The Darden School of Business Welcomes Five New Faculty Members

Five new professors join the ranks of the University of Virginia Darden School of Business faculty.

Thomas Steenburgh, associate professor of business administration, joins Darden’s Marketing Area. He had been an associate professor at Harvard Business School, where he developed the popular elective “Business Marketing and Sales.” Steenburgh’s research focuses on business-to-business marketing. His two research streams are called “Carrots and Sticks” and “Allocating Marketing Resources.” His work has been published in Management Science, the Journal of Marketing, Marketing Science and the Journal of Marketing Research. Steenburgh completed his doctorate in marketing at Yale University and received his master’s in statistics from the University of Michigan. He completed his bachelor’s in engineering from Boston University. Steenburgh will teach Darden’s required marketing course during his first year.

Justin Hopkins, assistant professor of business administration, comes to Darden’s Financial Accounting Area from the Kenan-Flagler School of Business at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. There, he taught a domestic immersion elective on “Accounting and Public Policy” and earned his doctorate in accounting. He has a master’s and bachelor’s degree in accounting from Montana State University. Prior to entering academia, Hopkins worked for Bearing Point Inc., where he was a senior consultant to the Department of Justice. During that time, he also served as a short-term intern for Asian Development Bank in Manila, Philippines. In 2004, he worked for Ernst & Young LLP as a senior auditor. In 2000, Hopkins volunteered for the Peace Corps in the Dominican Republic. His research interests include regulation, litigation, capital markets and corporate taxation. Hopkins will teach the First Year course “Financial Reporting” and the Second Year elective “Financial Statement Analysis.”

Dennis Tao Yang joins Darden’s Global Economies and Markets (GEM) Area. Most recently, he served as an economics professor at The Chinese University of Hong Kong. There, he was nominated for the Exemplary Teaching Award for 2011. In the past, Yang taught in the economics departments of Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University (Virginia Tech) and Duke University. While at Virginia Tech, he was recognized as Graduate Teacher of the Year for 2005. His fields of interest include economic development and growth, labor and demographic economics and the economics of China. He has published dozens of research articles in both English and Chinese publications, including China Economic Quarterly, the Economic Journal, the Journal of Development Economics, the Journal of Monetary Economics and the Journal of Political Economy. Yang received his doctorate in economics from the University of Chicago and his bachelor’s degree from the University of California. Yang will teach the required GEM course in the MBA and GEMBA programs, and he will develop a new elective on the Chinese economy.

Philip I. Levy will join Darden for a one-year term appointment as an associate professor of business administration. Levy will teach one section of First Year Global Economies and Markets in the fall and two sections in the spring. Most recently, he was a consultant for The World Bank where he conducted trade policy research in support of the World Development Report. He served as an adjunct associate professor at Columbia University. He was also a professor of economics at Yale University for nine years. His other academic positions have included academic director for Yale’s Center for the Study of Globalization, senior economist for trade on the President’s Council of Economic Advisors, member of the U.S. Secretary of State’s Policy Planning Staff and resident scholar at the American Enterprise Institute. Levy received his doctorate in economics from Stanford University and graduated from the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, with an A.B. in Economics. He has published numerous research articles in the area of trade.