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Topic: Business

Elizabeth McVicker

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Elizabeth McVicker, Ph.D., J.D., is a professor in the Department of Management at Metropolitan State University of Denver.

She serves as an advisor for student internships, independent studies, individualized degree program majors; and provides academic advice to management majors, MBA students and students interested in pursuing a study of law. McVicker was instrumental in the creation of MSU Denver’s One World One Water Center (OWOW) and the Water Studies curriculum. She also has her own practice.

Her service to the community includes serving on the boards of a water conservancy district, a water enterprise authority, a nation-wide water consortium serving coalitions and collaborations focused on water quality and restoration after major fires and floods and a state-wide basin roundtable. In 2011, McVicker received the Outstanding Women Award from the Institute of Women’s Studies and Services at MSU Denver, as well as the College of Business Dean’s Award for Overall Faculty Excellence.

Her research interests include legal issues surrounding constitutional law, employment and labor law; and water law within the context of regional, national and international perspectives.

McVicker received her juris doctorate from University of Denver, doctorate in Spanish language and literature from New York University, master’s from Johns Hopkins University and bachelor’s from University of Texas. She is a licensed attorney in the state of Colorado in good standing and is current with all required continuing legal education classes.

Edgar Maldonado

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Edgar Maldonado is a professor in the Department of Computer Information Systems at Metropolitan State University of Denver. He holds a Ph.D. in information sciences and technology from Pennsylvania State University. A native Venezuelan with an extensive professional and academic background in engineering, he has spent several years designing and implementing network solutions and systems internationally.

He has experience as a software support engineer for banking networks, with projects in Venezuela and the Caribbean. Before joining MSU Denver, he worked at an IT consulting firm in Denver.

Maldonado specializes in the socioeconomic aspects of information technology and is well versed on the topics of computer security, cyber terrorism, public policies and information systems technologies, including emergency management.

He is aware of the major issues concerning intellectual property as applicable to technology patents and is an asset to the implementation of multicultural information systems. His scholarly work has been published in several peer-reviewed journals and he was a leader for one of the national level case studies in the “Research of Emergency Capacity Building,” sponsored by the National Science Foundation, as a research assistant at Penn State University.

Christopher Looby

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Christopher Looby, M.B.A, is an affiliate professor in the Department of Health Professions at Metropolitan State University of Denver.

Chad Kendall

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Chad Kendall, M.A., is a Professor and Federal Aviation Administration chief instructor in the Department of Aviation and Aerospace Science at Metropolitan State University of Denver. Kendall has over 20 years of experience in the aviation industry as an educator, researcher and FAA Part 141 chief instructor. His flight experience includes working as commercial airline pilot for American Eagle and PSA Airlines, as a corporate pilot and a flight instructor. Kendall teaching areas include flight/ground training, advanced systems, jet transition training, aviation curriculum and psychophysiology. In addition, Kendall is also the coach of the precision flight team at MSU Denver, which competes in the NIFA (National Intercollegiate Flying Association) organization against more than 80 universities nationally.

Kendall received his master’s degree in business administration in 2011 and his bachelor’s in aviation management and flight operations from Jacksonville University in 2004.

Mick Jackowski

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Mick Jackowski, Ed.D., is a professor in the Department of Marketing at Metropolitan State University of Denver. His areas of expertise lie in brand management, reputation management, relationship management, entrepreneurship, franchise and small business. Jackowski teaches primarily in the MSU Denver Center for Professional Selling. He teaches Principles of Marketing, Business Communication and Personal Selling.

Jackowski has been with MSU Denver since 2003. From 2007-13, he worked as the director at the Center for Innovation; since, he has returned to teaching. Jackowski chairs the Department of Marketing’s Assessment Committee and the Center for Professional Selling Advisory Board. He was awarded the Innovative Teaching Award and the Excellence in Teaching Award from MSU Denver’s College of Business. He also received the Best Practitioner Paper Award from the U.S. Association for Small Business and Entrepreneurship.

His written work has been published in the Journal of Selling and the Journal of Higher Education Theory and Practice. Jackowski has given several presentations with the Western Decision Sciences Institute, the Marketing Educators’ Association and the Conference on Historical Analysis and Research in Marketing. His current research projects are “Selling Sales Education: Proposing a New Major in Professional Selling” and “The Importance of Social Selling Proficiency and the Development of a Social Selling Class.” He is also conducting ongoing case-study research in professional sales.

