Katia Passerini

Biography

Katia Passerini, Ph.D., joined Seton Hall on June 5, 2020, as Provost and Executive Vice President. In her role as Provost, she leads the Academic Affairs areas of the University. Activities include strategic, operational, and resource planning for the University Schools and Colleges, in alignment with the University Strategic plan and in collaborations with the Deans and key university stakeholders. She is responsible for academic resources management, faculty hiring, development, and professional success; academic programs quality; research and innovation activities; academic policies and processes; partnership development locally, nationally, and internationally. 
 
Prior to Seton Hall, Katia was The Lesley H. and William L. Collins Distinguished Chair & Dean of the Collins College of Professional Studies at St. John's University, where she also held a Professor appointment in the Division of Computer Science, Mathematics and Science. From 2003 to 2013, she was Professor and Hurlburt Chair of MIS, Martin Tuchman School of Management, New Jersey Institute of Technology (NJIT), where she held a joint appointment in the Information Systems (IS) Department in the Ying Wu College of Computing Sciences. 
 
During the academic years 2013-16, she served as the Dean for the Albert Dorman Honors College, where she worked closely with the Board of Visitors to launch the third Albert Dorman Honors College strategic plan (2014-2020) while advising, recruiting, and developing new programs and articulations. 
 
At NJIT, Dr. Passerini taught courses in MIS, knowledge management, project management, and IT strategy. She received the NJIT Award for Excellence in Innovative Teaching, the Van Houten Alumni Teaching Excellence Award, and was designated as a Master Teacher.
 
Dr. Passerini served as a co-PI for grants funded by the National Science Foundation, and jointly by the New Jersey Department of Labor and the Department of Education (DoE). Particularly, she worked on the NSF-ADVANCE grant, CREATIVE-IT grant, and a curriculum development project for NJ DoE. 
 
Her research interests are focused on understanding macro-economic drivers of knowledge management, studying wireless broadband applications and industry trends; and computer-supported learning and education. She has published extensively in refereed journals and proceedings (Communications of the ACM, IEEE IT Professional, Communications of AIS, Electronic Commerce Research, Journal of Knowledge Management, Computers & Education, Journal of Educational Hypermedia and Multimedia, IEEE Internet Computing, Organization Management Journal, International Journal of Management Education, Journal of Small Business Management) and professional journals (Project Management Network, Cutter IT Journal, Cutter Benchmark Review), particularly in the area of computer-mediated learning, IT productivity, and knowledge management. She was nominated five times for best paper awards at regional and national conferences and won once. She serves on editorial boards of various IS and entrepreneurship journals and acted as program and track chair in selected IS conferences.
 
Dr. Passerini’s co-authored book on Information Technology for Small Business: Managing the Digital Enterprise (Springer, 2012) discusses how small and medium-sized businesses can leverage today's mobile and "as-a-service" technology to thrive in highly competitive global environments. This book received the 2012 Bright Idea Award, October 2013 by NJPRO Foundation & Stillman School of Business at Seton Hall University.
 
Katia's professional background includes multi-industry projects at Booz Allen Hamilton (now part of PriceWaterhouseCoopers) and the World Bank where she focused on information technology projects in Europe, North America, and the South Pacific. Katia is a certified project management professional (PMP®) and worked on various projects in the automotive and telecommunications industries and higher education. Some of her projects included business process management, balanced scorecard definition, business needs analyses and gaps assessment, benchmarking, evaluation of IT investments feasibility and outcomes.
 
Dr. Passerini holds degrees in political science (LUISS University, Italy), economics (University of Rome II- Tor Vergata, Italy), MBA and Ph.D. degrees from The George Washington University, and a Certificate in Business Project Management from New York University. She was a Fulbright Student Scholar and Fulbright Administrator Scholar, an Italian National Research Council Fellow (CNR), and received several funded scholarships awards and grants.

EDUCAUSE Publications

  • Change: The Inevitable Choice Forward
    • Article
    • Author

    To bring about positive change at our institutions of higher education, we must revisit older paradigms and look beyond the typical and isomorphic behaviors of the past.