Faculty - Human Resources and Employment Relations
Lead Faculty
Paul F. Clark, PhD
Dr. Clark is head and professor in the Department of Labor Studies and Employment Relations. He also holds an appointment as professor in the Department of Health Policy and Administration. His research interests include employment relations in several major American industries: collective bargaining, the American labor movement, and the globalization of the labor market. He has worked with numerous local and national unions on research projects and regularly serves as a speaker/workshop instructor for professional development programs for unions and employers.
Clark is an internationally recognized scholar in his field. He is the author of four books, including Building More Effective Unions, published by Cornell ILR Press in 2001. His research has also appeared in the leading scholarly journals in industrial and labor relations and applied psychology. Clark serves as the director of the master's degree program in human resources and employment relations at Penn State and regularly teaches undergraduate and graduate courses on industrial relations, labor law, and labor and globalization. He holds a master's degree from the Cornell ILR School and a doctorate from the University of Pittsburgh.
Program Faculty
- Antone Aboud
- Akram Al Ariss
- John Austin
- Donald Bauman
- George Bell
- Charlene Binder
- Jackie Brova
- Jerry Carbo
- Joseph Costello
- Nicholas J. Enoch
- Elaine Farndale
- John Gerak
- Lonnie Golden
- Todd Hershbine
- Tom Hogan
- Renate Klass
- Jane Moyer
- Robert Ostrov
- Mark Price
- Sumita Raghuram
- Julie Sadler
- Mark Schnurman
- Elizabeth Scott
- Rex Simpson
- Glenn Stephens
- James Stewart
- Paul Whitehead
- Barbara Wiens-Tuers
- Billie S. Willits
Antone Aboud, PhD
Antone Aboud received his PhD from Cornell University's School of Industrial and Labor Relations, and a BA in government from Cornell. Subsequently he served in increasingly responsible positions as a faculty member at State University of New York (SUNY) at Potsdam and SUNY Institute of Technology at Utica-Rome, and as director of the Graduate School of Industrial Relations at St. Francis College in Loretto, Pennsylvania. He also served as a labor arbitrator and mediator.
Since 1985 he has worked full-time as a consultant, developing effective risk management and investigatory policies and practices as well as management, leadership and supervisory training. He has authored training programs that have been taught in more than 40 states and Washington, D.C. Most recently he has focused considerable effort in helping organizations address issues related to organizational culture, particularly their ability to adopt changes in culture that are truly sustainable. Additionally, Aboud has specialized in working with long-term care entities in the public, private, and not-for-profit settings.
Akram Al Ariss, PhD
Akram Al Ariss earned his PhD from Norwich Business School–University of East Anglia, UK and lectures at Champagne School of Management, ESC Troyes in France. His research focuses on international human resource management (IHRM). He has written several book chapters, book reviews, and journal articles—in English, French, and Arabic—on interdisciplinary issues related to IHRM, including articles in British Journal of Management, Thunderbird International Business Review, Career Development International, Work Employment and Society, and Personnel Review. Akram has also served as co-editor of special issues of the Journal of Management Development and International Journal of Business and Globalisation on themes in IHRM. He presently serves as an editorial board member for Equality, Diversity, and Inclusion and Journal of World Business.
John Austin, PhD
John Austin is a principal at Decision Strategies International (DSI). Prior to joining DSI, John helped launch two companies based on his research: Aptient Research and Training, and YourWebView, LLC. He has taught on the faculty at the Smeal College of Business at Penn State and The University of Washington, and has taught executives for The Wharton School, Georgetown University, and Duke Corporate Education.
Dr. Austin has a BA in economics from The Johns Hopkins University and a PhD in management from Boston College. He is a thought leader in the areas of organizational change implementation, team leadership, and strategic planning under conditions of high uncertainty. His research on knowledge-based decision-making teams is widely cited in academic literature as is his work on the strategic actions of internal change agents.
Dr. Austin is an award-winning teacher with experience teaching MBA students and practicing executives. He has worked in a number of blended learning formats, developing and delivering learning solutions with a mix of classroom and virtual delivery for corporate clients. John has conducted training on change management, scenario planning, team performance, strategic decision making, and strategy execution. His experience with individuals at all levels of organizations enables him to translate broad strategies and concepts into actionable, engaging programs.
Dr. Austin's research has been published in leading management and applied psychology journals including Journal of Applied Behavioral Science, Journal of Applied Psychology, and Organization Science, as well as practice-oriented publications including HR Magazine and The OD Practitioner. John's work has been recognized with three Best Paper Awards from the Academy of Management and has been mentioned in a number of media outlets including CNN, The Wall Street Journal, and Barron’s.