Jackowski received his doctorate from the University of Northern Colorado in 1998, a master’s from the University of Massachusetts, Amherst, in 1996 and a bachelor’s from State University of New York at Buffalo in 1990.

Lynn Hoffman

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Lynn Hoffman, Ph.D., is an emeritus professor in the Department of Management at Metropolitan State University of Denver. He developed the course Organizational Management and Consulting, which prepares student teams to form a partnership with local companies. Additionally, Hoffman helped developed the entrepreneurship curriculum for the College of Business at MSU Denver and is the recipient of the College of Business Dean’s Excellence in Scholarship Award. In addition to teaching, he has served in a variety of officer positions for the Westminster Rotary Club and is an active member of the Small Business Institute. Hoffman’s areas of interest are in human resources, entrepreneurial business planning, social entrepreneurial management consulting and strategic management.

Hoffman received his Ph.D. in industrial relations and human resource management from the University of Iowa.

Debbie Gilliard

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Debbie Gilliard, Ph.D., is chair and professor in the Department of Management at Metropolitan State University of Denver.

Gilliard has served as department chair since 2008 and is involved in many school and university committees. She is a faculty advisor for the International Business program, spearheaded the development of the global business programs at MSU Denver and serves on the MSU Denver Strategic Planning Task Force. Gilliard received the College of Business, Dean’s Special Award “Unsung Hero Scholarly Activity.” She is active in the community serving as representative to the Aurora Chamber of Commerce, participates in the Aurora Business and Professional Women’s Organization and is on the Board of the Western Decision Sciences Institute.

Gilliard has presented her scholarly work at regional and national conferences. Her case studies have been published in strategic management textbooks and used in the strategic management course at MSU Denver. She conducts research on strategic management and international business.

Gilliard received her doctorate in management from Arizona State University, a master’s in management from University of Colorado, Denver and a bachelor’s in management from University of Northern Colorado.

Glenn Furton

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Glenn Furton, Ph.D., is an associate professor of economics at Metropolitan State University of Denver. He currently teaches Principles of Microeconomics, Economic Approach to Politics, Managerial Economics, Policy Issues in the History of Economic Thought and Applied Business Economics.

Furton’s areas of research include the political economy of public health and environmental economics, the constitutional political economy of federalist systems, public choice, law and economics, welfare economics and Austrian economics. He has published journal articles in “Beyond Market Failure and Government Failure,” “Emergent Politics and Constitutional Drift: The Fragility of Procedural Liberalism,” “Money and the Rule of Law” and “Private Governance and the Pricing of Political Enterprises.”

Furton received both his Ph.D. and master’s in agricultural and applied economics from Texas Tech University and his bachelor’s in business with a minor in economics from the University of Colorado at Colorado Springs in 2013.

Alex Fayman

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Alex Fayman, Ph.D., is the chair in the Department of Finance at Metropolitan State University of Denver.

Darrin Duber-Smith

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Darrin C. Duber-Smith, M.S., MBA, is a retired senior lecturer at Metropolitan State University of Denver’s College of Business, where he teaches Sports Marketing, Green Marketing, Seminar in Marketing Management and Advertising Management courses.

Duber-Smith has more than 30 years of specialized expertise in the marketing and management profession, including decades of work with natural, organic and green/sustainable goods and services.

As president of Green Marketing, Inc. from 2000-16, Duber-Smith was a co-founder of the Lifestyles of Health and Sustainability market/industry model and was leader of the first U.S. industry task force that helped frame the Natural Products Association’s definition of natural in 2005.

He has co-authored several academic papers, including “State of the Economy and Attitudes Toward Sales Careers,” “Student Disposition Towards Sales as a Career,” “The Evolution of an Award-Winning Assessment Plan” and “Gender Bias in Consumer Perceptions of Salespeople.” He has published over 90 marketing-related articles and book chapters in various business publications, and he has been an invited speaker at over 50 executive-level events.

Duber-Smith has been the most frequently-interviewed marketing expert in Colorado media since 2005, and he authored Cengage Learning’s “KnowNow! Marketing” blog from 2011-2019.

Duber-Smith received The Wall Street Journal’s In-Education Distinguished Professor Award in 2009 and WSJ’s Top 125 Professor Award in 2014.

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