-cultural influences on knowledge sharing and e-Learning, and utilizing social networking approaches to promote collaborations and knowledge sharing. He was a Fulbright Scholar Award finalist in 2004 and an invited professor to the Thammasat University in Bangkok, Thailand in 2003. His most recent presentation was at one of three featured sessions at the 2004 International Conference on Knowledge Sharing and Collaborative Engineering in St. Thomas, U.S. Virgin Islands.

Iraida Carrion - Iraida V. Carrion has served as a full-time instructor in the School of Social Work at USF since 2001, teaching undergraduate and graduate courses. She has been a Licensed Clinical Social Worker since 1983. She received her Ph.D. from the University of South Florida in Applied Anthropology in 2007. As an Assistant Professor, she will pursue her research interests in end of life issues related to Hispanics/Latinos and health care disparities.

Alison Salloum - Alison Salloum received her MSW (94) and Ph.D. (05) from Tulane University School of Social Work. She has extensive clinical experience working with children, adolescents and families after violence and death. Dr. Salloum’s research interests include posttraumatic stress, traumatic grief, coping, and mental health intervention for children and families after violence, death and disasters.

Elizabeth Aranda - Dr. Elizabeth Aranda will be joining the Department of Sociology as an Associate Professor. She received her Ph.D. from Temple University in 2001. She is coming from the University of Miami, where she was an Assistant Professor. Her research focuses on immigrant incorporation and the emotional facets of migration. She is also interested in how race, ethnicity, social class and gender shape the process of immigrant adaptation. Dr. Aranda’s book, Emotional Bridges to Puerto Rico: Migration, Return Migration, and the Struggles of Incorporation, was published in 2006 by Rowman & Littlefield. Her work is also published in the American Behavioral Scientist, The Sociological Quarterly, and Gender & Society. Elizabeth teaches courses of immigration, Latinos in the U.S., Race, and Sociology of Families, among others. She is currently working on a book about ethnic and race relations in Miami.

Elizabeth Vequera - Dr. Elizabeth Vaquera will be joining the Department of Sociology as an Assistant Professor. She received her Ph.D. from the University of Pennsylvania. Her main areas of interest include Hispanics in the U.S., Quantitative Methods, Education, Adolescence, and Interracial Relations. She has conducted research on racial and ethnic identity of Hispanic youth, friendship choices among Hispanic students, and interracial dating among adolescents. Her most recent article examines how friendship reciprocity affects the academic well-being of students. Dr. Vaquera’s work has been published in Social Science Quarterly, The Hispanic Journal for Behavioral Sciences, The Sociological Quarterly, and Social Science Research. She is currently analyzing the relationship between friendship choices and racial and ethnic differences in school outcomes of Hispanic adolescents.

Office of the Provost, University of South Florida, 4202 E. Fowler Ave. ADM226, Tampa, FL 33620 -- (813) 974-2154

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