New Faculty at UCF Rosen College of Hospitality Management for Fall 2018
With the growing number of students in its hospitality, event management, entertainment management and tourism courses, UCF Rosen College of Hospitality Management is expanding its faculty roster in order to accommodate the increased student population. Five new faculty members are joining the ranks of those who are educating the next leaders of the hospitality industry. The new faculty are Sergio Alvarez, Sean Bliznik, Arthur Huang, Felice Jones and Yun Ying (Susan) Zhong.
Meet the new faculty:
Sergio Alvarez
Before joining the faculty of UCF Rosen College, Sergio Alvarez was the chief economist for the Florida Department of Agriculture and Consumer Services. Alvarez also served as a courtesy professor at both the University of Florida and Florida A&M University. Alvarez has had much success in his multiple peer reviewed journal articles and countless presentations he has made. Some of the grant-funded research he has made are topics such as Ecosystem-based fishery management, lost passive and recreational use value and economic impacts on northwest Florida from the Deepwater Horizon oil spill, and use of bioeconomic models to rebuild overfished fisheries.
Sean J. Bliznik
Dr. Sean J. Bliznik makes the trek from Arizona State University at Tempe to join the faculty at UCF Rosen College in Florida. As part of the faculty for the event and entertainment management curriculum, Bliznik’s theater experience is highly prized. He has served as artistic director for the College of Central Florida, teaching artist for Childsplay, Inc., and in multiple director positions at various venues including Arizona State University, Osceola Center for the Arts, and Saint Anselm College. He has served as an assistant cruise director and company/stage manager on the Disney Cruise Line, as a content development specialist and business programs facilitator at the Disney Institute, as well as working in multiple entertainment managerial positions at Walt Disney Entertainment. Bliznik has even had multiple publications, with one spotlighting the cult classic Disney film “High School Musical.”
Arthur Huang
Dr. Arthur Huang has experiences that range from transportation engineering to urban design to complex systems. With over 10 years of experience in researching infrastructure planning and data science, Huang has proved his qualifications with his background in the field. Academically, Huang has been a research professor of Civil Engineering at Texas A&M University-Stephenville and a research associate at the University of Minnesota. In addition to this, Huang has completed some funded research, focusing on topics such as the geography of emotions: social media data and urban travel analytics, how business clusters shape consumers’ destination choice, travel analytics based on social media data, and consumers’ travel behavior and retail geography. Huang has multiple publications in his name that cover things such as big data applications in transportation systems, social media data analytics for travel and tourism, integrated transportation-land use models, urban design for sustainability, and even transportation policy analysis. Huang has both industry experience as a research analyst at the Center for Clean Air Policy and teaching experiences that deal with things such as transportation engineering and policy and computer-aided system design. Huang has accomplished getting his own software published as well, with use of acronyms like ANGIE (Agent-based Network Growth model with Incremental Evolution) and CLUSTER (Clustered Locations of Urban Services, Transportation, and Economic Resources), he has accomplished something that many engineers dream of eventually achieving.
Felice Jones
Felice Jones brings a host of event planning experiences to her faculty position at UCF Rosen College including serving as the Assistant Vice President for Marketing and Events for the National Football League Players Incorporated. She has taught as an adjunct professor at Georgetown University with a major focus in a course titled “Sports Event Planning and Facility Management.” A graduate of Florida A&M University and George Washington University, Jones has worked for several years in the event development, management and venue management capacity in the world of sports, specifically football. She is a welcome addition to the UCF Rosen College event management faculty.
Yun Ying (Susan) Zhong
Dr. Zhong comes to UCF Rosen College from California State University in Long Beach. She has had much success in the professional world working in conference management, at Walt Disney World as a Cultural Representative in the China Pavilion at Epcot and in the MIT program right next door to the UCF Rosen College campus at Rosen Shingle Creek. Before earning her doctorate in 2015, Zhong had experiences being a full-time visiting lecturer and part-time instructor at Harrah College of Hotel Administration in Las Vegas. With many journal publications and involvement with industry and grant reports, Zhong continues her academic engagement. Zhong has had so much success in her field that she has made countless conference presentations about topics pertaining to her field of study.
The new faculty will start teaching courses at UCF Rosen College on Monday, August 20, 2018, when the fall semester kicks off.
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