ISSUED: 30 June 2016
MEDIA CONTACT: Valerie Owens
SHEPHERDSTOWN, WV — Dr. William Benjamin “Ben” Martz, Jr., of Cold Spring, Kentucky, has been named chair of the Department of Business Administration at Shepherd University, Provost Christopher Ames has announced. During the 2016-2017 academic year, Martz will supervise the creation of a School of Business at Shepherd that will include the Departments of Business Administration, Economics and Finance, and Accounting. He will become dean of the newly created School of Business in July 2017.
Martz, who will assume his appointment as department chair and dean for business school development August 15, will hold faculty rank as a professor of business administration.
“Ben Martz has the perfect combination of business experience and academic leadership in an AACSB (Association to Advance Collegiate Schools of Business) business program to work with our faculty, alumni, and local business community to advance innovation and excellence in contemporary business education,” said Provost Ames. “He is a creative thinker who knows how to bring people together over new ideas and turn vision into reality.”
Martz is a professor and director of the Master of Science in Business Informatics Program at Northern Kentucky University. During his nine years at Northern Kentucky University, he also served as chair of the Department of Business Informatics.
Previously, he was a professor in the Department of Information Systems at the University of Colorado, Colorado Springs, and prior to that served as an associate professor in the Department of Accounting and Information Systems at California State University, Chico.
In the private sector, Martz served as co-founder, vice president of research and development, and president of Ventana Corporation, a technology spin-off company at the University of Arizona created to commercialize the electronic meeting software GroupSystems. GroupSystems was awarded PC Magazine’s Editor’s Choice Award for best electronic meeting software in 1994, and Martz was nominated for Ernst and Young’s Entrepreneur of the Year in Arizona for managing the company’s financial turnaround.
Martz has published in refereed publications and journals, including Journal of Management Information Systems, Decision Sciences Journal of Innovative Education, Journal of Entrepreneurship Education, and Journal of Computer Information Systems.
He earned a B.B.A. in marketing from the College of William & Mary, and an M.S. in management information systems and a Ph.D. in business (management information systems) from the University of Arizona.
View Dr. Martz’s résumé HERE.
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