Hospitality
ManagementCornell

Certificate Program

Dr. Kate Walsh was named the seventh dean and E.M. Statler Professor of the School of Hotel Administration on June 16, 2017. She served as interim dean and E.M. Statler Professor for one year beginning July 1, 2016, the first day of operations for the Cornell SC Johnson College of Business. A professor of management, she has been a member of the school’s faculty since 2000. Dean Walsh received her PhD from the Carroll School of Management at Boston College and her MPS degree from Cornell’s School of Hotel Administration. She holds a Bachelor of Science in accounting from Fairfield University.

Dean Walsh came to Cornell with extensive industry experience, including posts as director of training and development for Nikko Hotels International, corporate training manager for the former Bristol Hotels, and senior auditor for Loews Corporation. She is also a former New York State Certified Public Accountant.

Since the beginning of her administration, Dean Walsh has focused on revamping the Hotel School’s alumni outreach; working with the faculty to undertake a comprehensive review of the graduate and undergraduate curriculums; and reengaging with the hospitality industry, most notably through the creation of an industry immersion initiative for faculty. Already, members of the faculty have traveled to Washington, D.C., New York City, and Los Angeles to learn from corporate executives and other experts in the hotel, restaurant, real estate finance, and technology sectors.

In addition to these ongoing efforts, Dean Walsh is working in collaboration with her colleagues on the Cornell SC Johnson leadership team on growth initiatives to strengthen the school and take advantage of opportunities afforded by the establishment of the college, including the potential to develop programming in New York.

Dr. Carvell joined the Cornell University School of Hotel Administration’s finance faculty in 1986. He is currently a Professor of Finance in the SC Johnson College of Business. Over the past 33 years he has taught undergraduate and graduate courses such as Advanced Corporate Finance, Capital Budgeting, Financial Strategy, and Investments. Dr, Carvell has also been an active teacher in executive education since 1990, working with almost every major domestic and international hotel company to create custom courses for hotel executives. These companies include Hilton, Marriott, InterContinental Hotel Group, Taj Hotels, Jumeirah, Accor, Sol Melia, Le Meridien, Shangri La, and Peninsula. Dr. Carvell has also authored eight distance learning courses through eCornell that are among the most widely demanded courses offered. He has held academic leadership positions at the School of Hotel Administration since 1999, serving as the Associate Dean for Academic Affairs from 2007-2016 and the Academic Director of the Pillsbury Institute for Entrepreneurship from 2013-2016

Dr.  Carvell has published numerous articles in academic and professional journals including the Financial Analysts Journal, Journal of Portfolio Management, the Harvard Business Review, and the Cornell Quarterly, and is the co-author of In the Shadows of Wall Street.  His work has been featured in the Wall Street Journal, The New York Times, Forbes, Fortune, Institutional Investor, Financial World, and Leaders. He has recently finished a major project designed to identify the determinants of hotel demand for U.S. hotels and another on economic and capital market antecedents of venture capital commitments. He is currently working on a project to disaggregate hotel room rates within urban markets and another to determine the risk-return characteristics of hotel room rates in major U.S. markets.  Dr. Carvell is also involved with evaluating the effectiveness of hotel company business strategies using strategic benchmarking and Economic Value Added analysis.

Dr. Carvell has worked for professional money managers in the area of applied strategy in the equity market and served as a consultant to the Presidential Commission on the 1987 stock market crash. His consulting interests include valuation and risk analysis in feasibility studies, hotel debt capacity, strategic benchmarking, and corporate and financial strategy.

Scott Gibson is the J.E. Zollinger Professor of Finance at the College of William and Mary Mason School of Business. His current research interests include optimal financing strategies for hospitality firms and the effect of institutional investor trading behavior on securities prices. His research has appeared in hospitality-focused journals including the Cornell Hotel and Restaurant Administration Quarterly, Journal of Hospitality Financial Management, the Cornell Hospitality Report and top finance journals including the Journal of Financial Economics, Review of Financial Studies, Journal of Financial and Quantitative Analysis, Journal of Financial Intermediation, International Review of Finance, Journal of Portfolio Management, and Journal of Financial Services Research.

His research has also been featured widely in the financial press, including articles in the Wall Street Journal, Financial Times, New York Times, Barron’s, Business Week, Bloomberg, Financial Advisor, and Institutional Investor.

Before returning to his alma mater Boston College where he received a Ph.D. in Finance, Professor Gibson worked as an analyst with Fidelity Investments and as a credit team leader serving a Fortune 500 clientele with HSBC Bank. Lecturing about corporate finance and the creation of shareholder value, he has received numerous teaching awards at the undergraduate, graduate, and executive levels. He has also been named as an outstanding faculty member in Business Week’s Guide to the Best Business Schools. Professor Gibson currently serves as an editorial board member of the Cornell Hospitality Quarterly (CQ).

