"A total dedication to experiential learning" has earned Dr. Armand Gilinsky, Professor in the School of Business and Economics at Sonoma State University, the Santa Rosa Chamber of Commerce Excellence in Education Award.
Gilinsky teaches at both the undergraduate and graduate level. In addition to Strategy, the capstone course required of all Business Administration students, he excels in teaching Entrepreneurship and Small Business classes.
Gilinsky uses real-world cases and experience to teach his students, developing programs or techniques that best promote student achievement. When students study cases in his classes they research and present real cases from real companies and present their results to panels of business executives from the companies studied, venture capitalists and financial company managers. 85% of Gilinsky's scholastic output is the result of co- authorship with and/or recognition of undergraduate and graduate students
This year Gilinsky sponsored a PhD student from the University of Florence who wished to study innovation in the wine industry as part of her doctoral research. As a result of the outstanding success of her visit, SSU now has a sister university agreement in Business, with the University of Florence. In addition, Gilinsky was invited to Florence to deliver lectures to graduate students in the business masters and doctoral programs.
Gilinsky serves the outside community as well, encouraging his students to be coaches for the teams of young men and women who, over full week's activity, develop a product, compete with other teams and finally present their cases before community business leaders as an advisor and faculty supervisor of Youth Business Week for Sonoma County high school students. He is also the Director of the "Small Business Institute", developing student-consulting projects for business since 1995.
"Armand is a role model of life-long learning for fellow educations by providing sustained contributions to organizations in his academic disciplines," said his nominator.
Gilinsky holds a Ph.D. in Business Policy from the Henley Management College/Brunel University; an M.B.A. with a finance concentration from Golden Gate University; an M.A. in Educational Administration and Policy Analysis from Stanford; and a B.A. in English with honors from Stanford. In addition he has industry experience in finance in two firms in San Francisco and serves as a Principal with McGill Associates in Sonoma. His case studies have won Gilinsky many awards and he has had many of them published in textbooks and professional presentations.
