USC Marshall Welcomes 9 New Faculty

For the 2018-19 year, the USC Marshall School of Business welcomes nine new faculty members to campus. They join a growing list of over 50 who’ve taken jobs at USC Marshall over the past two years and include lecturers, assistant professors, associate professors, visiting professors, adjunct instructors, and more.

When speaking about the latest faculty additions, USC Marshall’s Vice Dean for Faculty and Academic Affairs Nandini Rajagopalan talked about her excitement.

“We are excited about these faculty appointments, which build on our long tradition of fostering excellence in both research and teaching,” she says. “Leveraging their unique skills and experience, each of these individuals is poised to have a significant impact on the Marshall community.”

So, who are these nine new faculty members? We spoke with a few about what they bring to the school and why they are excited to join. We also got an inside look at their experience in a recent news release. Here’s what we found.

David Bacci

Lecturer in the Department of Business Communication

David Bacci has previously been a part of USC Marshall for years in the Department of Business Communication. However, this year he formally joins the team, bringing his experience as a speechwriter for the Committee on International Relations of the U.S. House of Representatives.

We had to chance to ask Bacci, “What do you hope students will take away from your experience/teaching?” Here’s what he had to say:

“Simply stated, my teaching philosophy is to train to students to be the types of great employees I would hire.  I spent 10+ years in various industries and in management.  In my experience, employers will teach their employees the technical skills required to do their jobs.  But employers will not teach employees how to communicate; how to show up each day; how to engage with their boss and coworkers; and how to use their soft skills to add organizational value—employers simply expect people to have these skills already developed.  Given this gap, I see my role as a professor to teach students how to use their communication skills to distinguish themselves as ‘great’ amongst a sea of ‘good.’”

Eva Buechel

Assistant Professor of Marketing

Eva Buechel was previously an assistant professor of Marketing at the University of South Carolina’s Darla Moore School of Business. Now, she’s bringer her research on psychological processes, consumer judgments, decisions, and behaviors to USC Marshall as an assistant professor of marketing.

Feng Chen

Lecturer in the Department of Data Science and Operations

Feng Chen has been an adjunct faculty member at USC Marshall since 2009. This year, he begins his new position as a lecturer, which he will take up alongside his job as the co-lead of the Port Solutions Project at Marshall’s Center for Global Supply Chain Management.

Maria Colman

Lecturer in the Department of Business Communication

Maria Colman joins USC Marshall after spending the last few years running her own e-commerce business. In addition, she brings her teaching experience in the principles of management, advertising, and business communication to her new role as a lecturer.

When Colman spoke with us, she told us about how excited she is to be at USC Marshall.

“I am excited every day I walk on campus, knowing I have the opportunity to work with students as they prepare for the next step in their lives—independence and a career, where many of them will do great things,” she says.

Colman then went on to talk to us about the unique perspective she brings to campus saying, “I not only know business fundamentals from my formal education, but much more from my experience working in large corporations, direct sales, as an entrepreneur, small business owner, educator, retail sales and even selling door-to-door.”

Susan Harmeling

Associate Professor of Clinical Entrepreneurship

Susan Harmeling has been a visiting professor since 2017, joining the school from Howard University entrepreneurship faculty since 2006. Her new role as associate professor of clinical entrepreneurship will allow Harmeling to use her research on the role of contingency in the entrepreneurial process and how entrepreneurship education shapes the identity of participants.

Gregory M. Kling

Full-Time Lecturer in Accounting

Gregory Kling has spent the past five years as an adjunct professor of accounting. During that time he taught six courses covering topics such as Taxation of Property Transactions and Accounting Ethics. Kling was also responsible for developing and teaching online courses and materials for two graduate tax courses. Now, he joins USC Marshall as a full-time lecturer in addition to his work as a tax partner at Kling & Pathak, LLP.

For Kling, he’s most excited about permanently joining USC Marshall with added responsibilities and contributions to the school. As for what those contributions will be, it has a lot to do with Kling’s professional experience.

“I have over 35 years experience in public accounting, many of which were as a partner in my own CPA firm. I bring the ‘practical public accounting CPA’ experience to the classes that I teach and always try to share my stories so that students can see how the material we are studying will be relevant to their careers.”

Christina Lubinski

Visiting Professor at the Lloyd Greif Center for Entrepreneurial Studies

Christina Lubinski recently served as the Copenhagen Business School’s academic director of the master’s program in organizational innovation and entrepreneurship. She brings that experience to USC as a visiting professor in entrepreneurial studies for a year before she’ll transition as a professor of clinical entrepreneurship next year.

When we had the opportunity to ask Lubinski, “What unique perspective do you bring to USC Marshall?” she told us about her work in entrepreneurship:

“I explore how entrepreneurs take clues from the humanities to put their businesses in a broader perspective. Startups are often about ‘what’s next’ but to appreciate how a business transforms an industry or society, we need to recognize them as a piece of a much bigger puzzle. I use my research in entrepreneurial history and imagination, to understand businesses’ role in society in the past, present and future.”

Zal Phiroz

Lecturer in the Department of Data Science and Operations

Since 2014, Zal Phiroz has served as an adjunct professor at USC Marshall. Now, he joins the school as a lecturer in data sciences and operations. He previously taught at Harvard and has held senior management positions at TELUS and Proctor & Gamble.

Roberto Robatto

Visiting Assistant Professor in the Department of Finance and Business Economics

Roberto Robatto, on leave from the University of Wisconsin Madison School of Business, joins USC as a visiting assistant professor. He brings his expertise in finance and macroeconomics to the school.

We spoke to Robatto about the role, telling us about how USC Marshall leads the way in finance and economics:

“I am very excited to be here because this is a top department in the fields of both finance and economics and my research and teaching bridges these two areas. In the Department of Finance and Business Economics at USC Marshall, there are colleagues that are experts in both economics and finance, and interacting with them allows me to deepen my knowledge in both fields. This will have a positive impact on my academic research, and I will do my best to transmit this knowledge to my students in the classes I teach.”

regions: Los Angeles

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