Faculty & Administration
Dean
Laquita Blockson | Dean of School of Business and Economics
Office location: PPHAC 220
Office phone: 610-625-7403
Email: blocksonl@moravian.edu
Laquita C. Blockson, Ph.D. became the Inaugural Dean of the School of Business and Economics and Professor of Management at Moravian University in August 2022. Dean Blockson most recently served as the Founding Faculty Director of the Social Innovation Graduate Program and Associate Professor of Business Management at Agnes Scott College in Decatur, Georgia. She served previously on the faculties of Florida International University, the University of Northern Iowa, and the College of Charleston, as well as visiting professorships with Shenzhen University in China and the University of Otago in New Zealand.
Dean Blockson is not a stranger to Pennsylvania, as she earned her doctorate in Strategy, Environment, and Organizations from the University of Pittsburgh’s Katz Graduate School of Business. She earned both her baccalaureate and master’s degrees in Business Administration from Florida A&M University’s School of Business & Industry in Tallahassee. Before pursuing the doctorate, Dean Blockson worked for Taco Bell Corporation, AT&T, and LG&E Energy Corporation. She is a former member of the Board of Examiners for the National Institute of Standards and Technology's Malcolm Baldrige National Quality Award program and a former director of the South Carolina Women’s Business Center, a statewide Small Business Administration agency.
Dean Blockson is a business/organizational effectiveness expert and scholar who conducts research on entrepreneurial ethics, social venturing, corporate-community relations, urban economic development and minority women entrepreneurs. She has received grants and monetary awards for her research and her pedagogical approaches from the Ewing Marion Kauffman Foundation, the National Science Foundation, VentureWell, Habitat for Humanity International and the United States Association for Small Business and Entrepreneurship, among other entities. Dean Blockson has received several accolades, including the 2005 Academy of Management Best Mentoring Practices Award for co-founding and leading the Management Faculty of Color Association, an organization founded in 2001 to provide guidance and support to African-American, Hispanic-American and Native American Management professors and scholars.
Dean Blockson enjoys sharing her knowledge and expertise with multiple audiences within the nonprofit, governmental, corporate and higher education sectors. A few of her previous clients include Nissan North America, YMCA of the USA, the South Carolina Chamber of Commerce, and the United Negro College Fund.
In her spare time, Dean Blockson enjoys cooking, international travel and listening to music. She also considers herself a sports junkie who especially enjoys watching college football, college basketball and tennis.
Faculty
Sonia N. Aziz | Associate Professor of Economics
Office location: Comenius Hall 204
Office phone: 610-625-7702
Email: azizs@moravian.edu
Dr. Sonia Aziz’s is an associate professor of economics specializing in Environmental Economics with a focus on health economics and water resources in developing countries. Dr. Aziz's research focuses on valuation of health and other non-market goods (environmental goods) by looking at human behavior in response to potential health and environmental risks, and the impact of that behavior on the outcomes experienced. Sonia Aziz is co-director of the Center for Investigation on Poverty and Inequality.
Stacy Boyer | Assistant Professor of Management
Office location: Comenius Hall 210
Office phone: 610-625-7836
Email: boyers03@moravian.edu
Dr. Boyer’s research focuses on understanding the influence social identities have on individual and group behavior in the workplace. Her current projects examine how perceived threats to valued identities, such as exposure to negative stereotypes or group derogation, affect employee motivation, performance, and career aspirations.
Dr. Boyer has a PhD in Business Administration with specialization in Organizational Behavior from Drexel University’s LeBow College of Business. In addition to her academic work, she has industry experience in the areas of human resources and sales management. She enjoys sharing her experiences and expertise in the classroom and utilizes reflective practices to encourage students’ personal and professional development. Dr. Boyer grew up in the Pocono area and is a Moravian alumna. In her free time, she enjoys reading, creative writing, and spending time with friends, family, and her pets.
Sue Cyliax | Assistant Professor of Practice in Marketing
Office location: Comenius 205
Phone: 610-625-7817
Email: cyliaxs@moravian.edu
Areas of expertise: Marketing strategy and planning, brand strategy and positioning, strategic planning, licensing, strategic partnership development, innovation and new product launch, market and channel expansion, integrated marketing communications, cross- functional team development and leadership.
Sue brings a diverse range of real world experience to share with the students at Moravian. She launched and ran her own successful strategic marketing consulting firm for 18 years. In addition to running her own firm, she has held senior level marketing and sales positions for a range of organizations including privately held, public and private equity owned companies. She has experience in CPG, consumer products, B2B and nonprofits. Sue is also a speaker on topics including: branding, competitive positioning, consumer behavior, strategic partnerships.
