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.
Summary Self-Assessment of Service
Forbes
Your customer doesn’t care how much you know until they know how much you care. ~ Damon Richards
Over my years at Graceland I’ve had the opportunity to serve on many committees ranging from salary, hiring, quality, first year experience, internships, evaluating a department, approving transfer students’ credits coming into Graceland, and chairing the Scholars’ Showcase Committee. I am especially proud of the work the Scholars’ Showcase Committee accomplished. In just a few short years, this event grew from 5 presenters and a handful of posters to a super convocation with over 100 students involved, to an all-day event starting in 2016 with no classes so that students and faculty could focus on scholarly works. Attendance for the all-day event has exceeded 500 students and faculty. Vice President Tammy Everett worded it the best when she said she enjoyed being on the Scholars’ Showcase Committee because we were doing something that really made a difference.
My professional service has run the gamut from leading the internship program for the Sandage School of Business to assisting with our award winning Enactus team as the Associate Director of the Sandage Center for the Study of Free Enterprise and Entrepreneurship, an Enactus Advisor, and Sam Walton Fellow. I assist the admissions department as often as I can by meeting with prospective students and their parents. Scholars’ Showcase even partners with admissions to bring in prospects during the event so that they and their parents can see the possibilities at Graceland. I am also deeply involved in the assessment and program review for the Sandage School of Business. I developed the annual C.H. Sandage School of Business Senior Student Survey which gives our school another assessment tool to drive improvement. In 2018, I took on the role of Dean for the C.H. Sandage School of Business and have been able to help grow the number of students as well as student satisfaction. In 2019, I took on the leadership of Career Services and totally reworked the Career Services site to enable students to easily access services. I also serve as the baseball team faculty mentor and am the department coordinator for both the Social Media Marketing and Business Administration majors. In 2019, I was heavily involved in getting the Rodeo team started at Graceland. I joined the Fair Board to help represent Graceland and was responsible for the lead donation from Leonard & Doty Boswell. In 2021, I developed strategic and tactical plans for the C.H. Sandage School of Business and followed that up in 2022 with a 5 year Strategic Growth plan. I also led the pilot of SkillPath's Leadership academy on both the Lamoni and Independence campuses. As Dean, I led the NVO effort for the C.H. Sandage School of Business to streamline majors and to develop curriculum maps with learning outcomes and scaffolding for all majors and was asked to present our accomplishments to the Board of Trustees February 2022. I also recognized the need for an easy to follow step-by-step hiring process for Full-Time Faculty, Part-Time Faculty, and Faculty Associates and finalized it Spring 2022.
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I wish I had more time for community service because I enjoy it and believe it really makes a difference. Over the last several years, my wife and I owned a business in town, led the “Save the Caboose” campaign and were responsible for all the events for the 4th of July celebration. I hope to continue helping make our community a great place to live.
Students are the lifeblood of our university and I do believe that having the opportunity to help them is a privilege we should not take for granted. I help students with a multitude of challenges ranging from repairing their cars, finding internships and jobs, understanding job benefits, budgets, and advising them for classes and careers. My wife and I are house parents for Stewart Manor which is so much fun. To help students feel more comfortable and a part of the university early in their university life, I helped develop and lead the new Fall Induction Ceremony for all new incoming students in the C.H. Sandage School of Business. This includes games, a BBQ, faculty and student introductions, and business cards for each student.
Description of Professional Service
To me service is all about being kind and helpful and there are many opportunities at Graceland to do both. So let’s get started.
I volunteered my experience and expertise to lead the Sandage School of Business Internship program. I’ve built a pretty large spreadsheet of companies
with personal contacts that helps me place students for both credit and non-credit internships. The internship program has been successful and now students even come to me for help finding jobs before and after graduation.
For 7 years I was the Associate Director of the Sandage Center for the Study of Free Enterprise and Entrepreneurship, an Enactus Advisor & Sam Walton Fellow. This allowed me to represent Graceland University at regional and national events. I was also a driver of a cruiser when we went to competitions in Chicago, Minneapolis, Rogers, Kansas City, and St. Louis. This meant staying awake driving late at night while everyone else slept to ensure that everyone arrived at their destination safely. One year, a student had a family emergency. We had just arrived in Rogers, Arkansas and it was late in the evening but she needed to get back home. I volunteered to turn around and drive back to Lamoni which meant that I drove all night and arrived at Graceland when the sun was coming up.
The admissions department was looking for a volunteer to represent Graceland for career day at the Knoxville Iowa high school and I was that volunteer. It was a great event and I not only met prospective students but made business contacts via the other guest speakers and have had them visit Graceland to speak to my classes.
I offer on a regular basis to meet with prospective students and their parents. This is a very positive experience and it’s fun talking about Graceland, our business department and Enactus to these parents and students. In the Fall of 2016, I had the opportunity to work with Admissions Counselor Keeyon Johnson and speak to over 300 students at William Chrisman High School in Independence Missouri about Graceland and our new Social Media Marketing major.
