St. James received her Ph.D. in marketing from The George Washington University after completing her dissertation on “The Use of Celebrities in Advertising High Tech Products.” Her research has led to six published works with four more in the pipeline, and she is excited about opportunities to expand on this thread of research while on campus, especially in cooperation with the Home Depot Center (HDC).  

“My work with celebrity endorsements looks at all types of things – whether they are effective, how they are effective, how that effectiveness varies across industries,” she said. “The Home Depot Center being here on campus will hopefully allow me to do other research projects with the sports teams that use the facility.” 

In the classroom, St. James uses a participatory, discussion-oriented style of teaching honed as a full-time lecturer at CSU San Bernardino for the past two and a half years and at the University of San Diego and The George Washington University before that. Her current classes include sections of Consumer Behavior and Marketing Principles, and she will likely teach courses in sports marketing, advertising and consumer behavior in the future.

“So far, I’ve been pleasantly surprised how quickly students have opened up here.  I’m not a lecturing-type, I like to get the students involved, but for some people, that’s difficult. I haven’t seen many have a problem with it here at CSUDH though,” she said. “Everything seems to be going well so far, but I’m about to give my first test, so we’ll see how well liked I am after that.”