Katie P. Desiderio | Associate Professor of Management; Executive Director, Graduate Business Programs
Office location: Comenius Hall 202 * Think Tank
Office phone: 610-861-1376
Email: desideriok@moravian.edu
Holding a doctorate in leadership with a specialization in human resource development, Dr. Desiderio’s teaching interests include a mindfulness thread in courses such as, Leading People in Organizations, Management & Organizational Theory, Organizational Behavior and Leadership,
Mindfulness in Sport, and Happiness in the Workplace. Her research is in optimizing humanperformance at work, employee engagement, organizational citizenship behaviors, and flow at work, which fuels her work in and out of the classroom.
Mahmoud Elhussini | Assistant Professor of Practice in Management
Office location: Comenius Hall 209
Office phone: 610-861-7101
Email: elhussinim@moravian.edu
Areas of expertise: Teaching; operations, marketing, and management courses. Research; cultural perspectives on business ethics, exploration of key personality traits in a successful project manager
In addition to being the Faculty Advisor for the Moravian Business Leaders Club, Dr. Elhussini also participates in the following: Ambassador for Peace, International Federation for World Peace, with consultative status in the United Nations’ Economic and Social Council. He completed Six Sigma training, which focuses on eliminating virtually all defects from a company’s products, services, processes, and transactions and the Master Planner program, which focuses on increasing sales performance by maximizing analytical planning skills.
Lei He | Visiting Professor of Economics
Office location: Comenius Hall 212
Office phone: 610-861-7929
Email: hel@moravian.edu
Areas of expertise: My teaching interests are statistics, economics, and econometrics. My research focuses on the US airline industry and network formation.
Gary S. Kaskowitz | Professor of Management
Office location: Comenius Hall 216
Office phone: 610-861-1406
Email: kaskowitzg@moravian.edu
Research interests and expertise: Strategic marketing; interactive marketing; the use of storytelling and archetypes in creating an identity; the morality and ethics of marketing, especially from Judeo-Christian and Western perspectives; service and interdisciplinary learning.
Lizabeth Kay Kleintop | Faculty & Director of Assessment and Accreditation
Office location: Comenius Hall 207
Office phone: 610-625-7704
Email: kleintopl@moravian.edu
Research interests and expertise: Dr. Kleintop (she/her) earned a PhD in Business Administration from Temple University and an MPA from The Pennsylvania State University. She teaches human resources management, organizational development, business research methods, and analytics at both the undergraduate and graduate levels. Her research interests are in workplace diversity, particulary on gender issues and acceptance and managing workplace transitions for transgender employees. She has recent publications in the Journal of Business Diversity, Academy of Management Proceedings, and Exploring Gender at Work – Multiple Perspectives. In addition to her teaching and research, Dr. Kleintop leads the accreditation and assessment work in the School of Business and Economics and is active in the University's Teaching and Learning Center and Women's Gender and Sexuality Studies program. She is a member of Iota Iota Iota and Pi Alpha Alpha.
Mark Koscinski | Assistant Professor of Accounting Practice
Office location: PPHAC 222
Office phone: 610-625-1432
Email: koscinskim@moravian.edu
Dr. Mark Koscinski has forty years of business experience in both public and private accounting. Over this career he has been Controller or Chief Financial Officer of the following entities: a Fortune 500 Bank, a boutique merchant banking firm with multiple publicly traded entities, the third largest board game company in the United States, and a publicly traded aerospace and defense contractor with approximately 4,000 employees. While in public accounting, Dr. Koscinski worked for a Big 4 accounting firm, rising to the level of manager. Dr. Koscinski later maintained his own accounting practice where he was interim chief financial officer of a start-up pharma company, a medical devices
company, a Catholic diocese, a not-for-profit organization and a construction company. Teaching a new generation of accountants and giving back to the community are now the driving passions in Dr. Koscinski’s life. He qualifies as a Practice Academic (PA) under AACSB Standards.
Richard Krohn | Professor of Practice in Economics and Business
Office location: Comenius Hall 208
Office phone: 610-861-7122
Email: krohnr@moravian.edu
Dr. Krohn presently teaches Economics, Spanish, and FYWS, but his doctorate is in American Studies (interdisciplinary history).
Prior to Moravian University, Dr. Krohn went to George Washington University, where he achieved his Ph.D. While at George Washington, he published a dissertation on 20th-century regionalization in Venango County, PA. When pursuing his M.A. in English Writing at Hollins College, Krohn wrote and studied fiction and drama. He acted in 9 plays at Hollins College and Washington & Lee University. While pursuing his B.A. in Economics and Urban Studies at Case Western Reserve University, he was a goalie and played varsity soccer for four years. Dr. Krohn also spoke at graduation following the Kent State shootings. In addition, Dr. Krohn is an active poet, with more than 100 published poems.
