Catherine Ridings

Dr. Ridings is Professor Emeritus in Lehigh University's College of Business where she taught for 23 years. During her tenure at Lehigh she was the Director of the Undergraduate Business Information Systems program (2006-2013) and the interim department chair of the Decision and Technology Analytics department. She delivered graduate and undergraduate courses in Java programming, Artificial Intelligence, and Database Management. Her primary research interest is virtual communities, including social networks, social capital, trust, knowledge management and electronic commerce in this context. She also has secondary research interests in technology adoption and acceptance. She has published in journals such as Journal of Management Information Systems, The DATA BASE for Advances in Information Systems, and Journal of Strategic Information Systems. Her dissertation, "Determinants of Trust and Use in Virtual Communities," won the Decision Sciences Institute's 2001 Elwood S. Buffa Doctoral Dissertation Award Competition. She is the recipent of Lehigh's Robert and Christine Staub Faculty Excellence Award (2020) and Lehigh's Deming Lewis Faculty Award (2023).
Ph.D. in Decision Sciences (Management Information Systems), Drexel University. MBA, Drexel University, Managment Information Systems. BS/BA, Villanova University, Computer Science/Arts & Sciences Honors Program