Bijan Fazlollahi
An associate professor of international business and computer information systems, Bijan Fazlollahi is the project director for four Georgia State partnership programs with universities in Azerbaijan and the Republic of Georgia, which are establishing MBA and BBA programs and training faculty. A native of the region, Fazlollahi has received honorary doctorates from Khazar University in Baku, Azerbaijan, and from Georgian Technical University in Tbilisi, Georgia. He has received a Fulbright scholar award to lecture in the former USSR and has taught in Poland, Azerbaijan and the former Soviet Republic of Georgia. With more than $1 million in U.S. government funding for university partnership and faculty/student exchange projects, Fazlollahi has teaching interests in computer information systems, decision support systems, database systems, data warehousing, data mining and international business. He received a PhD in business administration in 1984 and an MBA in operations management in 1967, both from Syracuse University. In 1994, he completed a certificate in international business at the University of South Carolina.
David Bruce
Known in the halls of the Robinson College of Business as "Mr. Latin America," David Bruce is a professor in the Institute of International Business. An expert in emerging economies in Latin America, particularly Argentina and Brazil, Bruce received his academic training at the University of Minnesota, the University of the Republic (Uruguay) and the University of Michigan. He was a Fulbright scholar and lecturer for the U.S. Information Agency. He has served as president of the Georgia Committee of the Partners of the Americas, which coordinates relations between Georgia and its sister state of Pernambuco in Brazil. Currently, he is chairman of the Brazilian-American Chamber of Commerce of Georgia. Prior to joining the RCB, Bruce was director of international program development for the Ivan Allen College at Georgia Tech, where he taught courses in management and international affairs. He also has served as coordinator of faculty internationalization for the Council for International Education of the University System of Georgia.
Kamal El Sheshai
Kamal El Sheshai is director at the RCB of a joint MBA program with Cairo University. With MBA and PhD degrees from Indiana University, El Sheshai is forging links between Georgia State and Egyptian business. His areas of specialization include business forecasting, time series analysis and statistical analysis, and his research interests focus on the adoption of information technology in developing countries, corporate earnings forecasts and classificaion models. El Sheshai has served as a consultant for Wachovia Bank, the Central Bank of Egypt, Georgia Power and BellSouth.
Fenwick Huss
With a worldwide network of business contacts, H. Fenwick Huss, associate dean and professor of accountancy, is the man RCB colleagues seek out when they want to arrange exchanges, trips and projects in countries overseas. His contacts range from Europe to Asia and Africa. Currently, Huss is project director for a capacity-building partnership between Georgia State and the University of Venda in South Africa as well as co-director of a $5 million grant from the U.S. Agency for International Development to develop an institute for business training and skills development in Sub-Saharan Africa. An expert in international accounting and auditing, Huss has directed federally funded business development projects in Russia and has lectured extensively in the Peoplešs Republic of China. He is a visiting professor at Sorbonne University, Paris.
Karen Loch
Having lived and worked overseas, Karen Loch is director of the Institute of International Business, where she provides guidance for program development, partner institutions and professional and executive development offerings. Loch received her PhD in management information systems and an MA in French language and literature from the University of Nebraska Lincoln. With research interests in international IT transfer, social and ethical concerns of information systems, and global e-commerce, she is the principal investigator of a grant funded by the National Science Foundation that is examining information technology transfer to Egypt. Loch has published in a variety of international business journals, written a book on IT education and served as editor for important journals in her fields. She was the first vice president of international relations for the Information Resources Management Association, where she established a network of worldwide research colleagues in 25 countries. She is a member of the Phi Beta Delta Honor Society for International Scholars, Atlanta Women in International Trade, the French-American Chamber of Commerce and other community organizations.
Richard Welke
For the past four years, Richard Welke, director
of the eCommerce Institute, has focused his efforts on establishing a research, education, entrepreneurial incubator and community outreach facility in e-commerce at the RCB. Working with nine top international business schools, he developed the Global eManagement (GEM) program and consortium, of which he is the current director. Previously, Welke served as professor and chair of the RCBšs Computer Information Systems Department, which he helped develop into one of the premier
IS departments in the United States. His international activity stretches back to 1975, when he was a founding member of the International Federation of Information Processing group on
IS and the organization. He was a founder of the Institute of Management Sciencešs College on IS and the first editor of its MIS Interfaces. He also is a founder of the International Conference on Information Systems. Welke has held academic appointments at Erasmus University, the University of Toronto, Tilburg University, SUNY at Buffalo and McMaster University.
