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Longtime USF professor receives Fulbright award to teach in Belarus

USF Muma College of Business Professor Jerry Koehler will be teaching executives in the former Soviet Union about business next year, thanks to a Fulbright award to Belarus.

Koehler will teach at the School of Business at Belarus State University in the Executive MBA Program there, starting Feb. 1, 2017, and continuing through the end of May. He will also consult with the faculty at the university on MBA issues, provide consultation to business executives and offer seminars to the business community.

"It's an honor to receive the Fulbright," Koehler said. "I'm excited about going to Belarus and teaching in the Executive MBA in a former Soviet country. I'm excited about what I'm going to learn."

Koehler has been with USF since 1976, and has also served as a consultant to leading national and international companies and governmental organizations, including Honeywell Space Systems, and Florida's Departments of Revenue, Labor, and the Office of the Governor.

From 1992 to 1995, he served as deputy secretary of Florida's Department of Labor and Employment Security, and in 1998, he received the "Florida's Finest" award from then-Governor Lawton Chiles. Koehler has taught courses and has lectured to audiences throughout the world and has traveled to more than 60 countries.

Koehler planned to visit the area that is now Belarus in 1986, back when it was still the Soviet Union. He could not complete his planned travel to Minsk because of the Chernobyl disaster, and he and his wife went to Sochi instead. He said he is eager to teach executive MBA students and to see what their perceptions are regarding business in today's environment.

"I want to go back and find out how much it's changed," he said.

USF Muma College of Business Dean Moez Limayem said the Fulbright award is yet another addition to Koehler's impressive list of accomplishments.

"Our own Executive MBA students always gain so much from Professor Koehler's courses, and we are glad he can impart his decades of business experience to business students worldwide as a result of the Fulbright," Limayem said. "We look forward to the insights he will bring back to USF from his time in Belarus. Our students will be even more prepared to be leaders in a global marketplace as a result of his experiences abroad."

Koehler is the third USF Muma College of Business professor to receive a Fulbright award since 2015. ISDS Professor Grandon Gill received a core Fulbright award in 2015 to help faculty in South Africa learn how to write case studies and use cases in their classes. Marketing Professor James Stock was awarded the prestigious Fulbright-Hanken Distinguished Chair in Business and Economics at the Hanken School of Economics in Helsinki, Finland and is teaching there this fall.

Active in more than 160 countries, the Fulbright Program facilitates educational exchanges between nations all over the world. Sponsored by the United States government, Fulbright exchanges are designed to increase understanding between people of the U.S. and other nations, and more than 360,000 people have participated in the program since its founding in 1946.