The Boston College Chronicle

Assoc. Prof. John Gallaugher

Passion and Principle

CSOM's Gallaugher loves being 'a geek' - and being a teacher

By Reid Oslin
Staff Writer

He calls himself "just a geek," but Assoc. Prof. John Gallaugher brings passion and an innovative approach to his Carroll School of Management classroom, and beyond.

Gallaugher, a member of CSOM's Information Systems department, certainly has geek credentials. A recipient of the University's Distinguished Teaching Award, he was the first professor at Boston College to make all of his lectures available to students via iPod or MP3 computer downloads, a strategy he says significantly boosts learning, especially among students in his four freshman sections.

He keeps in touch with hundreds of his former students via a blog, "The Week in Geek," and alumni often return to guest lecture in his classes.

Gallaugher also organizes and oversees the popular "TechTrek West" field study courses for undergraduate and graduate students and co-leads the MBA program's "International Management Experience: Asia" course. These programs provide CSOM students with the opportunity to meet face-to-face with top high tech executives in Silicon Valley and the Far East.

The self-confessed geek is a bundle of energy in his classroom, constantly on the move, bounding up stairs to ask or answer questions and engaging his students in the topic of the day. His office hours find a constant queue outside his door with students seeking his advice and information on academic and professional pursuits.

"I want to love my job the way Professor Gallaugher loves his," says Sophie Farrell, a College of Arts and Sciences senior who has taken several of Gallaugher's courses and participated in last spring's TechTrek.

"He always has enough going on to drive one person crazy, but he would never close his door to a student. When he tells you he is here to help you with career advice or just to have conversations about the newest technology, he really means it. He shows a dedication to Boston College and to his students that is incredible."

"John Gallaugher is plugged into the ever evolving technology landscape and brings a voltage of enthusiasm both into the classroom and into professional relationships with business leaders, students and alumni," says Paul Springer '00, an executive at Amazon.com.

Springer, like a number of Gallaugher's former students who hold executive positions in high technology firms, often returns to campus to deliver classroom lectures on the latest industry trends to Gallaugher's undergraduate classes.

"John encourages students to think simultaneously through the lenses of a technologist and a CEO," Springer says. "He brings the real world into the classroom."

Yet few of his students know that John Gallaugher endures a significant and lifelong vision deficiency that, without corrective lenses, makes him legally blind; that he once dropped out of college because none of his teachers knew his name; or that he once did stand-up comedy in Boston nightclubs.

"[With John] the enthusiasm and passion all comes out," notes CSOM Associate Dean Jeff Rinquest, a friend and colleague since Gallaugher joined the BC faculty in 1997 after receiving a doctorate from Syracuse University. "John is clearly one of the most passionate people that I know.

"But it's not just the show with him. It's the preparation, it's the love of the field. That's what comes through."

This passion stems in part from his commitment to his own alma mater. "I was changed very positively by my own experience at Boston College," says Gallaugher, a 1988 College of Arts and Sciences graduate who added an MBA from CSOM two years later. "As an alumnus I feel a particularly strong sense of responsibility to give my students a top-notch experience at BC."

Gallaugher's life was not always gilded with the privilege of faculty status. He was given up for adoption at birth, taken into foster care by Eileen and Maurice Gallaugher, a Canadian couple who were raising three of their own children in Wayne, NJ.

Doctors thought he would be severely developmentally delayed and placed him in a birth defects clinic where he spent the first five months of his life. "My best guess is what looked like a serious mental handicap was probably just my poor eyesight," he says. "So much for the doctors! I guess that it turns out that some really smart people can sometimes be really wrong."

Assoc. Prof. John Gallaugher (CSOM) with (L) Eric Procopio '09 and Paul Santora '08: "I want my students to see that we have high expectations for them in the Carroll School, and I think most are up for that challenge. Iíve been impressed."

Gallaugher was eventually diagnosed with severe nearsightedness, nystagmus and developing macular degeneration, but he downplays his poor vision. "I wear contact lenses instead of glasses - super-thick lenses are more distorting. I tilt my head sometimes, and from a distance, some people may think I am not looking straight at them because one eye is stronger than the other. Without my contacts I am legally blind, but with them I read and use the computer at a decent distance. The only real limitation is not driving, and in Boston that's not much of a problem."

