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Topic: Consumer Issues

Edgar Maldonado

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Edgar Maldonado is an associate 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.

David Klein

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David Klein, M.F.A., is a professor in the Department of Industrial Design at Metropolitan State University of Denver.

His professional experience includes designing children’s riding toys and adult fitness equipment at Roadmaster Corporation, decorative designs at David Marshall Inc., and consumer electronics for Samsung Corporation in Seoul, Korea. Klein also completed a Fulbright-Hayes Seminar in the Czech and Slovak Republics, was a visiting scholar at the Beijing Academy of Science and Technology and has presented at IDSA and NCIIA national conferences. He is also a member of Industrial Designers Society of America (IDSA) and is in involved in the One World One Water Center at MSU Denver.

Klein received his master of fine arts in industrial design from University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign and a bachelor of arts in product design from Southern Illinois University at Carbondale.

Samuel Jay

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Samuel Jay, Ph.D., is a professor of Communication Studies and interim executive director of Online Learning at Metropolitan State University of Denver.

He joined MSU Denver in 2011 as an adjunct professor and went full-time in 2014. Jay opened his own consulting company in 2015 called Jay Communication Solutions helping individuals and small businesses market themselves. He has developed and implemented content marketing campaigns, handled social media accounts of NCAA Division I sports teams and coached and managed projects for varied clients. Jay also produces and co-hosts a weekly sports podcast and radio show, called Sports Nerds, where he examines how sports influence our perception of things like race, class, gender and power. He also co-hosts a weekly podcast, called Unfiltered, where leaders in the craft beverage industry are featured, providing a behind-the-scenes look at what they do.

His research focus areas include how digital communication technologies and their users generate and circulate emotional energy and how that energy adds rhetoric effectiveness to disparate discourses, including politics, sports, and economics.

Jay received his doctorate in communication studies with a focus on rhetoric and a minor in emergent digital practices from University of Denver in 2014, a master’s in radio-television-film from University of North Texas in 2009 and a bachelor’s in cinema and comparative literature from University of Iowa in 2006.

Christina Huber

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Christina Huber, Ph.D., is an professor in the Department of Economics at Metropolitan State University of Denver. She teaches courses in development economics, environmental economics, natural resource economics and econometrics.

Huber’s main research interests include issues of maternal and child health in developing countries, economics of the family and determinants of student academic performance. She has published in the Journal of Human Capital, Demography, the Southern Economic Journal and Applied Economics, among others.

Huber received her doctorate and master’s in economics from the University of Colorado Boulder in 2008 and 2003 respectively and a bachelor’s in anthropology and environmental studies from Grinnell College in 2000.

Darrin Duber-Smith

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Darrin C. Duber-Smith, M.S., MBA, is a 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.

Steve Beaty

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Steve Beaty, Ph.D., has an extensive background in both the theoretic and pragmatic aspects of computers and networks. He wrote compilers at Cray Computer, managed a large group of developers and was a software test architect at Hewlett-Packard. He was also the security team lead at the National Center for Atmospheric Research in Boulder.

At Metropolitan State University of Denver, Beaty is currently a professor of Computer Science and has served as chair of the Mathematical and Computer Sciences Department and interim vice-president for Information Technology. He works on a number of open-source projects, consults with a variety of businesses and interviews regularly with the media.