A Quality Project Management Education

Online MS in Project Management Faculty

Working professionals with earned doctorate or master’s degrees, Saint Mary’s project management faculty members infuse career experience into their teaching and engage in their discipline in creative and scholarly ways. Our faculty members strive to provide you with a quality project management educational experience, lively online teaching, and engaging, thought-provoking discussions.

Saint Mary’s students note that our faculty members are available, helpful, understanding, and engaged in university life. In their roles as advisors, Saint Mary’s faculty also speak with students about career and academic plans as well.

Cathy Bartholet
Professor Bartholet joined Saint Mary’s University in 2001. She holds a bachelor’s degree in organizational training and development from the University of Minnesota and a master’s degree in organizational leadership from St. Catherine University. She earned her Project Management Professional (PMP) certification in 1996 and has been a member of the Project Management Institute (PMI) / PMI Minnesota since 1994; she also currently serves on the latter’s Board of Directors. 

Bringing more than 20 years of experience in project and program management to the classroom, Professor Bartholet was instrumental in the development of the Master’s in Project Management program at Saint Mary’s. She works in the financial industry as a Manager for Project Management and Practice Execution and is a Certified Life Coach through Adler Graduate School. Previously, she also worked in the telecommunications, healthcare, and publishing industries, as well as in the non-profit sector. 

Richard Berg
Professor Berg has been an adjunct program instructor for Saint Mary’s University since 2007. He holds a bachelor’s degree in business management and master’s degrees in telecommunications management and project management, and is near the completion of his educational doctorate in leadership, where his research focuses on employee retention and development in a multigenerational workforce. In addition to his teaching responsibilities at Saint Mary’s, Professor Berg also serves as a visiting guest lecturer on supply chain and software-development project management at the University of Wisconsin at Stout and the University of St. Thomas, and as a senior staff project engineer at Lockheed Martin.

A member of the Project Management Institute, Professor Berg has more than 10 years of functional and project leadership experience in the defense and telecommunications industries. His expertise in managing complex aerospace and defense systems projects enriches his role as faculty member in the Master of Science in Project Management program at Saint Mary’s University. 

Allan M. Carstens
A member of the Project Management Institute, Dr. Carstens joined Saint Mary’s University as a professor of project management education in 2001. Since then, he has been instrumental in designing Saint Mary’s Project Management Institute-compatible Master of Science in Project Management program curriculum. He developed the initial Project Planning and Estimating, Project Risk and Quality Management courses, and improved the capstone course in 2005; he continues to teach, maintain, and upgrade that course today.

Over the course of his career, Dr. Carstens has also served on faculty of Washington State University and Mankato State University, and as Project Manager, Lead Software Developer, and Lead Project Manager Developer/Trainer for Unisys, developing project management education to support the company’s global project management education initiative. He rolled out courses in Europe, Asia, the South Pacific, and in Central and South America. More recently, Dr. Carstens served as community faculty for Metropolitan State University’s MBA program, where he taught the project management component both online and on-campus, as well as to a Taiwanese-speaking cohort with the aid of a translator. His doctorate is in mathematics.

Vinaya Gore
With an educational background in engineering and business, Professor Gore has been teaching within the Master of Science in Project Management program at Saint Mary’s University since 2008, most recently in the Fundamentals of Project Management class. Over the last two decades, Professor Gore has managed a successful consulting business, as well as large organizations and industry-vertical programs in the US, Europe, and Asia. In addition to her teaching at Saint Mary’s University, she also leads the account management function for an Internet marketing business unit at Thomson Reuters.

Elijah Maronga
Dr. Elijah Maronga teaches Project Human Resource Management and Global Project Management. He has a Master of Science in Project Management, and an earned Doctorate in Educational Leadership. Dr. Maronga is the cofounder and president of Masaba Global Consulting, Inc., a project management consulting firm based in the Twin Cities. His research interests include project management leadership, project success, managing project teams, and personality traits of project managers. Dr. Maronga is a member of the Project Management Institute.

Karen Rainford
Karen Rainford has held PMP certification since 2003 and is a past Program Manager for Certification for PMI Minnesota. She received her MBA and BA from the University of Minnesota and is currently working on her dissertation for her Ed.D. in Leadership at Saint Mary’s University. Karen was recognized in 2009 as the recipient of the Ana Alvarez-Holmberg Scholarship awarded by  PMI-MN and the Twin Cities chapter of the American Society of Training and Development (ASTD-TCC). She has been an adjunct instructor in the Master of Science in Project Management program at Saint Mary's University for eight years.

Heather Wegwerth
Heather Wegwerth is a Project Manager at Securian Financial in Saint Paul, Minnesota. She has experience with Information Technology and Enterprise Risk Management projects of all sizes. She earned a BA in IT Management from Concordia University-Saint Paul, her MS in Project Management from Saint Mary's University of Minnesota and is currently working on her Doctor of Education in Leadership at Saint Mary's University of Minnesota.

Jean Wilhelm
Professor Wilhelm has been teaching in the project management graduate program at Saint Mary’s University since 2003. Professor Wilhelm’s classes include Fundamentals of Project Management, Project Communications, Global Project Management, and the Project Management Capstone. He also operates a project management consulting firm primarily serving the financial and healthcare industries and currently responsible for the implementation of the Epic electronic health record at five area clinics.

Learn more about the talented and accomplished faculty teaching in Saint Mary’s University’s online MS in Project Management: call 877-308-9954 to speak with an enrollment counselor or request more information.