New area business college dean creates long list

Running a business school like a business sounds obvious — but in academia that’s not always a certainty. One new dean embraces that mission.

By Mark Gordon
| 6:00 a.m. January 31, 2020
| 0 Free Articles Remaining!

Courtesy. Chris Westley, a professor at Florida Gulf Coast Universityâ€™s Lutgert College of Business since 2015, was recently named dean of the business school.

Education

Southwest Florida native Chris Westley says that when he grew up in the 1980s, there was feather-light enthusiasm, at best, among he and his buddies about the region’s long-term job potential. “We thought we would never come back here — not at least until we retired,” says Westley, a Naples High School graduate.

Westley first went north, to Gainesville and the University of Florida. After a short stop in Washington, D.C. to work for a think tank, Westley spent 15 years in academia, teaching economics at Jacksonville State University in Jacksonville, Ala. But Westley did return to the region, and long before retirement, he joined the faculty at Florida Gulf Coast University in Fort Myers in 2015, again teaching economics.