A father of two himself, Gallaugher credits his parents with helping him find his calling. "My parents were wonderful," he says. "I was so blessed. Ours wasn't a college family. Dad was an electrician and Mom worked the nightshift in a plastics factory. In fact, neither my mother nor oldest brother graduated from high school, but they always encouraged me to find something that I was interested in and to pursue that."

"The first computers I got to program were in our junior high school. I remember it didn't even have a monitor, just a printer that was attached to the keyboard. The computer was tucked away in another room and was about the size of two refrigerators. At the time it was very high tech - most schools didn't have that."

Gallaugher knew that he wanted to continue his education after high school, but he didn't know where, and there were no college graduates in his family to offer advice. His first college experience was not a good one.

"At the end of my freshman year, there wasn't a single professor who knew my name," says Gallaugher, who declines to name the institution he attended. "I thought 'This isn't what college is supposed to be like.'"

So Gallaugher took a year off, writing software for small businesses in a computer dealership and taking courses at a local state college. A friend at Tufts invited him to visit, and he took the opportunity to look at schools in the area.

"When I visited BC, the students seemed to love it here. They were genuinely enthusiastic about the University and I knew this was where I wanted to go."

While at BC, Gallaugher had enough positive student experiences to fill an admissions office viewbook. "I came to BC thinking the only languages I wanted to study were programming languages," he says. "By the time I left, I'd chosen to study Spanish in Spain and Russian in the Soviet Union."

He served as a residence hall assistant and also participated in PULSE program social service projects, an experience he strongly recommends to students. "PULSE was an eye-opener. I served a community of Southeast Asian refugees, people who had escaped Communism to come to the United States. I realized hearing some of their experiences that I had never had a truly bad day in my life. These people had really struggled."

After getting his undergrad degree in computer sciences, Gallagher went immediately into BC's MBA program, and during those years he served as graduate student manager of Murray House at that time, studied Russian (he volunteered as a Russian interpreter at Beth Israel Hospital) and met his future wife, Kim, also a BC student.

His clever wit and engaging personality made him a natural comedian. To take a break from his business studies, he would often emcee campus events and perform at open microphone comedy shows at various Boston night spots. He wrote his own material: "Dukakis jokes, Gorbachev jokes, topical humor, nothing raunchy" he says. "The jokes are too old to tell now - past their expiration date."

Gallaugher's on-stage talents earned him an offer to take part in the "Comedy Riot", a Boston comedy club competition that rewarded the winner with a professional contract. He declined the "Comedy Riot" invitation, opting instead to sharpen his Russian in a summer program at Bryn Mawr College. The eventual "Riot" winner was another young Boston comic, Joe Rogan, who today is the host of the NBC television show "Fear Factor."

"I'm glad I'm not asking people to eat worms for a living," he quips. "I know that I have a much better job than Joe Rogan, but he's probably making more money than me."

After toiling in Moscow for what he says was "maybe the lowest starting salary of any American MBA," he returned to the US to marry Kim and then worked on software projects for Alcoa in Pittsburgh. The experience of "learning new things and sharing that with others," he says, rekindled his interest in teaching at the college level. He and Kim wound up at Syracuse, where he won several teaching awards as a graduate student in information systems, and then BC called to offer him a job.

"This is the place where great faculty, now my colleagues, inspired me to teach," he says. "And, I get an opportunity now to work with amazing students who just keep getting better every year. They are wonderful."

Gallaugher has an unusual teaching assignment this semester: leading four sections of the re-cast CSOM core course Computers in Management that he co-teaches with faculty from the Computer Science department. Gallaugher's role is to offer a first course in management through the lens of technology. Computer Science faculty teach hands-on Excel skills during the second half.

"Teaching freshmen is new for me, but I've really enjoyed it. They're a blast," he says. "I push them really hard, but they seem excited about the material. Maybe just a few haven't yet settled into the reality of how they are going to be challenged on campus, but most have. And if you're going to be shocked into working harder, freshman year is the best time for that to happen.

"I want my students to see that we have high expectations for them in the Carroll School, and I think most are up for that challenge. I've been impressed."

