Growing up near the sunny beaches in San Diego, Ben Galvin imagined himself making a difference in society. Now, after eight years as a professor and three years at the BYU Marriott School of Business researching leadership and teaching undergraduate business students, Galvin has been named the faculty advisor to the undergraduate HR program. In this new role, Galvin is dedicated to creating high-impact experiences for his students to help them build connections along with their education.
“This is an exciting opportunity for me to engage more with the students,” he says. “I’ll be a friend and mentor to them, and help them figure out how to get the most out of their major, how to be successful, and how to make positive changes in business.”
As an associate professor of organizational behavior and human resources, Galvin aims to help students realize their potential influence in his classroom, and he loves researching leadership and uncovering truths that people haven’t previously understood about what makes leaders successful.
Galvin has had his work published in various academic and practitioner business journals, and that work focuses on different aspects of leadership, including how positive follower attributions of a leader spread through social networks, how to communicate in a visionary way, how narcissism influences leadership in positive and negative ways, how to lead more inclusively, and how sponsorship of women and minorities in organizations can help them realize their full potential.
Due to this leadership specialty, Galvin is distinctively equipped to arm his students with the abilities required to lead the way forward in their careers. He sees potential in everyone and works with his students to figure out how to best utilize their individual expertise.
“There is not one size that fits all when it comes to leadership,” Galvin says. “I try to take the inherent talents that each student has and bring those talents out more fully to help students be their best selves and ultimately have a positive influence in the business world.”
Galvin graduated from BYU Marriott with his MBA in 2003, after working at the corporate level for a national retailer, earning a PhD, and teaching at two other universities. He returned to teach at BYU in 2015. Teaching at BYU Marriott was his dream job, and now with his new role as the undergraduate HR program’s faculty advisor, he will expand his dream even further.
“This year we’re making sure that everything we do as a program has high impact,” Galvin says. “We also want to make things fun so we can connect to students in a deep way. The most important things our students will take away from BYU Marriott won’t just be their educations but also the network of relationships they build with each other and with our faculty, and a deeper faith in the Savior.”
_
Writer: Katelyn Stiles