Dr. Joan Combs Durso

ASSOCIATE PROFESSOR

Dr. Joan Combs Durso is an Associate Professor at Sullivan University in the Graduate School as of Fall 2010. Dr. Combs Durso has taught at Sullivan University since Fall 2009 in the Pharm Tech, Pharmacy, Undergraduate and MBA programs, in Lousiville and Lexington.

Dr. Combs Durso is a graduate of Bellarmine University. She earned the MA in International Political Economy & Development and the PhD in Economics at Fordham University in New York. She also completed additional graduate work in Finance at the University of Kentucky. She was a Teaching Fellow at Fordham University and has taught at the Penn State Great Valley School of Graduate Professional Studies in Malvern PA, at Eckerd College in St. Petersburg FL and in the Rubel School of Business at Bellarmine University. She has been an online course facilitator in economics for the Kentucky Community and Technical College System (KCTCS). A former Navy Supply Corps officer, she also spent four years as a financial analyst at UPS in Louisville.

Her research interests in applied microeconomics and finance include pharmacoeconomics, the economics of pre-hospital health care, women veterans' wealth, spatial models for data analysis, the local impact of trade and technology, and the economies of virtual worlds. Dr. Combs Durso has also presented and written on incorporating computing applications, large data sets, and oral history techniques in the classroom. She has been the volunteer coordinator for Metanomics (www.metanomics.net), an online weekly broadcast about the business and economics of virtual worlds and serves as a trainer and consultant in virtual worlds.

In addition to her work at Sullivan University, Joan is an American Heart Association CPR instructor and is also an alumni volunteer EMT-Basic with the Bellarmine Emergency Response Team, for which she was the founding faculty advisor.