Heather Kuhns | Assistant Professor of Practice in Management
Office location: PPHAC 215
Office phone: 610-625-7938
Email: kuhnsh02@moravian.edu
Research interests and expertise: marketing, branding, social media, communication planning, leadership
Dr. Kuhns brings more than 25 years of field experience to the classroom and her career has spanned many industries including healthcare, higher education, nonprofit, media and advertising. In 2016, Dr. Kuhns had the opportunity to teach a graduate-level marketing course at Cedar Crest College and discovered teaching was her greatest passion. Prior to joining the SOBE team at Moravian, she also taught as an adjunct faculty at Cedar Crest College, Kutztown University and DeSales University. Dr. Kuhns recently graduated from Johnson & Wales University with her Doctor in Business Administration with a concentration in Organizational Leadership and is a proud Moravian MBA graduate. She also hold a Bachelor's degree in English/Professional Writing from Kutztown University. In addition to teaching, Dr. Kuhns owns a boutique-style marketing agency called zenspire communications, where she specializes in social media management, strategy and branding.
Eva Marikova Leeds | Professor of Economics
Office location: Comenius Hall 214
Office phone: 610-861-1446
Email: leedse@moravian.edu
Research interests and expertise: Financial markets, event studies, sports economics and gender differences in competitive settings
Dr. Leeds received her undergraduate degree in political theory from James Madison College at Michigan State University and her M.A. and Ph.D. in economics from Princeton University. She was a Fulbright Lecturer in 1991 and an advisor to the minister of the economy in the Czech Republic in 1994-95. She was a visiting scholar at the University of Michigan in 2006-7, a visiting associate professor at Temple University Japan in Tokyo in 2007-9, and a guest researcher at the Institute for the Study of Labor (IZA) in Germany in spring of 2016.
Jinjing Liu | Assistant Professor of Economics and Business
Office location: Comenius 205
Office phone: 610-861-1453
Email: liuj@moravian.edu
Dr. Liu earned her Ph.D. in financial economics from McGill University. She teaches managerial finance, investments, money and banking, behavioral finance, and advanced managerial finance. Her Ph.D. dissertation focuses on asset pricing and risk management. After joining the World Bank, she expands her research to banking and corporate governance. Her research publishes in Journal of Financial Econometrics, Finance Research Letter, International Review of Financial Analysis, etc.
Daniel O'Connor | Assistant Professor of Practice in Accounting
Office location: Comenius Hall Room 211
Office phone: 610-861-1413
Email: oconnord@moravian.edu
Areas of expertise: Accounting, Corporate Leadership, Financial Reporting, Interpersonal Relations, Process Improvements, Leadership Research, Analysis and Auditing
Professor O’Connor is a recent addition to the Business and Economics Team. He is a native of Pennsylvania, and brings years of real world accounting experience to the classroom at Moravian. He is pursuing his Doctoral Degree at Alvernia University, focusing on corporate leadership. Currently, Professor O’Connor is part of the Amrhein Investment Club and plans to participate in other activities on campus as the opportunities arise.
James Ravelle | Professor of Economics and Business
Office location: Comenius Hall 217
Office phone: 610-861-1378
Email: ravellej@moravian.edu
Research interests and expertise: Dr. James Ravelle teaches or has taught the following courses: management and organizational theory; human resources management; complex organizations; labor and management relations; labor economics; principles of economics; legal environment of business; legal environment of finance and credit. He is also the author of 17 articles and other scholarly publications and has recently completed a book entitled: "Cases and Exercises in Business, Finance and the Law".
At Moravian Dr. Ravelle has received the "Timothy Briedegam Award for Outstanding Faculty Service" on three occasions and also received the "Christian and Mary Lindback Award for Outstanding Teaching". He has served as the Chair of the Department of Economics and Business (1987-1990); the Chair of the Department of Sociology (2000-2006); and was a member of the Moravian University Board of Trustees (1988-1992). Dr. Ravelle has been admitted to the Bar before the Supreme Courts in Pennsylvania and New Jersey and before several United States District Courts. He was also a member of the voluntary labor arbitration and commercial arbitration panels of the American Arbitration Association and the civil arbitration panel of the Court of the Common Pleas of Lehigh County. He served as an arbitrator in over 400 cases.
