Featured Faculty

Pace University professors are dedicated teachers. They bring real-world experience and scholarship into the classroom through their work with outside companies and organizations throughout the world and by leading cutting-edge research projects. Pace professors work closely with students to not only broaden their academic horizons, but to show how their work in the classroom is applicable to their future careers. 

Lubin School of Business

Ipshita Ray, PhD
Assistant Professor of Marketing

Ipshita Ray came to Pace with a wealth of knowledge in customer relationship management and advertising effectiveness. She is the recipient of a variety of awards, including Outstanding Professor of the Year (2002), the International Communication Association Excellence in Teaching Award (1998), and the National Championship in Public Speaking (sponsored by the United Nations in India, 1993). In 2008, Ray was part of the Advertising Education Foundation's Visiting Professor Program, where she worked with the host advertising agency, DDB, Chicago on the McDonald's, Budweiser, Wrigley's, and State Farm accounts.
 

Aron Gottesman, PhD
Associate Professor Finance and Economics

Aron Gottesman is Pace's resident expert in financial markets, financial intermediation, mutual funds, managerial finance, and capital markets. He has published many articles in journals such as the Journal of Banking and Finance, and the Journal of Empirical Finance, and his research has been reviewed in the Wall Street Journal, the New York Times, Forbes, and BusinessWeek. He has also won numerous awards and research grants, including both a grant and doctoral fellowship from the Canadian Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council.

Melissa Cardon, PhD
Associate Professor of Management

Prior to joining Lubin, Melissa Cardon was a human resources analyst for Key Bank, where she managed organizational compliance with EEO/AA regulations. Cardon's research focuses on human resources and entrepreneurial passion and behaviors, and she has published articles in journals such as the Academy of Management Review, the Journal of Business Venturing, and Human Resource Management. She has won several awards for her research as well as for her teaching and student mentoring.

Kaustav Sen, PhD
Associate Professor of Accounting

Kaustav Sen joined Lubin in 1996, after receiving his PhD in Accounting from Rutgers University, and is both an Associate Professor of Accounting and an Ernt & Young Scholar. His research and publications have examined issues related to earnings quality and corporate governance, both in developed and emerging market settings. He recently won a Verizon Thinkfinity grant to develop information technology auditing teaching modules. Sen has held visiting positions at several universities in Hong Kong and India and has consulted with numerous large insurance and financial service organizations including NY life, Prudential, Chase Manhattan, and GE Capital.

Seidenberg School of Computer Science and Information Systems

Christelle Scharff, PhD
Associate Professor of Computer Science

Christelle Scharff obtained her PhD in Computer Science from the Henri Poincare University in Nancy, France and did her research at LORIA and INRIA Lorraine. She continues to apply her research in automated deduction and theorem proving to software and hardware verification. Scharff believes that in today's environment "software proofs have become crucial and provide assurance that cannot be obtained simply through testing." She recently spent a year in Senegal through a grant from the National Collegiate Inventors and Innovators Agency, introducing the use of mobile computing to aid in the promotion of sustainable economic development and is currently teaching a course in mobile applications to Pace students.

Doctor Scharff was the winner of an IBM Smarter Planet Faculty Innovation Award for her recent work with Pace students on mobile computing. Check out the video about the Smarter Planet Project.

Chienting Lin, PhD
Associate Professor Information Technology

Chienting Lin has worked with his colleagues on security and intrusion detection in connection with the school's designation as one of only two National Centers of Excellence in Information Assurance in the New York Metropolitan Area. His research interests center on information assurance and network security, digital government and e-commerce applications, knowledge management systems, and implementation of enterprise systems. Lin's research has appeared in numerous prestigious publications, including the Journal of Management Information Systems, Decision Support Systems, Social Science Computer Review, Journal of the American Society for Information Science, and IEEE Transactions on Pattern Analysis and Machine Intelligence.
 

Li-Chiou Chen, PhD
Associate Professor of Information Technology

Tackling topics such as exploring countermeasures against Internet-based attacks, investigation of the dynamics of diffusion in various network structures, and detection of anomaly patterns in network traffic, Li-Chiou Chen brings years of research and knowledge to the Information Technology Department. Her research interests are focused on combining artificial intelligence, simulation modeling, and social network analysis to conduct technological and policy analysis in the area of information security.

Pauline Mosley, DPS
Associate Professor of Information Technology

It's rare that a student enters a classroom filled with LEGO bricks—but it's not an uncommon sight in Pauline Mosley's courses. With more than 20 years of experience in both academic and professional computer science environments, Mosley teaches and engages students through her Problem Solving Using LEGO Robotics class. Using hands-on techniques and programming skills, students learn how to use a LEGO model to solve a real-world problem. A proponent of service-learning, Mosley also encourages her students to take a LEGO robotics presentation to an area school, where students teach children how to use the LEGO systems.

Dyson College of Arts & Sciences

Nancy Krucher, PhD
Associate Professor of Biology and Health Sciences

When Nancy Krucher received her PhD in Biochemistry from Clarkson University in 1995, her mother had just been diagnosed with metastatic breast cancer. She decided to go into breast cancer research at the University of Rochester Cancer Center and New York Medical College before joining the faculty at Pace in 1999. During the past several years, she and her students have developed a novel way to induce cancer cells to commit suicide. "My research projects with Pace students have been among my proudest moments...it's so great to see the students get excited about the work...and provide them with the opportunity to learn about what it's like to be a scientist." Her research has been supported by grants from the National Cancer Institutes of Health for the past six years.
 