Donald Bauman, JD
Donald Bauman began his career as an engineer after earning a bachelor's degree in chemical engineering from Penn State in 1967. He earned his JD in 1974 from the University of Maryland while working and raising a family. A course in labor law inspired him to pursue a career in the field of labor and employment law, where he spent the next 35 years of his career. He spent most of his career at Bethlehem Steel, where his duties centered on arbitration, labor negotiations, and matters of the National Labor Relations Board. After retiring from Bethlehem Steel, Bauman served as an arbitrator and is now a lecturer for the World Campus.
George Bell, MSc
George Bell is currently a visiting lecturer for the Faculty of Business at London South Bank University (LSBU) and a visiting lecturer in HRM and dissertation supervisor with Warwick University WMG, UK. Formerly, he served as director for postgraduate management programs in the School of Business Computing and Information Management (BCIM) at LSBU and was also the course director of the MBA and the masters and certificate in international management. George Bell has served as a tutor for many distance learning programs in the fields of HRM and business management throughout the UK and Ireland, including Open University Business School, University Of Leicester, University of Essex, and Henley Business School.
George studied at Open University Business School in the UK. Until his retirement, he was a fellow of the Higher Education Academy, the Royal Society for the encouragement of Arts, Manufactures and Commerce (RSA), and a member the Chartered Management Institute and the Institute of Business Consulting in the UK. Currently, he is a member of British Universities Industrial Relations Association (BUIRA), and has also been involved as a joint partner in a small consultancy, e-Nable, which focuses on providing online learning and solutions for private institutions engaging in the UK HE sector.
Charlene Binder
Charlene Binder is an accomplished leader and human resources professional whose career includes top roles at Fortune 500 and leading consumer packaged goods companies, such as Hershey, Dannon, and Unilever, where she was instrumental in implementing and driving positive change to enhance profitability, sales growth, and employee engagement on a global scale.
For the past two and a half years, Charlene was the Chief People Officer for The Hershey Company where she was responsible for global human resources, including talent and organization capability, total rewards, compliance and employee systems, values and culture, corporate communications, corporate social responsibility, and flight operations. Most notable among her accomplishments was the transformation of the human resources organization where she redesigned the roles, governance, technology, and overall human resources culture on a global scale.
Jackie Brova, MBA
Jackie Brova is executive vice president, human resources at Church & Dwight, Co. Inc., a $2.5 billion consumer products company headquartered in Princeton, New Jersey. Jackie’s more than 30-year career spans three industries (mining, steel, and consumer products) and she has worked in both union (UMWA, USWA, Teamsters, IAM) and non-union settings. Her experience includes support of acquisitions, divestitures, shutdowns, and start-ups and encompasses all aspects of the human resource function. In her current role at Church & Dwight, she has corporate-wide responsibility for global HR matters. Jackie received her BA in labor studies from Penn State and her MBA from Moravian College, in Bethlehem, Pennsylvania.
Jerry Carbo, PhD, JD
Jerry Carbo is an associate professor of management at the Grove College of Business at Shippensburg University and teaches courses in business and society, labor relations, and employment law. Dr. Carbo has been an adjunct professor in the MHRER program since 2009. His research interests include socially sustainable business systems, workplace bullying, and union revitalization, and has published articles in several academic journals, including Journal of Strategic Information Systems, the Journal of Workplace Rights, and WorkingUSA.
Dr. Carbo received his PhD from Cornell University School of Industrial and Labor Relations and his JD from The Dickinson School of Law of Penn State. Dr. Carbo is also a practicing attorney in the state of West Virginia. Prior to entering academia, he worked as an employee relations manager and human resources manager in both unionized and non-union settings.
Joseph Costello, MS, JD
Joseph J. Costello is the practice group leader of Morgan Lewis's Labor and Employment Practice and Morgan Lewis Resources, the firm's workplace training, employment audit, and counseling enterprise. He is responsible for the strategic and day-to-day management of these operations across each of the firm's offices. Within his legal practice, Joseph represents employers in a broad range of employment litigation matters and administrative agency proceedings, and provides counseling in connection with human resources and benefit-related decisions.
Joseph regularly handles complex class actions and litigation involving multiple parties. These matters have included ERISA actions challenging the prudence of benefit plan investment decisions, the legality of plan design decisions, and the adequacy of fiduciary disclosures; employment discrimination cases under Title VII, the ADEA, and state law; and trade secret and noncompete agreement disputes.