Sheryl E. Kimes is a professor of operations management at the School of Hotel Administration. From 2005 to 2006, she served as interim dean of the school, and from 2001 to 2005, she served as the school’s Richard and Monene P. Bradley Director of Graduate Studies. Kimes teaches revenue management, restaurant revenue management, and service operations management. She has been named the school’s graduate teacher of the year three times and was awarded a Menschel Distinguished Teaching Fellowship by Cornell University in 2014.

Kimes’s research interests revolve around revenue management in the restaurant, hotel, and golf industries. She has over 100 articles in leading journals, such as Interfaces, Journal of Operations Management, Journal of Service Research, Decision Sciences, and the Cornell Hospitality Quarterly.
She was awarded the CHR Award for Industry Relevance in 2010, 2012 and 2014 and was given a lifetime achievement award by the Production and Operations Management Society in 2010.

Kimes has served as a consultant to many hospitality enterprises around the world, including Chevy’s Fresh Mex Restaurants, Walt Disney World Resorts, Fairmont Hotels and Resorts, Starwood Asia-Pacific, and Troon Golf. She was given the Vanguard Award for Lifetime Achievement in Revenue Management by the Hotel Sales and Marketing Association International in 2017.

Kimes earned her doctorate in operations management in 1987 from the University of Texas at Austin.

Rob Kwortnik, associate professor of services marketing, joined Cornell’s faculty after earning his Ph.D. in Business Administration from Temple University in 2003. He also earned a BA in Journalism from Temple and an MBA from California State University, Northridge. Kwortnik’s research focuses on consumer behavior in service contexts, with special attention to service experience management. He has published in the Journal of Marketing Research, Journal of Service Research, The International Journal of Research in Marketing, and the Cornell Hospitality Quarterly, among others. He has been honored eight times as a Teacher of the Year by students at The Hotel School. Prior to his career in academics, Kwortnik held several professional positions in marketing and was a travel industry consultant. He is a recognized expert on the leisure cruise industry.

Alex Susskind is a Professor of Food and Beverage Management and is currently serving as the Associate Dean for Academic Affairs. Professor Susskind earned his Ph.D. in Communication from Michigan State University with a specialization in organizational communication and his MBA with a concentration in personnel and human relations. Alex earned his undergraduate degree at Purdue University in Restaurant, Hotel, and Institutional Management and is also a trained chef with a degree in Culinary Arts from The Culinary Institute of America in Hyde Park, New York. Prior to starting his career in academia, Alex was a chef and restaurant operator for both independent and multi-unit restaurant companies in the Northeastern and Southeastern United States.

Cheryl Stanley is a lecturer in food and beverage management at the Cornell School of Hotel Administration (SHA). She has been involved with food since the age of ten, when she started her own chocolate business, “Cheryl’s Chocolates.” Following her interest in food, she attended SHA and graduated in 2000.

While at Cornell, Stanley discovered her passion for beverages through the courses Introduction to Wines, Food and Wine Pairing, and Beverage Management. Upon graduation, she continued this enthusiasm for beverages and food service in both hotel and restaurant operations on the west coast, where she worked for the Four Seasons Hotel, Newport Beach, and the Wine Cask in Santa Barbara.

Continuing her entrepreneurial journey, Stanley started her own restaurant consulting company specializing in beverages and service in 2008. During this time, she was also presented an opportunity to become an adjunct instructor at the Culinary Institute of America (CIA), where she taught courses that included gastronomy, food, wine, and (agri)culture. Falling in love with teaching, she decided to pursue her master’s degree in hospitality and retail management from Texas Tech University. Heading back north, Stanley returned to the CIA prior to joining the food and beverage operations area back at her alma mater.

Stanley teaches courses on specific elements within the field of food and beverage operations, including Introduction to Wines, Catering and Special Events, and Beverage Management. She combines theoretical education with practical operational applications.

Certified through multiple wine organizations, Stanley has conducted research on beverage costing in hotels, bars, and restaurants, as well as hospitality education, and has presented at beverage-related conferences. In 2015, she was awarded the Ted Teng ’79 Dean’s Teaching Excellence Award. She is a member of the Society of Wine Educators and the United States Bartenders’ Guild. She is the faculty advisor for Cornell Cuvée, the blind wine tasting competition team, which has won first place at multiple international wine competitions. In 2017 she was selected as one of Wine Enthusiast Magazine’s 40 under 40 Tastemakers.

Reneta McCarthy has both teaching and practical experience in hotel operations. She began her career at Marriott International, where she worked as a housekeeping manager and then as director of services in the full-service hotel division. She later transferred to Courtyard Hotels, by Marriott, where she became one of the youngest general managers of a Courtyard property. She became director of rooms at The Statler Hotel at Cornell in 1992 and joined The Hotel School faculty in 1995, where she teaches courses in hotel and casino operations. She is the faculty advisor to Hotel Ezra Cornell (HEC), an annual, student-run industry conference that attracts 300 hospitality leaders to campus each spring.