The management of corporations in crisis will be the first subject in Tri-State University’s Distinguished Speaker series beginning Monday, Sept. 24 at 7 p.m. in Fabiani Theatre. Other speakers will make guest appearances on Oct. 15 and again on Feb. 18 and March 17 in 2008 in the theater, located in the new University Center and Center for Technology and Online Resources.

Peter Kurzina, a senior lecturer with the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) Entrepreneurship Center, will give the inaugural presentation, “Anatomy of a Corporate Turn-Around,” for the TSU community and the public.

Kurzina has 32 years of experience providing interim, crisis, and turn-around management to a wide variety of companies. He was president and chief operating officer of Fanny Farmer Candy Shops, interim president of Vermont Castings Stove Co., and president of Westville Homes Corp., and provided similar leadership roles to a number of other troubled companies in the textile, men’s clothing, distributing, and service industries.

For 15 of those years, he was associated with Argus Management Corp., the Massachusetts-based provider of management to troubled companies. He joined the Sloan faculty in 2003 to teach The CEO Perspective: Managing in Adversity.

He earned a bachelor’s degree in economics at the University of Pennsylvania, a juris doctor degree at Northwestern University, and a master’s degree in management science in the Sloan Fellows Program at the Sloan School, MIT. Kurzina will address Ketner School of Business students the following day, focusing on a company he managed for two years through a bankruptcy.

Students in the Ketner School of Business and throughout campus will also have the opportunity to hear a presentation by a distinguished speaker from last year’s series, William Thourlby, on Tuesday, Sept. 25 at 7 p.m. in Wells Theater, Taylor Hall. Thourlby earned a Tri-State business degree in the 1940s and moved on to a career as a model, actor, international consultant, writer, and image-maker.

His presentation will focus on the science of visual, verbal and non-verbal perception. Thourlby’s expertise in image creation has been commissioned by several U.S. presidents. He is the author of “You Are What You Wear,” and delivers the seminar, “Passport to Power: The Science of Marketing Yourself,” nationally. He has also presented a seminar developed from his book, “Women: The New Power Class,” internationally.

On Wednesday, Sept. 26, Thourlby will take appointments for individual consultations with students in the Trine Welcome Center. Students can seek Thourlby’s advice in a one-on-one atmosphere by scheduling a 15-minute sessions through the Office of Career Services at 260.665.4124.