Steven Carvell, professor of finance in the School of Hotel Administration, has been named Cornell’s first vice provost for external education strategy. The appointment was effective Aug. 1.

In his new role, Carvell will help the university achieve greater synergies between a number of separately organized external education programs, Provost Michael Kotlikoff said.

These include executive education programs offered by various colleges and schools, as well as certificate and master’s programs offered by both colleges and schools as well as eCornell. Carvell will work closely with eCornell and the colleges to support and expand these programs.

“This new position has been created to help Cornell more effectively leverage a number of separate initiatives and help eCornell more closely align with the academic enterprise,” Kotlikoff said. “President Pollack and I believe that external education programs will become an increasingly important component of Cornell’s educational mission, particularly as Cornell opens the Verizon Executive Education Center on our Roosevelt Island campus in New York City.”

“I am excited by this opportunity and look forward to working with the entire Cornell community here on the Ithaca campus and in New York City, and to fulfilling the objectives set out by President Pollack and Provost Kotlikoff,” Carvell said.

Carvell has taught finance courses at the Hotel School since 1986. He also has conducted a number of specialized executive education seminars for some of the world’s largest hotel companies. He is the academic director of the Center for Real Estate and Finance at Cornell and he has served as associate dean of academic affairs in the Hotel School.

A hospitality finance expert, his specialties and research interests include new approaches to hotel valuation and investment decisions, such as valuation and risk analysis in feasibility studies, debt capacity models, strategic benchmarking and economic value-added analysis. His recent projects have included evaluating the effectiveness of hotel company business strategies; determining optimal brand standards; identifying the determinants of hotel demand in the U.S.; and the valuation of exotic hotel reservation options.

He has worked for professional money managers in applied strategy in the equity market, and was a consultant to the Presidential Task Force on Market Mechanisms following the 1987 stock market crash.

Carvell is the co-author of “In the Shadows of Wall Street” (1988) and has published articles in academic and professional journals such as the Harvard Business Review. He earned his master’s (1981) and Ph.D. (1984) from the State University of New York at Binghamton.