Nicholas J. Enoch, MBA, JD
Nicholas J. Enoch specializes in labor and employment law. He earned his BA in labor studies from Penn State and JD and MBA from the University of Dayton, Ohio. In addition to teaching, Enoch is a partner with the Phoenix/Denver/El Paso law firm of Lubin & Enoch, P.C., which focuses on the representation of labor unions throughout the Southwest. Enoch routinely appears before arbitrators as well as all courts and administrative agencies in matters arising under traditional (e.g., National Labor Relations Act, Railway Labor Act, Labor-Management Reporting and Disclosure Act) and non-traditional labor and employment law. He frequently advises and represents clients in the areas of discrimination, wrongful discharge, and wage and hour litigation. In addition to a traditional labor side practice, Enoch has an active utility regulation practice focusing on the energy, telecommunications, and water industries and he regularly serves as an arbitrator in cases not involving labor unions. In 2010, he received an appointment as a Judge Pro Tempore to the Maricopa County Superior Court wherein he handles civil and settlement-related matters for the fifth largest trial court system in the United States.
Enoch is admitted to practice in Arizona, Colorado, Texas, and numerous federal courts including the U.S. Supreme Court. His law firm is listed in Martindale-Hubbell's Bar Register of Preeminent Lawyers and he achieved an "AV" rating after only eight years. He joined the Penn State faculty in early 2010 and has taught both HRER 501 and LER 401.
Elaine Farndale, PhD
Elaine Farndale is a visiting assistant professor in labor studies and employment relations and an affiliate of the Department of Human Resource Studies at Tilburg University in the Netherlands. Farndale earned her doctorate in human resource management from Cranfield University School of Management in the United Kingdom. Her areas of specialization and research include international and comparative HRM; the power, professionalism, and roles of the HR department; HRM and firm performance; change management and HRM; eHRM and new HR delivery mechanisms; and HRM and employee engagement. She has presented numerous papers at international conferences and has published articles and chapters in both the practitioner and academic press, including the Journal of World Business, Human Resource Management Journal, and International Journal of Human Resource Management. Dr. Farndale has also worked as an HR specialist for several years.
John Gerak, JD
John Gerak is a shareholder/attorney with the law firm of Ogletree, Deakins, Nash, Smoak & Stewart, P.C., and has represented employers nationally in a broad range of labor and employment issues. He has litigated single-plaintiff employment cases, as well as class action discrimination and wage and hour cases. John has extensive experience presenting seminars and highly-focused custom training in all major areas of labor and employment law. He spent time on loan as in-house counsel for a national transportation and logistics company. He teaches employment law for human resource practitioners for World Campus HRER program, is a member of the Cleveland Employment Law Inn of Court, a member of the Board of Directors of the Federal Bar Association in the Northern District of Ohio Chapter, and a member of the Penn State APG Labor Studies and Employment Relations Board. In 2010, he was recognized by Ohio Super Lawyers magazine as a "Rising Star." Prior to attending law school, he played five years in the National Football League. John is a 1992 graduate of Penn State and served as co-captain of the Nittany Lion football team in 1992.
Lonnie Golden, PhD
Lonnie Golden is professor of economics at Penn State Abington and affiliate of labor studies and employment relations. Lonnie received his doctorate in economics from the University of Illinois-Urbana, with emphasis in the fields of labor economics, macroeconomics, economic history, and history of economic thought. His current research interests include labor markets and working conditions, including work scheduling, overtime work, worker health and happiness, workplace flexibility, work-life and work-school conflict as well as the Fair Labor Standards Act, and various nonstandard employment arrangements.
Lonnie has published several journal articles and book chapters, and is co-editor of Working Time: International Trends, Theory and Policy Perspectives from Routledge Press and Nonstandard Work: The Nature and Challenge of Changing Employment Arrangements from Cornell University Press.
Todd Hershbine, MS
Todd Hershbine is a human resources and administrative services executive at Minitab in State College, Pennsylvania, where he oversees several departments and ensures that corporate policies complement Minitab's unique culture. Minitab's unique corporate culture, which places great value and responsibility on employees, is a major factor in the company's success. In 2009, Minitab was named to the Society for Human Resource Management's list of the 25 best small and medium companies to work for in America. Todd also serves on Minitab's nine-member executive committee.
