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(863) 667-7077
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Professor brings global perspective to USF Lakeland
John Selsky, Ph.D.
Associate Professor
Management
LAKELAND,
FL (November 14, 2007) - For Dr. John Selsky, “the wanderlust started early.” And the University of South Florida Lakeland values that attribute.
Beginning at age 16, when he went on a school-sponsored trip to Europe, the USF Lakeland associate professor of management has visited 34 countries. That love of travel led him to an international teaching career.
“In 1988, after receiving my Ph.D. from Wharton, I was looking for a different kind of academic experience,” he said. “I was living in Seattle and was recruited by the University of Otago in New Zealand. One thing led to another and I went sight unseen.”
Selsky left thinking he might stay two or three years. Instead he spent nine years at Otago, one of New Zealand’s top-ranked research universities.
“I loved it,” he said. “It was comfortable, pleasant, and beautiful. I enjoyed the university, made friends and established a research program.
“I grew up with a love of the outdoors, and in New Zealand there’s a big interest in the natural environment. I was able to turn my recreational interest into a part of my professional life by becoming a member of the university’s research center for environmental policy and management and worked on several projects. Later I became director of that center.”
As director of the interdisciplinary research center, Selsky coordinated the efforts of 50 faculty members representing 20 different departments.
“As a business faculty member I was greeted at first with some skepticism,” he said, “but I convinced people my values were in the right place.”
Selsky credits Wharton, generally regarded as one of the top business schools in the world, with helping to prepare him for an international career.
“In my department at Wharton I was one of the few Americans,” he said. “I was surrounded by students from the Netherlands, Mexico, Iran, the UK and other countries. Also, my department, Social Systems Sciences, was a unique interdisciplinary program. Students had backgrounds in all kinds of areas, from architecture to chemistry. There was an enormous amount of teamwork, so I learned how to collaborate effectively with people from different cultures and different professional backgrounds.”
After nine years in New Zealand, Selsky felt the familiar wanderlust returning.
“I wanted to swim in a bigger pond,” he said. “As my academic career developed I started to feel constricted by my position in New Zealand.”
So he moved from Dunedin, New Zealand, a town of about 90,000, to Melbourne, Australia, a city of 3 million.
“I loved Melbourne,” he said. “It reminded me in many ways of my hometown, Philadelphia, in terms of size, industry and demographics. Plus they’re both coastal cities with major seaports.”
Selsky taught at Monash University and the University of Melbourne, one of the country’s top universities. He directed a master’s program in systems thinking at Monash and the Ph.D. program in management at the University of Melbourne.
Having taught in three countries, Selsky sees differences in each one’s system of higher education. In Australia and New Zealand, a bachelor’s degree is a three-year course of study. Semesters last 12 weeks instead of 15 in the United States. Student attitudes reflect these differences.
“Students in North America are used to regular assessment every few weeks. They have clear benchmarks,” he said. “In Australia and New Zealand, students have more of a sense of completing a whole course and then taking a performance assessment. Some professors used to base 100 percent of the grade on the final exam. It was not uncommon to have a final exam account for anywhere from 50 percent to 75 percent of a student’s grade. Here at USF Lakeland, that type of cumulative final exam could never happen.”
Selsky said a significant event prompted him to consider leaving Australia.
“September 11 had a surprisingly strong effect on me, one that I didn’t realize at the time,” he said. “It took a while for it to sink in, but I found myself longing to return to the United States. So I targeted universities that would value my broad research interests and not try to pigeonhole me into a little box. At USF Lakeland, I feel valued for my broad perspectives and research interests. “
In an increasingly global economy, an international perspective benefits the university and its students.
“I try to bring an understanding of other cultures, of different ways of seeing the world and dealing with problems in the world,” said Selsky. “My familiarity with different concepts and methods helps me address organizational problems in my field, management, in some different ways.”
Selsky maintains many international contacts. He speaks some French, German and Ukrainian and publishes in North American and European journals. He recently spent time at Oxford University in England working on a book and currently has co-authors on research projects in the United States, New Zealand, Australia and Turkey. Last semester he applied his experience, teaching international management for the first time at USF Lakeland.
“It was a very interesting and rewarding experience,” he said. “After listening to my own lectures in previous classes I realized many of my examples were international, so I thought teaching international management would be a good experience for me and the students. I felt comfortable with the material and could relate it effectively to students. I think the class operated at a deeper level because of my international experience.”
The USF Lakeland business program, in which Selsky teaches, has a highly regarded faculty, consisting of nine full-time professors and five adjuncts. It offers about 28 upper-division courses in five areas of business every semester, and business students make up nearly 30 percent of total campus enrollment.
As part of its strategic plan, USF has committed to pursuing its rising stature as a pre-eminent research university with global impact. Reflecting that effort, Professor John Selsky uses his international experience to help USF Lakeland management students prepare for an increasingly global business environment.
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