Academics
Business and Accounting Faculty
Robert Letovsky, Ph.D.
Department Chair
Associate Professor of Business Administration and Accounting
B.Comm. McGill University; M.B.A. University of Toronto; Ph.D. Concordia University
Robert Letovsky has corporate experience in bank administration and commercial lending with the Royal Bank of Canada and the Toronto Dominion Bank, and in export finance with the Export Development Corporation. His teaching focus is on marketing, international business and strategic management. Dr. Letovsky’s research and scholarship efforts have centered on case development and on issues dealing with government/business relations. He has had papers published in several journals, including The Columbia Journal of World Business, The Journal of Teaching in International Business, the Banker’s Magazine, and the Multinational Business Review. He has also had cases published in several outlets, including texts on strategic management and retailing, Quebec Studies Journal, Annual Advances in Case Research, Case Research Journal, the University of San Francisco Non-profit Case Collection, and Georgetown University’s Institute for the Study of Diplomacy Case Collection. When not in the classroom, you can find Dr. Letovsky either hiking, canoeing or cross-country skiing.
Jeanmarie Hall 149
Phone: 802.654.2477
Box 273
E-mail: rletovsky@smcvt.edu
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William Anderson
Professor of Business Administration and Accounting
B.A. Dartmouth College; M.B.A. Amos Tuck School (Dartmouth)
Professor Anderson began teaching at Saint Michael's in the fall of 1974. He usually teaches statistics, operations management, and business policy and has taught database management in the computer science department. Currently, he serves as the College's Chief Information Officer, a position to which he was appointed in January, 2002. Professor Anderson looks forward to returning to the classroom when he completes this assignment.
Saint Edmunds 221
Phone: 802.654.2252
Box 196
E-mail: wanderson@smcvt.edu
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Robert Kenny
Professor of Business Administration and Accounting
B.A., B.S., M.B.A. University of Vermont
Professor Kenny has been at Saint Michael's College and in the department of business administration and accounting for more than 30 years. His principal contributions have been as a professor of accounting and finance courses. In addition, during that time, he has served as chair of the department on three separate occasions, interim Vice President for Academic Affairs for one year, interim Vice President for Administration and Treasurer for one year, and member and/or chair of most of the major academic committees on campus. His consulting and research interests include accounting, personal finance, entrepreneurship, corporate financial management and federal income tax. These interests are informed by his degrees in mathematics and business administration, and his professional work as a C.P.A. When not involved in his professional work, you can find Professor Kenny with his family, volunteering on one or more non-profit boards in the community or participating in one of the many outdoor and athletic interests.
Jeanmarie Hall 149D
Phone: 802.654.2247
Box 38
E-mail: rkenny@smcvt.edu
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M. Birger Benson
Associate Professor of Business Administration and Accounting
B.A. Dartmouth College; M.B.A. Harvard Graduate School of Business
Professor Benson came to Saint Michael's after a successful stint in business and consulting. He teaches a broad cross-section of courses to undergraduate business majors and in the Master of Science in Administration P rogram. His specialties are financial policies of corporations, labor relations, total quality management and computer applications.
Jeanmarie Hall 149H
Phone: 802.654.2467
Box 38
E-mail: bbenson@smcvt.edu
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Richard Kuklis
Associate Professor of Business Administration and Accounting
B.S., M.B.A., Ph.D. Syracuse University
Dr. Kuklis’s areas of special interest are marketing and advertising. Along with those courses, he teaches financial and managerial accounting and business in contemporary society. He also consults on office organization. When not teaching, Dr. Kuklis makes furniture using exotic woods. He also does bowl turning and is an avid golfer.
Jeanmarie Hall 155
Phone: 802.654.2639
Box 38
E-mail: rkuklis@smcvt.edu
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Diane Lander
Associate Professor of Business Administration and Accounting
B.S. University of California, Davis; M.B.A. University of North Texas; Ph.D. University of Kansas
Dr. Lander's areas of interest include real asset valuation techniques and implementation of real options approach to capital budgeting. She is widely published (15 articles) and has made numerous professional presentations. Some of her publications include "Introducing Students to the Real Option Approach to Capital Budgeting" in Journal of the Academy of Business Education (2007); "Strategic Implications of Valuation: Evidence from Valuing Growth Options" in Advances in Strategic Management (2007); "Managing Risk and Uncertainty in Complex Capital Projects" in Quarterly Review of Economics and Finance (2004); "Business Strategy and Real Options in the Context of Large Engineering Projects" in Journal of Global Competitiveness and more.