Before joining Minitab in 1998, he worked as a senior compensation/employment analyst and as employment/training coordinator at Penn State. He has been an adjunct lecturer for Penn State's labor studies department since 1998, teaching strategic human resources and compensation, and has been an adjunct lecturer for Smeal Business College since 2009.
Hershbine earned a bachelor's degree in general arts and sciences from Penn State in 1992, and earned his master's degree in industrial relations and human resources from Saint Francis College in 1994. He is a member of The Society for Human Resource Management.
Tom Hogan, PhD
Dr. Tom Hogan is a professor of practice in the Department of Labor Studies and Employment Relations at Penn State. His research and teaching interests include global human resources, business ethics, corporate social responsibility, sustainable business development, strategic staffing and training, and global leadership development. He teaches undergraduate and graduate courses online and in-residence.
Dr. Hogan has 30 years of experience as a practitioner and has served in leadership and management positions in higher education administration, the corporate sector, and state government. Prior to joining the department, Dr. Hogan held the position of Interim Associate Provost, Office of Faculty Affairs at the University of Maryland University College (UMUC). Prior to working for UMUC, he spent 23 years with AT&T in a variety of assignments including sales, sales support, business development, marketing, and human resources. In his last assignment at AT&T, Dr. Hogan served as Director of Strategic Talent Acquisition and Retention, Workforce Diversity, and EEO/AA. Prior to AT&T, he worked for the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania.
Dr. Hogan currently serves as a member of the U.S. Technical Advisory Group of the American National Standards Institute (ANSI). In this role, he is involved in developing and representing the U.S. position on global HR standards to the International Organization for Standardization (ISO). In November 2011, he was elected to represent ANSI as a member of the U.S. Delegation at the first ISO Technical Committee 260 Human Resource Management plenary meeting.
Dr. Hogan holds a doctor of management degree from the University of Maryland University College and two master's degrees from Penn State, in public administration and regional planning. Dr. Hogan is a faculty adviser for the SHRM PSU student chapter. He holds certifications from the HR Certification Institute as Senior Professional in Human Resources (SPHR) and Global Professional in Human Resources (GPHR).
Renate Klass, JD
Renate Klass is a lecturer in labor studies and employment relations at Penn State. A graduate of the University of Michigan Law School, she has practiced law in California and Michigan, and for the past 30 years has devoted her practice to public and private sector labor, employment, discrimination, and benefit law. She is admitted to the U.S. Supreme Court as well as numerous other federal and state courts and has lectured at conferences sponsored by the Pacific Coast Labor & Employment Law Conference; AFL-CIO Lawyers Coordinating Committee; the University of Michigan Institute of Labor and Industrial Relations Labor Studies Center; the Michigan Employment Relations Commission; and the Michigan Institute of Continuing Legal Education. She has taught human resources and employment relations as part of the master of professional studies (MPS) in human resources and employment relations offered by the World Campus since January, 2009.
Jane Moyer, MS
Jane Moyer is the global head of HR, Operations, for Maersk Line in Copenhagen, Denmark. Maersk Line is the largest shipping and transport company in the world, and one of the largest employers in Scandinavia. In this role Jane is responsible for all HR activities worldwide related to Maersk Line’s ports, vessels, supply chain, and sustainability and reliability teams.
Prior to Maersk, Jane worked at Starbucks in Seattle, Washington, and Canada, including roles in organizational development, strategic HR planning for more than 20,000 employees and the administration of savings, stock and pension plans. She was also the vice president, HR and Shared Services, of Kendall-Jackson Wine Estates and Jackson Family Farms in California and was responsible for all their HR functions. She has experience in organization design and compensation from her time at iQuantic in San Francisco, California, and has also worked in HR roles for Xerox Business Services. She completed her graduate work at Hewlett-Packard, helping to design organizational structures and systems to enable effective change management.
Jane has degrees from Penn State (including studies at the University of Cologne, Germany) and Cornell and has presented and lectured nationally on issues of compensation, equity and stock, turnover and retention, organizational agility, and justice in the workplace. She has been a featured executive in numerous publications including The Advocate, Fast Company, and the Chronicle of Higher Education. Jane is a member of the International Guild of Sommeliers and serves on several non-profit boards. She lives in Copenhagen.
