Academic rigor

John Meyer is one of the few business school deans who is as comfortable in the classroom as he is inside an auto-repair shop.

Meyer, the dean of the school of business and technology at Florida SouthWestern State College in Fort Myers, is a certified auto mechanic who owned his own towing, repair and auto wholesale business before earning his academic stripes. “I'm a nontraditional student,” Meyer explains. “I went back to college in my middle 30s.”

That makes Meyer the ideal academic to bridge the yawning gap between universities and the real world. “This is why I like workforce education,” he says. “How do you get these things aligned?”