Chair, C.H. Sandage School of Business
Professor of Business Administration
Sam Walton Fellow
Graceland University, 1 University Place, Lamoni, IA 50140
Jeffery W. McElroy, Ed.D.
Professional Goals & Action Plan
My professional goals have served me well in my career. I try to be the best that I can be, personally and professionally. I try to make a difference, which I believe means continually driving improvement. I try to be mindful that while I can be consumed by my goals, I must also remain kind and helpful.
During my many years of corporate experience, my professional goals kept me focused and led to the development and implementation of many new key processes that increased customer satisfaction and reduced costs by millions of dollars (see CV for more details).
I am currently starting my 15th year teaching at the university level and continue working to grow as an educator. My goal of trying to be the best that I can be led me to embark on the daunting adventure of attaining my doctorate while teaching full time. In the business world, my MBA was as high as most executives wanted and needed to go but once I started teaching, I had a new rung on the ladder, my Ed.D. I started my Doctor of Education in Leadership in 2013 with the goal of completing my dissertation in 2016. I had a pretty significant delay on my dissertation from 2015 thru 2016 as my father was in serious condition in the hospital for months. The good news is that my father recovered and I was able to complete my dissertation in 2018.
My goal of trying to make a difference pushed me to really work on who the target audience (customer) is for Graceland which then leads to defining what they believe a quality education is so that we can not only provide it, but do it better than our competition. Quality can be a nebulous topic as described by Robert Persig in Zen and the Art of Motor Cycle Maintenance where he states "Quality ... you know what it is, yet you don't know what it is." … “But if you can’t say what Quality is, how do you know what it is or how do you know that it even exists?" (p. 57). In Basic Marketing, Perreault, Cannon and McCarthy describe quality as whatever the customer thinks is quality. This means that we need to understand who the target audience is to have a definition of quality so we’ll know what new offerings are needed and what current offerings require improvement. To dig deeper into making a difference, my doctoral dissertation looks into quality at the university level from student/staff/professor point of view.
I also served on the Quality committee and chaired the Scholar’s Showcase committee. Both of these committees key focus is on quality and making a difference.
To ensure that I continue to make a difference by offering classes that are current and in demand, I talk to students, evaluate my classroom surveys, and talk to industry leaders which guided me to develop a new social media marketing class in 2013. At that point in time, we were one of the few universities that had this class. Seeing the need (student and industry demand) for a major in Social Media Marketing, I then led a joint effort between the Sandage School of Business and the College of Liberal Arts & Sciences to develop one. This major was quickly approved by the board of trustees and was commended as the first major of its kind that required no new classes and crossed academic units. They went on to state that this was a model for development of future majors.
I enjoy helping others so being kind and helpful just seems to come naturally. The struggle I have is taking on too much which can lead to stress which can lead to me not having time to be as kind and helpful as I would like to be. I truly enjoy working with students and my fellow colleagues and really work to not be overly consumed by my drive to make a difference and improve too many things. This is a constant balancing act for me between making a difference and ensuring that I have time to be the kind and helpful person I want to be. As I’ve matured, I’ve learned that there are times that I just have to say no to new projects to maintain this balancing act.
Leadership has always been a part of me and I was honored to accept the role of Dean of the C.H. Sandage School of Business in 2018. This role has enabled me to apply my corporate leadership skills to improve the largest school on the Lamoni campus. Part of my role as Dean was to implement the Next Version of Graceland which I am proud to say that the C.H. Sandage School of Business was the first area to complete the implementation. Moving forward, I plan to continue attending conferences relevant to my discipline, learning from colleagues and business leaders, participating in key committees and activities, and helping in the Lamoni community.