In the spring of 2015, I developed a program evaluation including a new annual senior student survey for the business department in the Sandage School of Business. The survey and subsequent evaluation showed mostly areas of excellence with one primary area for improvement. The program evaluation was so well received that we rolled it out to all departments in the Sandage School of Business the next spring.
I had the opportunity to be a facilitator for team building for student leaders at a retreat in Kansas City prior to the start of school. It was outdoors and the weather was great. Chalk up one more wonderful experience.
Most professors have advisees but I take it one step further. Students need to know if they are going to graduate with the degree(s) they want on the date they want to. It is fairly tough to impossible for them to calculate this on their own. So I take the time, and it takes about two hours per student, to calculate a graduation plan with all 4 years of their classes laid out on a spreadsheet. This ensures that they graduate when they planned to and makes it easy to register them for future classes as they are already mapped out.
In Fall 2015, our CH Sandage School of Business was named by Business Research Guide as one of the Top 50 Most Innovative Small College Business Departments in the United States. To promote this, I proposed that we have banners made up. Of course that meant that I volunteered to see that the banners were designed and put up on campus.
Description of Community Service
In Lamoni, my wife and I started and owned a small business, Kathy Jo’s Originals Floral & Design, for two years to provide a much needed service for the community.
Our band, Terre Haute, played for free at a fund raiser for the new Lamoni grade school playground and equipment. It was a successful fund raiser as the grade schoolers now have a new playground and equipment. Our band also played for free at the Lamoni Community Christmas Party.
I helped Preferred Properties serve free pancakes and juice at a Graceland basketball game and I donated my labor and my truck for Lamoni’s annual spring cleanup.
Two big community projects were “Save the Caboose” and the Lamoni 4th of July. The caboose was the last representative of the old railroad that used to go through Lamoni and many of us had grown up with it being around. Unfortunately, it had deteriorated over the years and had also been vandalized. The city didn’t have the money or the man power to fix it so they were going to sell it for scrap metal. That’s when we got involved. My wife and mother did much of the fund raising along with a grant from Grand River Mutual telephone company procured by the Enactus team and I rounded up the manual labor.We removed all of the weeds and overgrown bushes and put in a nice new brick sidewalk around the caboose. Next we patched the holes and put a new metal roof and siding on it to cover the old worn ones. The final phase of the restoration was to install “dummy” windows and a nice sign that tells about the railroad and the history of the caboose.
Before - just getting started
After - with new exterior & sign
My wife and I volunteered to organize and lead Lamoni's 4th of July celebration and I can tell you that being in charge of the all the 4th of July events turned out to be a bigger undertaking than we thought. The day started with a dog show that required us to find a location, advertising and judges. Next was the parade which had many challenges again including judges. After the parade, we had a car and tractor show with a record number of both due to our numerous phone calls to local clubs and owners. The day wound down with a community cookout and a band. Normally the bands are local bands that are fairly inexpensive. This year, due to some kind donors, we were able to bring in The Blue Band that is in the Iowa Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. What a treat for the community!
My wife and I continue to find ways to help our Lamoni community.
Description of Student Service
Students are the lifeblood of any university and having the opportunity to help them is a privilege.
I help students with their cars. They need everything from problem diagnosis, help with repairs, where to take their car to get it repaired, to me looking their car over before they leave to go home. I even help them when the local repair shops can’t get the problem fixed.
Another area that students need assistance in is finding internships and jobs. I’ve made quite a few business contacts over the years and built an excel spreadsheet with all these companies and contacts to help me find students the internships and jobs they want. I also write letters of recommendation for students and have built such a good rapport with some companies that if I drop them an email about a student, it is a guarantee that the student will get an interview.
Each semester I have a student worker and do my best to be a good mentor. I stay in touch with them after graduation and it’s really rewarding to see how well they do in that next step in their lives.
I give students advice about life in general. It could be discussing a potential job and explaining how all of the benefits work like a matching 401K. I had one student that played football ask me if he should quit football because he was getting concussions in the games. I asked him if he thought he was going to be a pro football player after Graceland. He said he didn’t think so. So I asked if he thought he was going to need his brain and he said yes that he wanted to go to grad school. I said that he probably should quit football then. His amusing response was “I just wanted your opinion. That’s the same thing my dad told me”. Another student was disabled from a brain surgery and was in a motorized wheel chair. Her battery went dead and I found out that her charger had broken. I stopped by her apartment, picked up the charger, took it home, soldered the bad connections back together and returned it to her so she could have her chair charged for the next day of classes.
We all advise students but I go step farther and make up a graduation plan for them that lays out all of their classes in a spreadsheet so that they know when they will graduate. This also lets us plan ahead to be sure they get in all the classes they want to take.
My wife and I are house parents for Stewart Manor. We typically start in the fall with a bonfire, weenie roast and s’mores for dessert. Next is a super bowl party and the school year usually wraps up with us taking treats out to the students for finals week. We even loan the students cookware and other items they need for events.
