Nominated for the Council of Fellows' Faculty Excellence in Outreach and Service Award, Penn State Erie, Erie PA, Spring 2000; Spring 2001

Nominated for the Council of Fellows' Excellence in Teaching Award, Penn State Erie, Erie PA, May 1994

Professor of the Year for the 1993-94 Academic Year-Best Core Course, Graduate Student Association, Penn State Erie, Erie PA, April 1994

Walter Stellner Fellow, University of Illinois, Department of Business Administration, August 1987-May 1988

Teaching Philosophy
Courses Taught

Teaching Philosophy

Teaching is an act of great responsibility as it is an enterprise of equally great challenge. Over the years, I have begun to recognize the many complexities of teaching, questioning myself what it is that I do: teaching or facilitating learning? To me the two concepts are different. Teaching is akin to sharing acquired knowledge and expertise using a shotgun approach, delivering to students what one knows and hoping they will exert their best effort to absorb the material. Facilitating learning is about winning one student at a time, recognizing that each individual in the classroom has different experiences, different goals, different learning styles, different levels of motivation, and different perspectives on life. I believe that I fit the second category. Hence, on the one hand, my task is fraught with many uncertainties, frustrations, trials, and tribulations; on the other, when I know I have reached a student, it is a source of great satisfaction and joy.

My approach to reaching (and not teaching) students has evolved over the years as I have learned from each experience what works and what doesn't. I certainly demand a great deal from the students; perhaps as much as I demand from myself. Hence, as I reach out to them, I also challenge them to reach me at a higher plane. I am sure I lose some of them in the process, especially those who lose the will to fight and settle for a grade. This to me is a source of great disappointment. But I have also learned to accept that disappointment, convincing myself that it is the price I must pay to uphold a standard of excellence that I believe every student must strive to achieve. It is easy to step down from that standard and perhaps even gain some popularity. In the long haul, however, that strategy represents a disservice to students because my goal is to prepare them for life, not just for a grade.

The style that I have developed over the years is one that I believe is quite personal and unique: It begins with the student but does not end there; I attempt to target multiple beneficiaries-students, my own research program, and our community, both local and global. My approach, therefore, is multidimensional and involves bringing together my knowledge and experience, the background and knowledge of students, and the enterprises that can potentially gain from the creative work each class produces. Consequently, my reaching style involves a blend of lectures to convey concepts of importance that are augmented by assignments, cases, videos, guest speakers, library and qualitative research, and term projects. Cases and assignments are used to allow students to grapple with the concepts, videos and guest speakers are used to provide a glimpse of the real world, library and qualitative research are intended to embellish their understanding, and term projects are designed to put together disparate components of knowledge into a coherent whole. Student presentations are used to bring it all together to share the product of their labor with a beneficiary.

As I continue to build on my personal approach, my overall philosophy is driven by one goal: to deliver greater value to students, as well as to the community.

Courses Taught *

B ADM 550: Global Marketing (Spring 2006)

B ADM 552: Service Marketing (Summer 2006)

MRKTG 342 (Formerly MRKTG 310): Marketing Research (Fall 2002) (Fall 2004) (Fall 2005) (Fall 2006) (Fall 2007) (Fall 2008) (Fall 2009)

MRKTG 330: Services Marketing

MKTG 445 (formerly MRKTG 470): Global Marketing (Fall 2002) (Summer 2003) (Summer 2004) (Fall 2004) (Spring 2005) (Summer 2005) (Fall 2005) (Summer 2006) (Fall 2006) (Spring 2007) (Summer 2007) (Fall 2007) (Spring 2008) (Summer 2008) (Fall 2008) (Summer 2009) (Fall 2009)

MRKTG 495: Internship

MRKTG 496: Independent Student Studies

MRKTG 501: Marketing

MRKTG 541: Marketing Research

MRKTG 596: Individual Studies

MRKTG 597A: International Marketing (Spring 2003)

* Syllabi are only available online for four semesters. Visit the Sam and Irene Black School of Business for copies of others.