Dr. Ravelle has served as a solicitor to several labor unions, banks, corporations, and local governmental units. He is also the former managing member and President of Brafferton Financial, LLC, a mortgage bank.
Joe Szmania | Assistant Professor of Practice in Predictive Analytics
Office location: PPHAC 221
Office phone: 610-625-7714
Email: jszmania@moravian.edu
Sabrina Terrizzi | Associate Professor of Economics and Business
Office location: Comenius Hall 212
Office phone: 610-625-7937
Email: terrizzis@moravian.edu
Dr. Terrizzi has teaching and research experience across a variety of fields in economics and information systems. Despite this breadth of experience, her specialty and true passion align in the field of health economics. Dr. Terrizzi has conducted research in three primary areas of health economics: prescription drug expenditures, healthcare delivery, and healthcare behaviors. She is currently expanding her research to study various effects of the Affordable Care Act (ACA), including: the effect of the ACA on entrepreneurship; and the regional effects of the ACA on chronic health care outcomes, utilization, and income inequality. The goal of each analysis is to inform healthcare policy with the priority of providing more affordable healthcare to support a healthier population.
James P. West | Professor of Economics and Business
Office location: Comenius Hall 215
Office phone: 610-861-1381
Email: westj@moravian.edu
Research and Academic research includes international and development economics, economic philosophy, monetary economics and issues in international business and management. Dr. West has extensive international travel and research interests and has lived and worked in India, Slovakia and the United States.
Affiliated Faculty
Joel Nathan Rosen | Associate Professor of Sociology and Anthropology; Contributing Faculty in Sports Management
Program Director, Communications & Media Studies
Office location: Benigna Hall, Room 215
Office phone: 610-625-7814
Email: rosenj@moravian.edu
Personal website: www.joelnathanrosen.org
Research interests and expertise
Media in Culture; American Popular Music (especially the blues and its related genres); Sport; Celebrity and Reputation; Moral Panics in the Media; American and African-American Culture; and the American South
Joel Nathan Rosen (Associate Professor of Sociology) is Program Director in Communications and Media Studies at Moravian University in Bethlehem, Pennsylvania. His research is premised on the relationship between human activity and human efficacy as portrayed in media and as demonstrated through such cultural idioms as sport, music, comedy, and other areas that intersect celebrity. He is the author of The Erosion of the American Sporting Ethos: Shifting Attitudes toward Competition (McFarland) and From New Lanark to Mound Bayou: Owenism in the Mississippi Delta (Carolina Academic Press), is coeditor of and a contributor to a multi-volume series that explores the relationship between sport and celebrity (University Press of Mississippi), and has been published in such varied journals and anthologies as The Cooperstown Symposium on Baseball and American Culture, 2009-2010, The Sociology of Sport Journal, The Journal of Mundane Behavior, NINE: A Journal of Baseball History and Culture, The Journal of Sport History, and Media History Monographs.
Staff
Cathy Welsko | Sr. Support Leader
Office location: Comenius Hall, 2nd floor suite
Office phone: 610-861-1591
Email: welskoc@moravian.edu
Adjunct Faculty for Graduate and Undergraduate
Susan Aloi
Email: alois@moravian.edu
Theodore (TJ) Barron
Email: barront@moravian.edu
Scott Bartkus
Email: bartkuss@moravian.edu
Scott Best
Email: sbest@moravian.edu
Erik Daly
Email: dalye@moravian.edu
Tom Egan
Email: egant@moravian.edu
Richard Fehr
Email: fehrr@moravian.edu
Michael Fraboni
Email: frabonim@moravian.edu
Beth Gotwals
Email: gotwals@moravian.edu
Bradley Hahn
Email: hahnb@moravian.edu
Monica Law
Email: lawm@moravian.edu
Santo Marabella
Email: marabella@moravian.edu
Rebecca Miller
Email: millerr@moravian.edu
Stephanie O'Hara
Email: oharas@moravian.edu
JP Orlando
Email: orlandoj@moravian.edu
Laura Queen
Email: queenl@moravian.edu
Kathy Ramson
Email: ramsonk@moravian.edu
Geoffrey Roche
Email: rocheg@moravian.edu
Robert Sclafani
Email: sclafanir@moravian.edu
Jeffrey Stewart
Email: stewartj@moravian.edu
John Sylvia
Email: sylviaj@moravian.edu
Kim Talipan
Email: talipank@moravian.edu
Debra Tarone
Email: taroned@moravian.edu
Juan Vazquez
Email: vazquez@moravian.edu
Adriana Welsh
Email: welsha@moravian.edu
* Adjunct Space: PPHAC 216