Raised by a family of successful entrepreneurs, Charles Wankel,
Ph.D., Associate Professor of Management in St. John’s University's
The Peter J. Tobin College of Business, says at one point in his
life he considered joining his relatives in the family
business.
“My initial plan was to continue to work at the hardware store that
my great grandparents started in the 1890s on Third Avenue but I
became very engrossed in my studies and academic research while I
was an MBA student at New York University. I knew I had to readjust
my career goals and went into their doctoral program.”
Thus, Dr. Wankel chose to follow his own path and become an
educator. He joined St. John’s faculty in 1990 and brings over 20
years of business and management expertise to his teaching. Dr.
Wankel is also the author of books on cutting-edge approaches to
management education through real world projects and new
technologies.
“One of the reasons why I chose to teach at St. John’s is its
mission. I believe that we all have a responsibility to help
alleviate poverty and support the movement towards global and
environmental sustainability. At St. John’s I have found the
opportunity to teach at a University with Catholic values in the
business capital of the world.”
Due to a debilitating foot injury that makes it challenging to
teach in a traditional classroom, Dr. Wankel teaches several
management courses online including “Creating E-commerce Business
and International Management.” He believes online teaching gives
professors the ability to create global networks not possible in a
traditional classroom setting.
“I have always been interested in the Internet as a collaborative
medium for education even before the World Wide Web was created.
Using the Internet is now standard practice and necessary for the
completion of any business program. My students use it to
collaborate on various projects with students from other St. John’s
campuses, whether it’s Manhattan, Rome, Italy or Paris,
France.”
While teaching at St. John’s, Dr. Wankel was awarded a Fulbright
grant in 1997; received numerous top research and teaching awards
from the Academy of Management; and was invited to be a keynote
speaker at business and management conferences around the world. He
was recently invited to be the keynote at the Innovation in
Management Conference at the Poznan University College of Business
and Foreign Languages in Poland, where he was named an Honorary
Vice-Rector.
“All of my classes are made up of a diverse group of people who are
constantly working together on team projects and in the process are
learning not only from me but from each other. I love when my
students get excited about an innovative endeavor because my goal
is to teach them that every problem is an opportunity in
disguise.”