Instructors

The Business Essentials program taps some of the area's brightest minds in business and education to lead you through the program. You will learn from people who know how business operates in the real world. These instructors have the practical knowledge and academic experience needed to prepare you for managerial work that requires core business competencies. See the semester schedule for the instructors in your area.

John Austin
John Austin earned a bachelor's degree in economics from Johns Hopkins University and a doctoral degree in management from Boston College. His research focuses on information awareness in teams and organizations. He also studies the implementation of controversial change initiatives in organizations. Dr. Austin's work has been published in the Journal of Applied Behavioral Science, the Journal of Applied Psychology, and Organization Science. His research has been recognized with three Best Paper awards from the Academy of Management. Before attending graduate school, Dr. Austin worked as a health care analyst for HCIA, a health care information company. Prior to joining the Penn State Smeal College of Business, he worked as an assistant professor at The University of Washington, Bothell.

Adam Conrad
Adam Conrad is the vice president of sales for Select Data, Inc., of Anaheim, California. He has worked in sales and marketing for various firms in the home health care industry. As an entrepreneur, Conrad founded and owned a number of companies. He is an adjunct professor of business for Penn State Altoona where he teaches entrepreneurship, entrepreneurial marketing, logistics, and project management. Conrad speaks nationwide on technology issues in the industry.

John Dolan
John Dolan joined Penn State as an adjunct instructor of marketing in 2002 and has been with Penn State Outreach since the fall of 2003. He works with national corporate accounts in the areas of training and development of their employees using the resources of Penn State. Dolan has more than fifteen years of experience with such Fortune 500 companies as The Washington Post Company, Knight Ridder, BellSouth, and AT&T. Before joining Penn State, he served as an online general manager for two Knight Ridder-owned newspapers. Prior to that, Dolan was a senior product manager with Washingtonpost.Newsweek Interactive, managing several successful online classified products. His professional experience has focused in the areas of sales, marketing, research, and product management. Dolan earned a master of business administration from the Owen Graduate School of Management at Vanderbilt University and will begin doctoral course work in workforce education and development at Penn State in fall 2006.

Michelle A. Drager
Michelle A. Drager is founder, chair, and president of The Drager Group, Inc., and has expertise in corporate, nonprofit, health care, legal, and manufacturing marketing and public relations. Her portfolio includes award-winning media coverage, branding and public relations campaigns, high-profile special events, and successful crisis communications plans. She has provided media relations services for several international dignitaries including Pope John Paul II and former President George Bush. Drager is nationally accredited by the Public Relations Society of America and earned a master of business administration degree from The Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore, Maryland, and a dual bachelor of arts degree in journalism and communication from Carlow University in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania.

Ann Echols
Ann Echols is assistant professor of business management at Penn State. She recently started her own firm to design environmentally and socially responsible strategies. Dr. Echols also serves on the nonprofit Building Materials Reuse Association's board of directors and is a member of the Strategic Management Society and the Academy of Management. She has published research on business strategies in the venture capital industry, involving interfirm networks, competitive positioning, and the stock price performance of IPO investments, as well as research on technology timing and entry strategies for new industries.

James Fong
James Fong has become a renowned instructor of marketing in both noncredit professional development and credit academic courses. Prior to becoming vice president of sales and marketing for Diagnostics Plus in 2005, he served as director of marketing research and planning at Penn State Outreach Marketing and Communications. Fong specializes in educational marketing, competitive intelligence, and market research. He served as president of a successful market research company, research director at an advertising agency, and director of analytics at a top-twenty international market research firm. Fong earned an master of business administration and an master of science in statistics from the University of Vermont.

Bob Igo Bob Igo
Bob Igo brings to his teaching role more than twenty-five years of supervisory, management, and financial experience, both in the electronics and metal fabrication industry and at Penn State. Igo began his career at Centre Engineering where he served in various supervisory and management roles concluding with personnel manager. For nearly sixteen years, Igo held a variety of increasingly responsible management roles for Murata Electronics, including production operations manager for a 350-employee multiunit operation, general operations manager for a $10-million speciality business unit, production and material control manager for a $200-million business, and senior corporate business analyst. Igo came to Penn State in 2004 where he assumed the position of Outreach assistant director for finance and business, responsible for grants and contracts, business analysis, and financial reporting. Igo's accomplishments include leadership of a major ERP systems implementation, and major cost reduction and process improvement initiatives for Murata, producing multimillion dollar company savings. Igo holds a bachelor of arts degree in labor studies from Penn State and a master of business administration from St. Francis University.

Edward Kashmere
Edward Kashmere is president and founder of eFFiciencies, Inc., a firm that specializes in project management consulting, Six Sigma quality and process improvement, and accounting and financial systems solutions. He is an adjunct professor of accounting and finance in the Graduate School of Management at Penn State Great Valley and is an adjunct professor of management at Temple University's Fox School of Business. Kashmere has developed several courses for Penn State and other institutions in his named fields of specialization and is a contributing author to the book The e-Business Project Manager. He has worked for and consulted with General Electric, Lockheed Martin, Siemens, NASA, The Homeland Security Agency, ZLB Behring, Air Products and Chemicals, the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania, among others.

Nancy McClure
Professor Nancy McClure has taught a broad spectrum of accounting and business courses at Penn State, including financial and managerial accounting, auditing, taxation, commercial banking, and business and industry analysis. She gained accounting experience as an accountant with a CPA firm that provided diverse accounting services to small business and individual clients. McClure holds a master's degree from Penn State.

Susan D. Sampsell
Susan Sampsell, B.S., CPA, M.Ed., began her career as staff auditor with Deloitte & Touche, located in Pittsburgh. While at Deloitte & Touche, she specialized in the nonprofit and banking sectors of the business. Prior to becoming the financial officer for finance and business at Penn State, she served as the controller/director of finance for Carlow University. At Carlow, Sampsell was responsible for the overall financial operations of the university including budget, fixed assets, capital planning, debt, student accounts, auxiliary operations, accounts payable, payroll, and financial reporting. She also served as financial liaison to the board of trustees. In her role as financial officer at Penn State, her current responsibilities include overall financial oversight for operating budgets in excess of $500 million-including budget development, capital planning, debt financing, and strategic planning for administrative areas of the University including human resources, the physical plant, auxiliary and business services, investment management, and the University police. Sampsell's academic credentials include a master's degree in higher education administration and a bachelor's degree in accounting, both from Penn State. Sampsell is also a certified public accountant, after passing all four parts of the CPA exam.

Darren Wagner
Darren Wagner serves as the marketing director for Penn State Continuing Education, a role that includes overseeing the continuing education marketing efforts of the university's twenty-four campuses across Pennsylvania. Prior to this assignment, he worked in brand management at Nestle, Hershey Foods, and International Home Foods, and in sales at Fuji Photo USA, among other companies. Wagner holds an MBA with an emphasis in marketing and logistics from the Penn State Smeal College of Business.

Page last modified on Tuesday, January 09, 2007