In the coming weeks, Gallaugher will be putting the finishing touches on this year's TechTrek and International Management Experience programs that will bring students to a close-up view of some of the world's leading high tech companies.

This will be the second year for the "Trek" undergraduate tour, which visits cutting-edge firms in California and Washington; the third year for the MBA excursion to the same area; and the seventh year for the Asian graduate-level trip, which in the past has visited high tech companies in China, Hong Kong, Japan, Thailand, Vietnam and India, among others.

Gallaugher sees a special benefit to the field studies - introducing current Boston College students to University alumni who have moved into leadership positions. "It's inspiring to our students - both the domestics and the internationals - to see other 'Eagles' doing these really great things."

As an example, Gallaugher points to alumnus Phil Schiller '82, vice-president of world-wide marketing at Apple Computer who hosted the BC group during a recent TechTrek.

"Phil is probably the best product marketer on the planet. He's also one of the guys who invented the iPod. He's listed on the patent for the click wheel," Gallaugher says. "When we first spoke about TechTrek, [Schiller] said 'Let's do something different,' and for the past two years he's met our students in San Francisco and has given them a master class on how Apple launches new products. He brings us to the MacWorld Expo two days before the open of the show, takes us on the floor and we get a behind-the-scenes look at how it's executed. He talks about how Apple handles the secrecy [of new products], brings us into the press room and talks with us about some of the details that are critical to building the iconic brand of our time.

"He then brings the group back a couple of days later to see Steve Jobs roll out products.

"We are very fortunate to have such committed alumni in high tech and in venture capital," says Gallaugher. "They have so much to offer our students. I know that I've learned a tremendous amount and it gives us some a lot credibility when we can mention that our alumni - people who graduated from the seats that my students sit in right now - are doing pioneering things at firms like eBay, Google, and Amazon," he says,

"Classroom teaching is my primary focus. But being able to do some of these extra things, to launch innovative programs, to creatively seek opportunities for student formation, it's a gift," Gallaugher says. "I have my dream job. How many people can say that?"


