Chatham University’s Business & Entrepreneurship (B&E) Department is pleased to welcome two new faculty members to the Data Science Analytics and Management Information Systems concentrations this fall.

Joining the Business and Entrepreneurship Department as Assistant Professor in Data Science Analytics is Dr. Sergio Butkewitsch. Alongside a Ph.D. from the Federal University of Uberlandia in Brazil, he has over 15 years of experience as an executive, engineer, and consultant serving major automotive, aerospace, energy, defense, and research and development organizations worldwide. He boasts both technical expertise and management experience in systems engineering, machine learning, statistical analysis, and project management. As a university professor and corporate instructor, he has also taught and lectured extensively in these fields. Dr. Butkewitsch has published and presented nearly 40 papers and has received such recognitions like the Young Researcher Fellowship for Exemplary Research granted by the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

Dr. Butkewitsch brings this experience to life as he teaches the cross-listed Business, Accounting, and Data Science Analytics Capstone course this semester. Students from all the B&E majors combine what they have learned at Chatham with Dr. Butkewitsch’s Project Management focus. The integration of business plan components with classic project management frameworks ensures that students leave Chatham with both generalizable and resume-building skills. According to Dr. Butkewitsch, “The class is strongly business-oriented because of my background as a service provider. As a service provider,” he explains, “it is difficult to operate without a theoretical framework.” Through this capstone course, he hopes to leave students not only with the fundamentals of project management, but also insight into their actual practice in the workplace. Quoting famed machine learning scientist Vladimir Vapnik he says, “There is nothing more practical than a good theory.”

Despite years spent working in various industries, Dr. Butkewitsch has found that teaching has become front and center within his career. He hopes not to “bring” his experience and knowledge to Chatham, but to “exchange” these assets with fellow faculty and students instead. In an effort to drive sustainable innovation, he aims to expose students to topics that tend to be more tangential but balance them with hard, applicable skills. “Sustainability theory and good engineering are interdependent. Theory is nothing without hard technology, skills, and resources, but the relationship is symbiotic in that technology would have nothing to solve without the breakthroughs in theory,” he says.

This semester, you can find Dr. Butkewitsch teaching Data Visualization and Elementary Statistics, alongside this Capstone course. In the spring, Dr. Butkewitsch will focus on Elementary Statistics and the MBA course Foundations of Project Management.

 

Also joining the Data Science Analytics and Management Information Systems (MIS) programs is Dr. Mark Haney. He earned his Ph.D. in Management Information Systems from the Katz Graduate School of Business at the University of Pittsburgh, an MBA from Case Western Reserve University, as well as an MA in Chinese from Ohio State University. He discovered he loved a mandatory undergraduate programming class, which sparked his interest in MIS. After school, he went into financial planning; soon, however, his interest was piqued by a computer consulting ad in a newspaper, shifting his focus yet again. After moving to Pittsburgh, Dr. Haney returned to school at Pitt, where he met former Chatham professor Dr. Rachel Chung and learned about Chatham’s Business and Entreprenership Department. He was teaching statistics and analytics at Robert Morris University when Dr. Chung left in Spring 2019; Dr. Haney immediately jumped on the opportunity to take over some of her classes, drawn by Chatham’s small size, reputation for sustainability, and an engaged student body. He also was excited to be able to teach the subjects he loves most—Management Information Systems and Data Science Analytics!

His work has been published in many research publications, including the Asia Pacific Journal of Human Resources, Production Planning & Control, Industrial Marketing Management, Ethics & Behavior, and  Journal of Strategic Information Systems. His research interests include the information systems development process, supply chain management, and pedagogical uses of quantitative models.

While at Chatham, Dr. Haney looks forward to teaching subjects he holds near and dear, like analytics, data science, and programming. He also hopes to have a bigger role in program development, promote student networking, and bring interesting and relevant speakers to the greater Chatham community.

This semester, you can find Dr. Haney teaching Intro to Business, Research Methods, and Intro to Programming. “I enjoy teaching more technical things,” he says. “It’s a nice challenge to try to make it both fun and applicable for students.” He looks forward to moving beyond the basics and into more real and useful tasks. He wants students to enjoy learning just as they would without the pressure of evaluation. Look for him teaching Information Systems & Operations and Introduction to Data Science in the spring!

 

 

Rachel Henry is a senior at Chatham majoring in marketing. After graduation, Rachel will manage digital marketing for Tom Henry Chevrolet in Gibsonia. Besides marketing, talk to her about the automotive industry, her bucket list of national parks to visit, and cello.