University Park, Pa. -- Brent W. Ambrose, Smeal professor of real estate and director of the Institute for Real Estate Studies at Penn State's Smeal College of Business, has been elected president of the American Real Estate and Urban Economics Association (AREUEA), the leading worldwide academic organization in real estate, mortgage finance and urban economics. His one-year term began Jan. 1.
Ambrose is the third Smeal faculty member to serve as president of the organization, making Penn State only the fifth university to have three faculty members lead AREUEA. Austin Jaffe, chair of the Insurance and Real Estate Department, and Kenneth Lusht, professor emeritus of business administration, both are past presidents of AREUEA.
Ambrose was first elected to the AREUEA board in 2007, served as second vice president and program chair in 2008, and first vice president in 2009.
At Smeal, Ambrose directs the Institute for Real Estate Studies, which is the college's conduit between real estate academia and industry, serving its members, students and real estate researchers.
Ambrose also teaches at the graduate and undergraduate levels and conducts a robust research agenda focusing on real estate finance, corporate finance, and fixed income security analysis. He serves on the editorial boards of the International Real Estate Review, the Journal of Real Estate Finance and Economics, the Journal of Real Estate Research, and AREUEA's Real Estate Economics.
Ambrose joined the Smeal faculty in 2006 from the University of Kentucky, where he held the Kentucky Real Estate Professorship and served as director of the Center for Real Estate Studies and professor of finance. He previously served on the faculty at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee and was a visiting associate professor and research fellow at the Wharton School of Business. He also is a fellow of the Weimer School of Advanced Studies in Real Estate and Land Economics at the Homer Hoyt Advanced Studies Institute and a fellow of the Real Estate Research Institute.
He holds a master of business administration and a doctorate from the University of Georgia and a bachelor's degree from Wake Forest University.
AREUEA, originated at the 1964 meeting of the Allied Social Science Association in Chicago, is a nonprofit organization dedicated to advancing research in the fields of real estate development, planning and economics. The association publishes the quarterly journal Real Estate Economics and holds three conferences annually. For more information, visit http://www.areuea.org/ online.