Directors, Professors & Faculty

Image of Mack Mariani

Mack Mariani, Ph.D.

Interim Director, Smith Scholars Program

Mack Mariani, a Buffalo native, is the 2008 and 2018 chicken wing eating champion of Xavier University. He earned his BA at Canisius College (1991) and his MA and PHD at the Maxwell School of Citizenship and Public Affairs at Syracuse University (1992, 2006).

Mariani is the interim director of the Stephen S. Smith Center in the Williams College of Business at Xavier University. The Center promotes learning, scholarship, and debate about fundamental questions and ideas that impact society, emphasizing the study of economics and its relationship to law, political philosophy, and history.

Mariani also directs Xavier's American Founding and Constitution programs, which receive support from the Jack Miller Center for Teaching America's Founding Principles. He serves as an Honored Visiting Graduate Faculty member in the Masters in American History and Government program at the Ashbrook Center at Ashland University and is Xavier liaison for the Washington Center for Internships, and coordinator of the political science department's local internship program. Mariani previously served as chair of the political science department and was Founding Director of the Gene Beaupre State Politics Internship Program.

Professor Mariani's teaching and research interests include campaigns and elections, congress and the legislative process, women and politics, and political internships/experiential learning. Mariani is co-author of Diverging Parties (Westview Press, 2003) and co-editor of The Insider's Guide to Political Internships (Westview Press, 2002). His research has appeared in Political Research Quarterly, Legislative Studies Quarterly, Political Science Quarterly, PS: Political Science and Politics, Politics and Gender, The Journal of Women, Politics, and Policy, Representation, the International Political Science Review, the Journal of Irish Studies, the Canadian Journal of Irish Studies, Comparative State Politics and Terrorism and Political Violence. His most recent article, "Money Matters: The Impact of Gender Quotas on Campaign Spending for Women Candidates," (with Fiona Buckley, UCC Cork) appears in The International Political Science Review.

Mariani has mentored summer research students in the Summers of 2008, 2009, 2010, 2011, 2017, 2018, 2019, 2020, 2021, 2022, 2023 and 2024 on a number of projects, including research on the gender gap in US elections, party behavior in Ireland, gender and political violence in Ireland, and the impact of institutional changes on descriptive representation and legislative careers in the Ohio General Assembly.

Mariani has 15 years of political experience, having served as a legislative aide and press secretary for a member of the U.S. House of Representatives, chief of staff for the Monroe County (NY) Legislature, and a member of the speechwriting and media relations team serving two Monroe County Executives. Mariani started in politics working as an intern for U.S. Representative Jack Kemp.

In 2023, Mariani was selected as Alpha Sigma Nu Teacher of the Year.

Photo of Rachael Behr LaRose

Rachael Behr LaRose, Ph.D.

Associate Director of Thought Leadership and Research

Dr. Rachael Behr LaRose was born and raised in northern Indiana, and received her undergraduate education from Hillsdale College. At Hillsdale, she studied economics and political theory, with a minor in French. She then went on to graduate school at George Mason University, where she received her Ph.D. in economics, with special focus on political economy and economic sociology. She was also a Fellow with the F.A. Hayek Program for Advanced Study in Philosophy, Politics, and Economics at the Mercatus Center at George Mason University.

In her role at the Smith Center, Dr. LaRose's focus is on expanding the Center's research focus. She is responsible for the primary administration and oversight of the Smith Center’s events, programs, and initiatives which promote events related to thought leadership, intellectual contributions, and faculty/student research activities on topics and policies with a direct societal impact aligned with the Center’s mission. Such initiatives aim to enhance the visibility of the Smith Center in the Greater Cincinnati and Tri-State areas with respect to freedom-based solutions to social and economic issues.

Besides working as Associate Director in the Smith Center, Dr. LaRose has an appointment in the Department of Economics. At Xavier University, Dr. LaRose teaches Macroeconomic and Microeconomic Principles, Natural Resource Economics, and Markets and Morality. Dr. LaRose especially loves emphasizing the interdisciplinary nature of classroom studies, whether it be inflation or natural resources. Dr. LaRose researches questions of an interdisciplinary nature about markets and morality. Her work has been published by Cambridge, Journal of Institutional Economics, The Review of Austrian Economics, Studies in Comparative International Development, Public Choice, The Independent Review, and Routledge, and is currently under review at several journals. She is currently working on several projects on the economic consequences of COVID-19 policies, including the political incentives of mask mandates and situating pandemic entrepreneurship within the entrepreneurship literature.

CV/Résumé

Smith Professors

Staffpic

R. Stafford Johnson, Ph.D.

Professor, Finance Department

R. Stafford Johnson is a Smith Professor and Professor of Finance at the Williams College of Business. Since receiving his Ph.D in Economics from the University of Kentucky in 1975, he has taught at Central Michigan University, Southern Illinois University, University of North Carolina at Charlotte, and the University of Connecticut. He also was the Director for Research, Center for Public Affairs, University of Kentucky and Research Economist for the Center for Energy Research. At Xavier, he was department chair from 1988-1998, fund professor of the Xavier Student Investment Bond and Equity Funds from 2004 to 2010, and the Director of the Fifth-Third Trading Center from 2010-2011. In 2011 and 2015, he served as the Interim Dean of the Williams College of Business. He was founding Director of the Smith Center. His current research focuses on option pricing, fixed-income and debt management, efficient gambling markets, monetary theory, and international economics. He is the author of five monographs and seven books: Equity Markets and Analysis, Derivative Markets and Analysis, Options and Futures, Introduction to Derivatives, two editions of Bond Evaluation, Selection, and Management, and Debt Markets and Analysis. He has also authored or co-authored over 50 academic articles. Professor Johnson teaches undergraduate and MBA classes in investments, derivatives, financial markets, history of economic thought, and global finance. He was twice the recipient of the Delta Sigma Pi Teacher of the Year Award and recipient of the Williams College of Business MBA Teacher of Year Award.

CV/Résumé

Photo of Kathleen McGarvey Hidy

Kathleen McGarvey Hidy, J.D.

Associate Professor, Business Law

Kathleen Hidy is an Associate Professor of Legal Studies in the Department of Accounting and Business Law. Professor Hidy graduated magna cum laude from the University of Notre Dame with a Bachelor of Arts in the Program of Liberal Studies, Notre Dame’s Great Books program. She received the Nutting Award at graduation. Professor Hidy earned her Juris Doctor degree from Columbia Law School. After graduating from Columbia University, Professor Hidy spent twenty years practicing law as a corporate litigator, representing both private sector and public sector entities. She has held two federal court clerkships. In 1991, Professor Hidy began teaching in the Williams College of Business as an adjunct professor. She has also taught at Northern Kentucky University Chase College of Law and at the Opus College of Business at the University of St. Thomas.

Professor Hidy became a full-time academic in the Williams College of Business in 2011. She teaches in both the undergraduate business and M.B.A. programs in the Williams College of Business. Her courses focus on the ethical, legal and regulatory environment in which business organizations operate in the United States. Professor Hidy has received the Williams College of Business M.B.A. Teacher of the Year Award and the Ignatian Educator of Distinction Award for the Jesuits Midwest Province. Professor Hidy’s research interests focus on technology and its impact on freedom of speech, property rights, and employment law. She has presented her research at national conferences. Professor Hidy’s research has been published in multiple law journals including Columbia Business Law Review, the University of Pennsylvania Journal of Business Law, and Marquette Law Review.

CV/Résumé