Kent State College of Business Administration Welcomes New Faculty Members for 2017-2018

KENT, Ohio - Sept. 5, 2017 - PRLog -- The Kent State College of Business Administration will welcome three new faculty members at the start of the 2017-2018 academic year. Kelly Blay, Jessica (Osgood) Buchanan, Ph.D., Rouzbeh Razavi, Ph.D. will join the College.

"We are pleased to welcome three faculty members to the Kent State College of Business Administration," said College of Business Administration Dean Deborah F. Spake, Ph.D. "Each of these faculty members offer extensive expertise in their respective disciplines and will help the College continue to move forward in the areas of research and student learning."

Blay joins the College as instructor in the Department of Marketing having previously served as an adjunct professor in the College of Business Administration and in executive roles at Centurylink, EMBARQ and Sprint. She also works as a management consultant for a number of organizations.

"Working with students in the College of Business Administration at Kent State is very rewarding. I enjoy their enthusiasm and inquisitive nature. The College of Business Administration is working to transform lives and communities through the power of discovery, learning and creative expression and it's exciting to be a part of the team," Blay said.

Buchanan will join the Department of Accounting as assistant professor at the Kent campus. She received a Ph.D. in management with a major in accounting from the University of Massachusetts Amherst.

She is a CPA and previously worked as a senior associate at Johnson Lambert & Co, LLC. Buchanan's field of research focuses on judgment and decision-making in accounting, managers' voluntary disclosures and linguistics. This fall, she will teach Corporate Accounting I.

"I am thrilled to be joining Kent State in the fall. The culture in the Department of Accounting is exactly what I was looking for – a focus on teaching excellence and student experience balanced with a productive research culture. I have felt welcomed from the first time I came to campus for my interview. Kent already feels like home to me."

Razavi will join the Department of Management and Information Systems as assistant professor at the Kent campus. He earned a Ph.D. in computer science from the University of Essex.

Razavi has received numerous awards and honors for his extensive experience. He has more than 60 journal articles, conferences and presentations, has received 30 patents and has held multiple teaching and research positions. His research focuses on next generation networks, machine learning and predictive algorithms as well as enhancing credit scores and risk models. This fall, Razavi will teach Analytics for Decision Making and Business Analytics.

"When I visited KSU for the first time, I was immediately impressed by the level of energy and the diversity of research activities of faculty members at the College of Business Administration," Razavi said.  "I am very much looking forward to starting my appointment."

Kent State College of Business Administration

Kent State University's College of Business Administration is among the fewer than 1% of business schools worldwide to receive dual AACSB accreditation in both business and accounting. The College enrolls more than 4,200 students and has 85 full-time faculty.

The College grants undergraduate through Ph.D. degrees and is one of only three public business colleges in Ohio to offer a comprehensive Ph.D. program. The MBA program is offered in-person and online in an accelerated format. In addition, the College offers an Executive MBA program. The M.S. in Accounting and M.A. in Economics are specialized master's degrees for those seeking advanced study in these disciplines. The College also offers a Master of Science degree in Business Analytics (MSBA) that spans all industries and organizations. The college boasts 10 undergraduate majors, 13 minors and a Professional Sales Certificate program.

The Kent State College of Business Administration is ranked as a top business college in Ohio and undergraduate programs are ranked 45^th in the U.S. in 2016 by Bloomberg Businessweek based on an employer survey of how well schools prepared students for jobs. In addition, The College is ranked as one of the nation's Best Business Schools by Princeton Review, is ranked Tier One for both MBA and Executive MBA programs in North America by CEO Magazine and ranked by the Sales Education Foundation (SEF) for Professional Sales Education. The College is committed to sustainability as an Advanced Principles for Responsible Management Education (PRME) signatory and is recognized by the Sales Education Foundation as a top university for professional sales education.

Media Contact:

Joni Bowen, Public Relations and Media Specialist, (330) 672-1279, cell: (330) 221-0637, jbowen1@kent.edu