Professor Maritan teaches courses in strategic management in the Whitman PhD and MBA programs. Maritan has been published in many academic journals for her research on how firms develop the capabilities that they use to compete. She has also received various awards for her outstanding teaching and research.
Maritan is active in the Business Policy and Strategy Division of the Academy of Management and in the Strategic Management Society, the primary scholarly organizations for strategic management faculty. Before entering academia, she worked as a mining engineer and as corporate banker in North America and in Europe.
Maurice Harris Associate Dean for MBA & MS Programs
Professor Harris teaches the core iMBA course on managerial finance. Before earning his PhD from the Whitman School at Syracuse University, Harris worked in the financial industry with First City National Bank of Houston, the Government Finance Research Center, and Fidelity Investments.
His primary areas of research include market microstructure, asset return volatility, and corporate finance. Recent research includes product market competition among firms and the impact of this competition on the long-run equilibrium relationship among their capital structures.
Professor Dharwadkar’s research interests include organization theory and organizational behavior. He is currently working in the area of corporate governance. Dharwadkar’s research appears in the Academy of Management Review, Academy of Management Journal, Academy of Management Executive, Journal of Marketing, and Journal of International Business Studies. Professor Dharwadkar was the recipient of the Whitman School's Thomas Finucane Award for Exceptional Scholarship, 2002. He held the inaugural Whitman Research Fellowship in the Whitman School (2004-2006) and now holds the Whitman Teaching Fellowship (2006-2008).
Melvin Stith ’73 MBA, ’78 PhD Dean, Whitman School of Management
Dean Melvin Stith has shared his research expertise as a consultant
and lecturer for many private companies and public agencies, including
the Dracket Company, American Hospital Supply, Florida Department of
Education, Florida Department of Transportation, Glembys, Fireman’s
Fund Insurance Co., Anheuser-Busch, Kent Publishing Co., JM Family
Enterprises, Associated Credit Bureaus, and the University of
Wisconsin.
In his scholarly research, Stith studies the impact of value systems
on consumer purchase behavior and key influences on African American
and white consumers’ habits. His work has appeared in leading marketing
and psychological journals. He is also active in The Ph.D. Project, a
national foundation that works to recruit black, Hispanic, and American
Indian students to the business school professoriate.
Stith earned his MBA and PhD from the Whitman School in 1973 and
1978, respectively, with marketing concentrations. He most recently
served as dean of the College of Business and the Jim Moran Professor
of Business Administration at Florida State University, which claims
one of the nation's ten-largest business programs.
Professor Fried's research focus is on the contribution of context in the areas of work stress, job and office design, motivation, performance appraisal, and diversity. His work has appeared in leading journals in the field, including the Academy of Management Review, Journal of Applied Psychology, Personnel Psychology, Journal of Organizational Behavior, Journal of Occupational and Organizational Psychology, Journal of Occupational Health Psychology, Journal of Vocational Behavior, and Human Relations. Between 1998 and 2001 he served as the associate-editor-in-chief of the International Journal of Organizational Behavior.
Professor Fried recently was honored with a Best Paper Award at the Academy of Management Meeting, 2007 for his paper "Reactions to Inequity as a Function of Organization Strategy: Effect of Micro- and Macro Variables," co-authored with A. Levi, L. Markoczy, & A. Fiegenbaum.
Milena Petrova is a professor of finance at Whitman and is affiliated with Whitman’s James D. Kuhn Real Estate Center. Petrova teaches the courses Real Estate Principles and Financial Management and her research interests are in real estate capital markets, REITs, commercial real estate, corporate finance and corporate governance.
Before joining the Whitman family, Petrova worked as a consultant for Booz Allen Hamilton and as a project finance analyst for Finland’s official Export Credit Agency, Finnvera. Petrova has also trained and consulted for real estate and investment professionals in Europe, Asia, and the U.S.
Petrova has an impressive list of publications in journals including Real Estate Economics and the Journal of Applied Finance. She was also awarded the CoStar 2007 award for best paper using commercial real estate data and the Gerald R. Brown 2003 Award for best paper on “Real Estate and Finance” from the Asian Real Estate Society.
Craig Watters Assistant Professor of Entrepreneurial Practice
Formerly the dean for advancement in SU’s School of Information Studies and director of its economic stimulus center, the I-Launch Pad, Professor Watters earned his PhD from the Maxwell School of Citizenship and Public Affairs at Syracuse University.
Watters currently directs the highly visible South Side Entrepreneurial Connect Project, advising teams of undergraduates and MBAs as they help small-business owners and minority entrepreneurs on Syracuse’s South Side grow their ventures. His research and community work led to his nomination for an economic development award from Senator Hillary Clinton in 2003 and travel to Ireland as part of Clinton’s trade mission in 2002.
Michel Benaroch Professor of Management Information Systems
Professor Benaroch teaches strategic management of information technology, advanced decision support technologies, and analytical customer relationship management. He teaches the core course Introduction to Information Technology (IT) and E-Commerce, and the elective, Customer Relationship Management Using SAP, in Whitman's iMBA program.
Benaroch’s research interests are in three areas. One area involves the use of “real options” and economics techniques to evaluate IT investments, manage IT investment risk, and manage IT investment portfolios. Another area deals with developing declarative, ontology-centered modeling formalisms for building knowledge systems as well as supporting the semantic interoperability of distributed information systems. The third area deals with decision support and data mining applications in finance and economics. Professor Benaroch holds a Whitman Research Fellowship (2006-2008).
Anna Chernobai Assistant Professor, Department of Finance
Chernobai's teaching interests include business statistics, applied
probability, risk management, stochastic processes, and corporate
finance. She earned her PhD in statistics and finance from the
University of California at Santa Barbara.
Chernobai’s research interests lie in the area of financial
mathematics and applied statistics/probability applied to the
management and modeling of financial risks in banking institutions. Her
interests include modeling operational risk in light of the Basel II
Capital Accord and its integration with credit and market risks. Other
areas of interest include insurance, financial economics, applied
probability, and stochastic processes.
In the iMBA program, Professor Reed teaches the core course Strategic Management. Prior to teaching at the Whitman School of Management, Reed worked as a banker in Chicago. Her doctoral dissertation examined the effects of combining firms’
human capital, social capital, and organizational capital on
performance in the New England banking industry. Her
current research interests still include the banking industry as well
as focusing on how firms develop and utilize intellectual capital in
performance-enhancing ways.