Andres Villagra, PhD
Associate Professor of Modern Languages and Cultures

Andres Vilagra believes that in today's society the classroom extends far beyond the bricks and mortar and that technology can be a powerful cultural bridge. He is a pioneer when it comes to using technology in the classroom. It all started with his own blog, in Spanish, which students eagerly followed. Villagra soon introduced the blogs into his students' coursework. To create an even more collaborative online experience, he created the Pace University Spanish Lounge using wiki technology. "The students' work has an immediate relevance outside the classroom. They have a sense of 'don't write for the professor anymore'; they write for a real audience." In 2010, Villagra was awarded the first Dyson College Faculty Instructional Technology Award. 

 

Rostyslaw Robak, PhD
Professor of Psychology, Department Chair

"When you study psychology at Pace, you gain useful knowledge that can be applied in whatever career path you choose," says Rostyslaw Robak, who teaches courses on Social Psychology, Group Dynamics, Psychology of Death and Dying, and Theories and Techniques of Counseling. "Psychologists have made huge strides in recent years in precisely those areas that everyone needs to understand in order to function better in life. We now know a great deal about what really motivates people and how it is much more helpful to focus on the 'positive' than on what's pathological." Robak has done extensive research on group counseling processes, self-definition, and money and satisfaction. His approach to teaching is simple: Treat students with respect. It's the same approach he's found effective in counseling.
 

Jillian M. Mcdonald, MFA
Associate Professor of Fine Arts

Jillian Mcdonald's work in performance art, new media, and video is exhibited in galleries, museums, and festivals worldwide. Her research focuses on popular film genres and their effects on audiences, including fans. Celebrity worship and horror films are her most beloved subjects. Most recently her large scale sold-out performance, Undead in the Night, included more than 100 actors in the darkened forest of Malmo, Sweden, where small audiences experience a living horror film along a 3km path. In 2008, Zombies in Condoland, a commissioned performance for Nuit Blanche Toronto, featured hundreds of passerby turned into zombies and cast in scenes from a horror film. Mcdonald's work is reviewed in The New York Times, Flash Art, Art Papers, The Globe, and Mail (Canada), People (Sweden), The Toronto Star, and The Village Voice, among others.

College of Health Professionals

Elizabeth Berro, PNP, MS in Nursing, BSN Clinical Instructor

An expert in pediatric nursing, Elizabeth Berro has taught at Pace for more than 15 years, drawing upon her vast clinical experience to educate students in the areas of pathophysiology, pharmacology, pediatric nursing, and physical assessment. Berro began her nursing career in the pediatric intensive care unit at New York Hospital and has served as a hospital instructor for general pediatrics and pediatric intensive care, a pediatric advanced life support instructor, and a car-seat safety technician.

Karen (Toby) Haghenback, PhD
Assistant Professor

Toby Haghenbeck has been a professor at Pace since 2001 and is presently a Family Nurse Practitioner (FNP) at Northridge Medical Associates in New Rochelle, NY. Prior to that she was the critical care clinical instructor at Montefiore Medical Center and Sound Shore Medical Center, and was part of the Editorial Staff for AACN Critical Care Journals: Critical Care Nurse. She holds a PhD in Philosophy of Nursing/Clinical Research, FNP, MS in Adult Health Nursing, and a BS and RN in Nursing. She has published in the fields of critical care and cardiac care.

School of Education

Brian Evans, EdD
Assistant Professor of Mathematics

Receiving his doctorate in mathematics education from Temple University in 2005, Brian Evans believes "teachers must foster a positive learning environment for all students with various experiences regardless of cultural, physical, or ethnic background." The key to this is to remain flexible in their teaching skills and adapt to different learning styles. Evans has travelled extensively through six continents and to all 50 states, giving him a great appreciation for cultural differences.

Roberta Wiener, EdD
Assistant Professor of Education

Roberta Wiener strives to foster an environment with responsiveness to diversity and a mutual commitment to building essential knowledge, skills, and attitudes for students to use both inside and outside the classroom. A recipient of the Federal Education Training Grant, Wiener is the coordinator of special education for the School of Education. She has been an external evaluator for a SUNY charter school, and spent six years as a writer for the federal and state No Child Left Behind and Individuals with Disabilities Education Act. "I believe teaching and learning are interactive and inseparable," she says, "and that a committed and responsible teacher knows what students need to learn, understand, and apply in their chosen career, and indeed, in their lives."
 

Christine D. Clayton, EdD
Assistant Professor of Education

"My passion revolves around figuring out dynamic ways for educators to learn so they can sustain themselves in creating vibrant spaces for learning with their students," says Christine Clayton. "I am interested in promoting a vision of teachers as curriculum makers who can creatively negotiate the high-stakes curricular contexts we live in so they can build a life in teaching that is meaningful." And her work at Pace reflects that passion. Clayton and other faculty just received a grant to partner with four high schools in the New York City and Westchester areas to promote collaborative inquiry groups as a vehicle for teacher learning. In addition to her work in developing new teacher skills and curricular design, Clayton also focuses on social justice in teacher education.