Know Your Professor
By George Cheatham

Given his work history before coming to Greensboro College, Dr. Michael Dutch, Assistant Professor of Business Administration, should be obese—Chucky Cheese, Taco Bell, Frito-Lay. He’s not, though, perhaps a holdover from his high school days in Philadelphia when he ran cross country and track. (He confesses to having been a more than respectable miler and half miler). Or perhaps as a manager he simply never got very close to the food.

Whatever the reason, at any rate, after graduating from Drexel University with a B.S. in Business Administration, Dutch entered the food business, climbing through a succession of managerial positions, first in restaurants, then in food manufacturing (taking an M.B.A., also from Drexel, along the way), before finally arriving at LSG Sky Chefs in Chicago, where, among other positions he was director of operations and helped oversee the production of up to 40,000 airline meals a day. (Don’t make any jokes about airline food; he’s a still a little touchy.)

So why, you might wonder, is he in the classroom rather than managing the cafeteria or making potato chips?  It started innocently enough. While still with LSG, Dutch, curious, began teaching a night class at a local college. And the hook was in. He liked teaching—so much so that he left LSG and took a job as a full-trainer for a Kodak subsidiary. But even that wasn’t enough. So when his wife got transferred to Houston, Dutch used the move as an opportunity to take the plunge, quitting his job and enrolling in Bauer School of Business at the University of Houston, where he earned a Ph.D. in Management.

Greensboro College, where he arrived in 2004, is Dutch’s first full-time teaching job. And he’s quite happy to be here. The small, close community reminds him, he says, of the prep school he attended back in Philadelphia. He particularly likes the small classes and the close interaction among students and faculty. Such closeness lends itself to the sort of mentoring relationship that Dutch found lacking in the business world.

Dutch maintains a suite of offices in the lower level of the Cowan, where he has his own entrance to the building. On warm afternoons you might see him sitting by the open door overlooking the Cowan parking lot, working, of course, reading or grading papers, but also keeping a watchful eye on whichever of his two “high performance vehicles,” he calls them, that he’s driven to work that day—his ’74 BMW or his scooter. He concedes that it may be a stretch calling a 49.5 cc scooter a high performance vehicle but points out that that the 60+ MPG he gets was very impressive performance when gas was over three dollars a gallon.

Dutch is also the faculty advisor for the college Students in Free Enterprise (SIFE) team. In the past two years the team as won $10,000 in grants to help economically disadvantaged teenagers become better equipped to enter the business world. He’s always looking for new projects for his team, which is currently working on a concept to promote financial responsibility by conserving fuel. Sounds like a scooter theme may be emerging.

Dutch and his wife, Heather, met while taking a class together at the University of Pennsylvania. Dutch transferred from that program to the MBA program at Drexel but stayed with Heather and has been married for over 21 years. They have two sons, ages 16 and 11.