Scott W. Kunkel, Ph.D. 
Associate Professor

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Curriculum Vita

Syllabi and Course Materials

Consultant Learning

Articles and Working Papers

My Personal Life and Pictures of My Family

Links to Other Interesting Sites

USD School of Business

© 2005-2008 Scott Kunkel 

Page Last Updated: 07/20/2009.

Biographical Summary on Dr. Scott Kunkel

Dr. Scott Kunkel has pursued a number of careers through the years, including professional singer and recording artist, salesman, grade school teacher, accountant, bank executive, entrepreneur, and professor and scholar. Scott spent nine years in management of financial institutions, rising to Group Vice President of a state-wide Federal Savings Bank. He has also founded and operated three small businesses.

Education

Scott received his B.B.A. in Accounting and his M.S. in Finance and Law from Memphis State University (now University of Memphis). Scott completed his Ph.D. in Strategic Management at the University of Georgia. He has been a business professor since 1982, six years at Brenau University in Gainesville, Georgia, and four years at the University of Nevada in Reno, before joining the University of San Diego in the Fall of 1992.

Scholarship

Scott has received several awards for outstanding scholarship. He is only the second scholar in history to receive both of the two highest national recognitions that can be earned in the field of Entrepreneurship, the Heizer Award from the Academy of Management and the Best Dissertation in Entrepreneurship Award from The Institute for Management Sciences (TIMS), now known as INFORMS. He has also received several other prestigious scholarly awards. Scott has been biographed in the Marquis' publications Who's Who in the West, Who's Who in America, Who's Who in Finance and Business, Who's Who in Education, and Who's Who in the World.

Leadership

Scott has served in leadership positions with several professional organizations, including being the first Secretary of the Entrepreneurship Division of the Academy of Management and past Program Chair and President of the U.S. Association for Small Business and Entrepreneurship (USASBE).  He has served on the editorial review boards of several scholarly journals in the fields of Entrepreneurship and Family Business.

Phased Retirement  

Scott's current research interests include the strategic factors that influence the performance of new ventures and small and family businesses. He is also interested in working to develop new models of teaching in education for the knowledge-based economy for universities and high schools.  He is rated one of the top teachers in the USD business school by both student and peer evaluations.

Scott will complete his last semester teaching at USD in December, 2009, and will officially retire from the University of San Diego May 31, 2010.  He will be continuing his work with the Consultant Learning Foundation, Inc., a charitable foundation with the mission of spreading the amazing teaching method called Consultant Learning_® across the country, and continue expanding his business, Kunkel Publishing, which is developing and marketing a series of books called the 80/20 Guide^™ series, giving 80% of the benefits in 20% of the pages, on major topics of interest and self improvement.  To learn more see 80-20Guide.com.  

Consultant Learning_® -- Empowering Students to Excel 

Scott has devised a new approach to student directed learning that he has used in teaching business management, policy, small business, entrepreneurship and family business courses and that has been implemented by several other professors in fields from English and Physics to Accounting. 

This Consultant Learning_® framework, based on Student-Centered Problem-Based Learning" theory (PBL), makes students responsible for their own learning and empowers them to custom-design the course to get out of it what is of greatest value to them.  The teacher controls the content that the students learn while the students control the context within which that learning takes place.  

Consultant Learning_® also tracks student progress in terms of dollars rather than points.  Students are "paid" for what they do in the course and the total of what they earn determines their grade.

Consultant Learning_® has won the national award for Pedagogy Innovation of the Year from the U.S. Association for Small Business and Entrepreneurship, the premier organization interested in teaching of entrepreneurship, and the U.S. affiliate of the International Council for Small Business, as well as the Innovative Undergraduate Teaching Award from the University of San Diego School of Business..  

Since 2004, Scott has been training high school teachers in the use of Consultant Learning_®.  He has founded a not-for-profit foundation called the Consultant Learning Foundation, Inc., whose role is to spread the word about Consultant Learning_® and the way it can transform education system from one designed for a 20th century farm and factory society into one designed for a 21st century information economy.  

Scott has created a website just for Consultant Learning_®, called <www.ConsultantLearning.com>.    Click on the link to visit <www.ConsultantLearning.com> to learn about this innovative and successful new approach to teaching that has proven successful in the college as well as the high school classroom