Jeanmarie Hall 148
Phone: 802.654.2894
Box 38
E-mail: dlander@smcvt.edu
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Roger Putzel
Associate Professor of Business Administration and Accounting
A.B. Yale University; S.M. Massachusetts Institute of Technology; Ph.D. University of California, Los Angeles
Dr. Putzel can't stop innovating. His courses Foundations of Business Administration, Cross-Cultural Management, Leadership, the Future of Management, Power and Politics in Organizations and especially Organizational Behavior never run the same way twice. He runs his management class as an organization using his own book, XB: Manual for a Learning Organization. XB (as a class or training program) has run on three continents; over a dozen other professors have run it.
Dr. Putzel's recent papers include:
Drawing on Peer Evaluation Studies to Manage the Classroom, presented at the European Group for Organisation Studies (EGOS), Ljubljana, Slovenia, July 2-3, 2004 and available on the XB Web site.
Designing management education: Practice what you teach in Simulation & Gaming, vol. 34 (2003): 512-530 (co-author Professor Georges Romme of Tilburg University in the Netherlands).
Sénégal Meditation: thoughts on returning to the country where I served in the Peace Corps 38 years ago (available on the XB Web site).
Jeanmarie Hall 169B
Phone: 802.654.2458
Box 38
E-mail: rputzel@smcvt.edu
Personal Web site: http://academics.smcvt.edu/rputzel
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Dennis Voigt
Associate Professor of Business Administration and Accounting
David LaMarche Chair in Business
B.A., B.S., M.B.A. University of Vermont
Professor Voigt came to Saint Michael's in the fall of 1977 as an adjunct professor. Thirteen years later, after establishing his own firm and working as a senior manager at KPMG Peat Marwick, he became a full-time faculty member. He primarily teaches Financial, Managerial, Fundamentals and Intermediate Accounting along with Management Information Systems. Professor Voigt has taught at the University of Vermont as an adjunct professor as well. He loves living in Vermont, skiing and dabbling with computers.
Jeanmarie Hall 149E
Phone: 802.654.2255
Box 38
E-mail: dvoigt@smcvt.edu
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Norman Walker
Associate Professor of Business Administration and Accounting
B.S. St. Peter's College; M.B.A. New York University
Professor Walker came to Saint Michael's College in 1984. His teaching includes Advanced Accounting, Financial, Managerial and Cost Accounting, and Finance and Business Ethics. He is a C.P.A. with audit, consulting and tax experience in a big four accounting firm and executive level positions in private industry. Professor Walker has also taught accounting courses at the University of Vermont, Rutgers University and St. Elizabeth's College. He loves golf and enjoys living in Vermont.
Jeanmarie Hall 149B
Phone: 802.654.2459
Box 38
E-mail: nwalker@smcvt.edu
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Melinda Jones Micheletto
Assistant Professor of Business Administration and Accounting
B.A Virginia Tech; M.B.A. Ball State University; Ph.D. University of Tennessee
Dr. Micheletto teaches Marketing, Foundations of Business, Sports Marketing, and Consumer Behavior. Her focus is on the "soft or consumer side of marketing."
Dr. Micheletto's dissertation was titled "The Meaning of Sport-Related Events in the Process of Becoming and Being a Fan: A Grounded Theory Study of Highly Committed Sport Fans." Dr. Micheletto is co-author of "The Strategic Use of Celebrity Athlete Endorsers in Sports Illustrated: An Historical Analysis" published in 2000 in Sport Marketing Quarterly, and of "The Strategic Use of Celebrity Athlete Endorsers in Print Media," published in Sports Marketing and Consumer Psychology, Lawrence Erlbaum publishers, 2004. She is co-author of Discovering Marketing: Building Knowledge, Skills and Values, 1st edition, South-Western Publishing, 1993.
Professor Micheletto is actively involved in animal welfare, and serves on the Board at the Humane Society of Chittenden County as a volunteer for EARS (Emergency Animal Rescue Service) and AHA (American Humane Society Association).
Phone: 802.654.2605
Box 38
E-mail: mmicheletto@smcvt.edu
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Tamara Mullarky
Assistant Professor of Business Administration and Accounting
B.A. State University of New York at Plattsburgh; M.B.A. Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute
Jeanmarie Hall 149F
Phone: 802.654.2364
Box 38
E-mail: tmullarky@smcvt.edu
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Karen Popovich
Assistant Professor in the Business and Accounting
B.B.A., M.B.A., D.B.A. Cleveland State University
“Numbers are our friends” has been the introductory statement in Assistant Professor Karen Popovich’s statistics and operations management courses. Dr. Popovich has regularly taught statistics, production/operations management, and management information systems in the undergraduate business program and has taught operations management in the Master of Science in Administration (MSA) program. Effective Fall 2007, Dr. Popovich was hired to a tenure track position. In her new role, she will be a part of the faculty teaching management/organizational behavior, business policy, and other management/quantitative elective and required courses. In December 2008, Dr. Popovich earned her doctorate in business administration from Cleveland State University, Cleveland, Ohio. Her dissertation research involved strategic enrollment management and was titled “Strategic enrollment management in higher education: A multivariate and nonlinear optimization methodology to enroll the first year class.”