Home • About • Calendar • People • Forum • Archive	Nov. 16, 2006 • Volume 15 Number 6
Assoc. Prof. John Gallaugher Passion and Principle CSOM's Gallaugher loves being 'a geek' - and being a teacher By Reid Oslin Staff Writer He calls himself "just a geek," but Assoc. Prof. John Gallaugher brings passion and an innovative approach to his Carroll School of Management classroom, and beyond. Gallaugher, a member of CSOM's Information Systems department, certainly has geek credentials. A recipient of the University's Distinguished Teaching Award, he was the first professor at Boston College to make all of his lectures available to students via iPod or MP3 computer downloads, a strategy he says significantly boosts learning, especially among students in his four freshman sections. He keeps in touch with hundreds of his former students via a blog, "The Week in Geek," and alumni often return to guest lecture in his classes. Gallaugher also organizes and oversees the popular "TechTrek West" field study courses for undergraduate and graduate students and co-leads the MBA program's "International Management Experience: Asia" course. These programs provide CSOM students with the opportunity to meet face-to-face with top high tech executives in Silicon Valley and the Far East. The self-confessed geek is a bundle of energy in his classroom, constantly on the move, bounding up stairs to ask or answer questions and engaging his students in the topic of the day. His office hours find a constant queue outside his door with students seeking his advice and information on academic and professional pursuits. "I want to love my job the way Professor Gallaugher loves his," says Sophie Farrell, a College of Arts and Sciences senior who has taken several of Gallaugher's courses and participated in last spring's TechTrek. "He always has enough going on to drive one person crazy, but he would never close his door to a student. When he tells you he is here to help you with career advice or just to have conversations about the newest technology, he really means it. He shows a dedication to Boston College and to his students that is incredible." "John Gallaugher is plugged into the ever evolving technology landscape and brings a voltage of enthusiasm both into the classroom and into professional relationships with business leaders, students and alumni," says Paul Springer '00, an executive at Amazon.com. Springer, like a number of Gallaugher's former students who hold executive positions in high technology firms, often returns to campus to deliver classroom lectures on the latest industry trends to Gallaugher's undergraduate classes. "John encourages students to think simultaneously through the lenses of a technologist and a CEO," Springer says. "He brings the real world into the classroom." Yet few of his students know that John Gallaugher endures a significant and lifelong vision deficiency that, without corrective lenses, makes him legally blind; that he once dropped out of college because none of his teachers knew his name; or that he once did stand-up comedy in Boston nightclubs. "[With John] the enthusiasm and passion all comes out," notes CSOM Associate Dean Jeff Rinquest, a friend and colleague since Gallaugher joined the BC faculty in 1997 after receiving a doctorate from Syracuse University. "John is clearly one of the most passionate people that I know. "But it's not just the show with him. It's the preparation, it's the love of the field. That's what comes through." This passion stems in part from his commitment to his own alma mater. "I was changed very positively by my own experience at Boston College," says Gallaugher, a 1988 College of Arts and Sciences graduate who added an MBA from CSOM two years later. "As an alumnus I feel a particularly strong sense of responsibility to give my students a top-notch experience at BC." Gallaugher's life was not always gilded with the privilege of faculty status. He was given up for adoption at birth, taken into foster care by Eileen and Maurice Gallaugher, a Canadian couple who were raising three of their own children in Wayne, NJ. Doctors thought he would be severely developmentally delayed and placed him in a birth defects clinic where he spent the first five months of his life. "My best guess is what looked like a serious mental handicap was probably just my poor eyesight," he says. "So much for the doctors! I guess that it turns out that some really smart people can sometimes be really wrong." Assoc. Prof. John Gallaugher (CSOM) with (L) Eric Procopio '09 and Paul Santora '08: "I want my students to see that we have high expectations for them in the Carroll School, and I think most are up for that challenge. Iíve been impressed." Gallaugher was eventually diagnosed with severe nearsightedness, nystagmus and developing macular degeneration, but he downplays his poor vision. "I wear contact lenses instead of glasses - super-thick lenses are more distorting. I tilt my head sometimes, and from a distance, some people may think I am not looking straight at them because one eye is stronger than the other. Without my contacts I am legally blind, but with them I read and use the computer at a decent distance. The only real limitation is not driving, and in Boston that's not much of a problem." A father of two himself, Gallaugher credits his parents with helping him find his calling. "My parents were wonderful," he says. "I was so blessed. Ours wasn't a college family. Dad was an electrician and Mom worked the nightshift in a plastics factory. In fact, neither my mother nor oldest brother graduated from high school, but they always encouraged me to find something that I was interested in and to pursue that." What he found was computers. "The first computers I got to program were in our junior high school. I remember it didn't even have a monitor, just a printer that was attached to the keyboard. The computer was tucked away in another room and was about the size of two refrigerators. At the time it was very high tech - most schools didn't have that." Gallaugher knew that he wanted to continue his education after high school, but he didn't know where, and there were no college graduates in his family to offer advice. His first college experience was not a good one. "At the end of my freshman year, there wasn't a single professor who knew my name," says Gallaugher, who declines to name the institution he attended. "I thought 'This isn't what college is supposed to be like.'" So Gallaugher took a year off, writing software for small businesses in a computer dealership and taking courses at a local state college. A friend at Tufts invited him to visit, and he took the opportunity to look at schools