Robert Ostrov, MBA, JD
Robert Ostrov is currently the senior vice president of human resources for Central Parking System, Inc. Mr. Ostrov has previously served as senior vice president, chief human resources officer at the former ArvinMeritor, Inc.; vice president, human resources and labor relations of FedEx Corporation; senior vice president, human resources of True Value Company; and senior vice president of human resources at GE. Ostrov most recently served in a senior HR role with the United States Coast Guard/Department of Homeland Security. He has a bachelor of science in labor and industrial relations from Cornell University, New York; an MBA in finance and strategic planning from Roosevelt University, Chicago, Illinois; and a JD from Chicago-Kent College of Law in Illinois.
Mark Price, PhD
Mark Price has been a labor economist since 2004. He received his doctorate in economics from the University of Utah, where his dissertation, "State Prevailing Wage Laws and Construction Labor Markets," was recognized with an Honorable Mention in the 2006 Thomas A. Kochan and Stephen R. Sleigh Best Dissertation Awards Competition sponsored by the Labor and Employment Relations Association. His areas of research include income inequality, trends in employment and compensation, the construction industry, and low-wage labor markets. Mark's work has included reports profiling the state of women in the Pennsylvania workforce, and a nationally-recognized report tracking the educational qualifications of the early childhood workforce in the United States.
Sumita Raghuram, PhD
Sumita Raghuram received her doctorate in human resources management from the University of Minnesota and went on to join the faculty in the business school at Fordham University, New York from 1993 to 2005. Her research interests focus on virtual organizations and international human resource management. Her international HR research has been published as book chapters and in the International Journal of Human Resource Management. Her research on virtual work, published in journals such as Journal of Management and Organization Science, examines outcomes such as productivity, organizational commitment, and identity. Dr. Raghuram is currently engaged in two research projects: one examining the impact of human resource practices on globally dispersed virtual organizations and the other project examining the impact of call center work on the identification of call agents. She occasionally provides HR consulting to IT companies in India. Dr. Raghuram is also the area editor for OB/HRM in the Journal of Asia Business Studies.
Julie Sadler, PhD
Julie Sadler is an assistant professor in the Department of Labor Studies and Employment Relations at Penn State. She received both her master's degree and doctorate in industrial and labor relations from Cornell University. Prior to joining the LSER faculty, she was a faculty member in the Leadership Program in the School of Urban Affairs and Public Policy at the University of Delaware from 2006 to 2008.
Her current research interests focus on the dynamic linkages between perceptions of union leadership, union attitudes (e.g. union commitment, union satisfaction, and union instrumentality), workplace characteristics (e.g. job satisfaction), and members' voluntary participation in union activities. Specific areas of emphasis include research on industrial relations and leadership development in the health care and education arenas. More broadly, her teaching and research interests include leadership and leadership development in volunteer-based, social justice-oriented contexts including labor unions, community-based organizations, and other non-profit entities.
Mark Schnurman, JD
Mark Schnurman is a human resources/training executive with extensive experience in designing, establishing, leading and improving performance and supporting high-growth environments. Mark has a proven track record of delivering measurable results. Currently, he is chief human resources officer for GFI Capital Resources Group, a financial services and real estate company in New York City. Prior to that, he held leadership positions at Wachovia and Morgan Stanley. Mark holds a BA in labor studies from Penn State, a JD from Ohio State and has taken numerous graduate-level courses in organizational development. In his spare time, he is author of a business advice column for the Star-Ledger in New Jersey.
Elizabeth Scott, PhD
Dr. Elizabeth Scott is a professor of business administration at Eastern Connecticut State University and coordinator of its master of science in organizational management program. She is the managing editor of Business Ethics Quarterly and serves on the board of directors of the International Association for Business and Society. She has published work in the Journal of Business Ethics, Business Ethics Quarterly, Business & Society, and the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, as well as in edited volumes. Her research interest is in individual and organizational moral values and decision making in human resource management settings.
After completing her undergraduate degree at Brown University, Dr. Scott began her career working in HR management positions in public and non-profit organizations in Atlanta, Georgia. She studied for her MBA in industrial relations from Georgia State University while still working, and then, ten years later, left her position of personnel director of the Georgia Department of Labor to pursue her doctorate at The Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania. Dr. Scott taught in the labor studies program at Penn State for several years, and has since moved to Connecticut, where she currently resides and teaches.
Rex Simpson, JD
Rex Simpson is a 1970 Penn State graduate in labor studies and a 1975 graduate of the University of Pittsburgh School of Law. Shortly after graduating from law school, he spent nearly five years as an attorney with the NLRB at its Pittsburgh regional office. Following that, he entered private industry where he has worked ever since. Rex currently serves as vice president of administration for Yokohama Tire Corporation in Orange County, California. At YTC, he is responsible for all HR, labor relations, legal, and facilities management.