By taking a hands-on approach Karen works in small groups and often individually with students in and out of class. She attempts to bring as much “real-world” experience as possible to theory-based courses. In fact, it is not unusual to see Professor Popovich’s students on campus collecting primary research or flying paper airplanes to develop quality control charts. “We take our objectives very seriously, but we also try to have fun.” In her free time, you might see her “falling gracefully down the mountain” at Bolton Valley or Smuggs. In Spring 2008, Karen will be accompanying SMC students to Burgundy, France for the 3 credit Culture and Society in Medieval Burgundy course. She currently serves as the Academic Mentor for the Women's Ice Hockey Team, as a number of the players are Business and Accounting majors.
Jeanmarie Hall 154
Phone: 802.654.2467
Fax: 802.654.2478
Box 38
E-mail: kpopovich@smcvt.edu
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Paul Olsen
Instructor of Business Administration and Accounting
B.A. University of Vermont; M.S.A. Saint Michael's College; Ed.D. University of Vermont
Dr. Olsen joined the graduate program in administration in 1994 and is currently the associate director. He teaches Foundations of Business Administration, Eperiential Portfolio, and Managerial Leadership in the undergraduate program, and Human Resource Management, Effective Written Communication and Thesis Seminar in the graduate program. Dr. Olsen was previously employed as Employee Benefits Manager and Assistant Director of Human Resources at the College.
Jeanmarie Hall 169C
Phone: 802.654.2661
Box 38
E-mail: polsen@smcvt.edu
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Joanne Scott
Instructor of Business Administration and Accounting
B.A. Middlebury College; M.B.A. Amos Tuck School (Dartmouth)
Ms. Scott joined the Saint Michael's community in the fall of 1991 as a professor in the Master of Science in Administration program; the following fall she began teaching undergraduate courses. Her fields of expertise include corporate finance and international equity. She worked at Morgan Stanley for twelve years in cities such as Tokyo and New York and was vice president of the firm when she left. Most frequently, Ms. Scott teaches Foundations of Business, Business Policy, Financial Policies, International Finance, Investments and Thesis Seminar.
Jeanmarie Hall 146
Phone: 802.654.2241
Box 38
E-mail: jscott@smcvt.edu
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John Ambrose
Visiting Assistant Professor of Business Administration and Accounting
B.Sc. University of Toronto; M.B.A. University of Western Ontario; M.Sc. Princeton University
John's career blends engineering, financial services and academics. After working in refining at Imperial Oil, he analyzed energy companies ranked as a leading brokerage analyst. Later as Vice President at Citibank Canada, John structured transactions in the energy and pipeline industries. As head of the Investment Department of MD Private Trust, John managed $2 billion for Canadian doctors.
Today, John runs Ambrose Investment Counsel Ltd. (www.ambroseinvestment.com) to serve individuals and institutions in the medical and academic worlds in Toronto.
At the University of Toronto, John taught investments and served on Governing Council. Now he serves as Honorary Chairman of the Banting Research Foundation. He is a frequent speaker to universities on investments.
At Saint Michael's John teaches courses on corporate finance and business strategy. When not at work, he loves to golf and take portraits.
Phone: 802.654.2608
Box 38
E-mail: jambrose@smcvt.edu
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Joanne LaBrake Muehlberger
Internship Director, Business Administration and Accounting
B.A. Trinity College; M.Ed. Saint Michael’s College
Ms. Muehlberger began working at Saint Michael's in 1984 as co-director of the Center for Organizational Development. As a corporate consultant she conducted management and leadership training programs for companies such as IDX Corporation, Ben & Jerry's, Mylan Technologies, IBM Corporation and the Champlain Water District. A faculty member in the Master of Science in Administration graduate program, Ms. Muehlberger teaches courses in Managerial Presentation, Professional Effectiveness, Team Development, and Women in Leadership. She is currently the Academic Internship Program Director. When not in the classroom, you can find her on the ski slopes or the Burlington bike path, depending on the season.
Klein Hall 113
Phone: 802.654.2314
Box 273
E-mail: jlabrake@smcvt.edu
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Steve Doyon
Visiting Instructor of Business Administration and Accounting
Jeanmarie Hall 169D
E-mail: sdoyon@smcvt.edu