in the area. "When I visited BC, the students seemed to love it here. They were genuinely enthusiastic about the University and I knew this was where I wanted to go." While at BC, Gallaugher had enough positive student experiences to fill an admissions office viewbook. "I came to BC thinking the only languages I wanted to study were programming languages," he says. "By the time I left, I'd chosen to study Spanish in Spain and Russian in the Soviet Union." He served as a residence hall assistant and also participated in PULSE program social service projects, an experience he strongly recommends to students. "PULSE was an eye-opener. I served a community of Southeast Asian refugees, people who had escaped Communism to come to the United States. I realized hearing some of their experiences that I had never had a truly bad day in my life. These people had really struggled." After getting his undergrad degree in computer sciences, Gallagher went immediately into BC's MBA program, and during those years he served as graduate student manager of Murray House at that time, studied Russian (he volunteered as a Russian interpreter at Beth Israel Hospital) and met his future wife, Kim, also a BC student. His clever wit and engaging personality made him a natural comedian. To take a break from his business studies, he would often emcee campus events and perform at open microphone comedy shows at various Boston night spots. He wrote his own material: "Dukakis jokes, Gorbachev jokes, topical humor, nothing raunchy" he says. "The jokes are too old to tell now - past their expiration date." Gallaugher's on-stage talents earned him an offer to take part in the "Comedy Riot", a Boston comedy club competition that rewarded the winner with a professional contract. He declined the "Comedy Riot" invitation, opting instead to sharpen his Russian in a summer program at Bryn Mawr College. The eventual "Riot" winner was another young Boston comic, Joe Rogan, who today is the host of the NBC television show "Fear Factor." "I'm glad I'm not asking people to eat worms for a living," he quips. "I know that I have a much better job than Joe Rogan, but he's probably making more money than me." After toiling in Moscow for what he says was "maybe the lowest starting salary of any American MBA," he returned to the US to marry Kim and then worked on software projects for Alcoa in Pittsburgh. The experience of "learning new things and sharing that with others," he says, rekindled his interest in teaching at the college level. He and Kim wound up at Syracuse, where he won several teaching awards as a graduate student in information systems, and then BC called to offer him a job. "This is the place where great faculty, now my colleagues, inspired me to teach," he says. "And, I get an opportunity now to work with amazing students who just keep getting better every year. They are wonderful." Gallaugher has an unusual teaching assignment this semester: leading four sections of the re-cast CSOM core course Computers in Management that he co-teaches with faculty from the Computer Science department. Gallaugher's role is to offer a first course in management through the lens of technology. Computer Science faculty teach hands-on Excel skills during the second half. "Teaching freshmen is new for me, but I've really enjoyed it. They're a blast," he says. "I push them really hard, but they seem excited about the material. Maybe just a few haven't yet settled into the reality of how they are going to be challenged on campus, but most have. And if you're going to be shocked into working harder, freshman year is the best time for that to happen. "I want my students to see that we have high expectations for them in the Carroll School, and I think most are up for that challenge. I've been impressed." In the coming weeks, Gallaugher will be putting the finishing touches on this year's TechTrek and International Management Experience programs that will bring students to a close-up view of some of the world's leading high tech companies. This will be the second year for the "Trek" undergraduate tour, which visits cutting-edge firms in California and Washington; the third year for the MBA excursion to the same area; and the seventh year for the Asian graduate-level trip, which in the past has visited high tech companies in China, Hong Kong, Japan, Thailand, Vietnam and India, among others. Gallaugher sees a special benefit to the field studies - introducing current Boston College students to University alumni who have moved into leadership positions. "It's inspiring to our students - both the domestics and the internationals - to see other 'Eagles' doing these really great things." As an example, Gallaugher points to alumnus Phil Schiller '82, vice-president of world-wide marketing at Apple Computer who hosted the BC group during a recent TechTrek. "Phil is probably the best product marketer on the planet. He's also one of the guys who invented the iPod. He's listed on the patent for the click wheel," Gallaugher says. "When we first spoke about TechTrek, [Schiller] said 'Let's do something different,' and for the past two years he's met our students in San Francisco and has given them a master class on how Apple launches new products. He brings us to the MacWorld Expo two days before the open of the show, takes us on the floor and we get a behind-the-scenes look at how it's executed. He talks about how Apple handles the secrecy [of new products], brings us into the press room and talks with us about some of the details that are critical to building the iconic brand of our time. "He then brings the group back a couple of days later to see Steve Jobs roll out products. "We are very fortunate to have such committed alumni in high tech and in venture capital," says Gallaugher. "They have so much to offer our students. I know that I've learned a tremendous amount and it gives us some a lot credibility when we can mention that our alumni - people who graduated from the seats that my students sit in right now - are doing pioneering things at firms like eBay, Google, and Amazon," he says, "Classroom teaching is my primary focus. But being able to do some of these extra things, to launch innovative programs, to creatively seek opportunities for student formation, it's a gift," Gallaugher says. "I have my dream job. How many people can say that?" •
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Home • About • Calendar • People • Forum • Archive

Nov. 16, 2006 • Volume 15 Number 6

Passion and Principle

CSOM's Gallaugher loves being 'a geek' - and being a teacher

By Reid Oslin Staff Writer

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By Reid Oslin
Staff Writer