John Angelidis, Ph.D.

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.”