Engaging Students, Enhancing
Academics:
Business Professor Expands Service-Learning
Opportunities
Combining class work with service is a win-win situation for
today’s business students, said John Angelidis, Ph.D., Professor
and Chair of Management in The Peter J. Tobin
College of Business at St. John’s University.
“If you do the ‘math,’ it’s quite simple,” said Dr. Angelidis. “On the one hand,
students develop the ability to apply what they learn in class
toward productive action in the broader society. On the other hand,
our society benefits from what students have learned.”
Through his leadership, Academic Service-Learning is now a
requirement in two business courses — Managerial Strategy and
Policy (4329) and Administrative and Organizational Behavior
(2301). The course-related volunteer activities, said Dr.
Angelidis, provide “student engagement that enhances
learning.”
Dr. Angelidis also is an advisor to the University’s Office of Academic
Service-Learning. Assisting others has been an important part
of the St. John’s experience since the University’s founding in
1870. Over the past decade, a growing number of faculty and
departments have made service learning a part of their students’
course work.
Service, Dr. Angelidis believes, has special relevance for business
students. “We prepare new generations to take their place as
business leaders,” he said. “It is vitally important for these
leaders to possess a real concern for ethical issues — corporate
accountability, sustainability and a desire to assist the most
vulnerable in our society.”
Business ethics is the focus of Dr. Angelidis’s academic research.
In October, he received a Best Paper Award from the Southeastern
Institute for Operations Research and Management Sciences
(Informs). The paper, entitled “Promoting Ethical Practices
and Establishing a Strong Ethical Culture in Business
Organizations,” was honored in the organization’s Public
Sector/Social and Ethical Issues track.
A native of Athens, Greece, Dr. Angelidis earned a Ph.D. at Georgia
State University in 1987. He was drawn to St. John’s focus on
Vincentian values. This, he said, is evident in the University’s
GLOBE program. Headed by Linda Sama, Ph.D., Associate Dean for
Global Initiatives, it offers loans of $100-$200 to
entrepreneurs in the developing world.
This fall, Dr. Angelidis was joined on campus by his daughter, who
enrolled as a freshman. “I’m very pleased,” he said. “A St. John’s
education is a value education in terms of knowledge and the
ability to find a job. But above all, it creates good
character.”