Rex's experiences include serving as an in-house labor lawyer and in a wide variety of human resource positions with heavy emphasis in labor and employee relations. During his career, he negotiated contracts with the former Retail Clerks, the Teamsters, the United Auto Workers, and most recently, with the Steelworkers. He has also managed organizational campaigns, presented arbitration cases, and along with outside counsel, worked on a variety of employment law matters. Rex is a licensed labor lawyer admitted in both Pennsylvania and California.
Glenn Stephens, PhD, JD
Glenn Stephens graduated from Millersville University in Pennsylvania with a bachelor of arts in political science and went on to earn M.A., C.Phil., and PhD degrees from the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA). His PhD dissertation applied game theoretical and rational choice models to historical cases of worker collective action. While a graduate student at UCLA, he taught political science courses at the California State University, Northridge. Following graduate school, he was visiting professor in the politics department at Pomona College for a year and a visiting instructor with the political science department at UCLA for three years.
In 2000, Glenn earned his JD from UC Berkeley's Boalt Hall School of Law. After graduating from law school, he worked for private law firms in pensions and benefits and labor law, and also worked in government, serving as a counsel to current NLRB Chair Wilma Liebman. Stephens published many decisions and dissents while at the NLRB, including portions of the Democratic dissent in the high profile Brown University decision, which was widely quoted in the press. While with NLRB, he also served as a shop steward, grievance chair, and negotiator for his federal sector union, processing grievance-arbitrations, mediations and collective bargaining. Since leaving the Board, he has taught labor law, employment law, and workplace dispute resolution with LSER.
James Stewart, PhD
James Stewart is a professor of labor studies and industrial relations, African and African American Studies, and management and organization at Penn State, and a former vice provost for educational equity and director of the Black Studies Program. His research interests include diversity management, globalization, and Africana studies.
James has written several books in his areas of interest, including African-Americans and Post-Industrial Labor Markets, Managing Diversity in the Military, and African Americans in U.S. Labor Markets, and has also published more than 60 articles in economics and black studies professional journals. He is a former editor of The Review of Black Political Economy, past-president of the National Economic Association, and past-president of the National Council for Black Studies. James received his doctorate in economics from the University of Notre Dame in 1976.
Paul Whitehead, MD, JD
Paul Whitehead is a professor of practice specializing in labor and employment law. He earned his BS in labor studies and MS in industrial relations from the University of Wisconsin. He is also an honors graduate of Harvard Law School. Whitehead practiced labor, bankruptcy, and benefits law for almost 30 years for the United Steelworkers in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, serving as general counsel from 2001–09. His career has included, in addition to years of collective bargaining, the representation of workers and retirees affected by corporate restructurings, foreign trade disputes, and the design of benefit programs. He joined the Penn State faculty in early 2009 and offers courses in both the School of Labor Studies and Employment Relations as well as the Penn State Dickinson School of Law.
Barbara Wiens-Tuers, PhD
Barbara Wiens-Tuers is an associate professor of economics at Penn State Altoona with affiliate status in the labor studies and employment relations program at University Park. She received her doctorate from University of California-Riverside (UCR) in 1998. Barbara is currently the head of the Division of Business and Engineering at Penn State Altoona. She has published articles in various academic journals and authored parts of four books. She was chair of the Penn State Altoona Faculty Senate in 2005–06 and currently serves on the Penn State University Faculty Senate. She served on the steering committee for the Teaching and Learning Consortium at Penn State Altoona from 2002 to 2009, is active in assessment efforts university-wide, has organized regional conferences devoted to pedagogy and teaching strategies, and is a co-organizer of an international business and economics conference series held in Pacific Rim countries. Barbara is also active in the community through membership on the city Planning Commission and involvement in the community garden project.
Billie S. Willits, PhD
Dr. Billie S. Willits is the former associate vice president for human resources at the University and is currently the associate vice president for strategic initiatives at Penn State. She holds faculty appointments in the Department of Labor Studies and Employment Relations and in the Smeal College of Business. She has been responsible for the management of all aspects of human resources at Penn State, including training and development, employment and compensation, benefits, wellness, workers' compensation, occupational medicine, and labor relations. She has developed and conducted seminars in strategic planning, leadership, and numerous other human resources areas. Earlier in her career she worked in human resources for the University of the District of Columbia, the University of Massachusetts, and the University of Cincinnati. Dr. Willits holds both a master's degree and a doctorate from the University of Iowa.