John Carroll university • suMMer 2006 1�

Dr. Luis Ma. R. Calingo is the new dean of the Boler school of Business

“The emphasis for

my fi rst six months

will be on fi nding out

what our customers

expect from us and

learning how we can

be of better service

and value to them.”

John Carroll university • suMMer 2006 1�

1� John Carroll university • suMMer 2006

Dr. luis Calingo is the 51-year-old embodi-ment of the university’s commitment to engage the world. the new dean of the Boler school of Business was raised in the Philippines, and began his academic career in america with an asian perspective.

in the 26 years since he came here as a graduate student in 1980, Calingo has assimilated a comprehensive understanding of the best contemporary business practices, particularly in the area of strategic planning. he has also carefully developed state-of-the-art skills as a bridge builder between the business cultures of the u.s. and those of the world, especially the increasingly economically important asian portion of the world.

Calingo has engineered many connect-ing business and academic links, and there is a reasonable expectation that he will expertly guide John Carroll’s students and faculty across them in the years ahead.

When he went to singapore in 1993 on a three-year leave from California state university, Fresno, Calingo devoted much of his prodigious energy to interpreting the american corporate world to the Chinese-majority students and academics of that tiny economic powerhouse on the tip of the Malay Peninsula. at the Monterey institute of international studies, where he went on another academic leave at the conclusion of his singapore sojourn, the son of two Philippine engineers became the point person for the interpretation of asian business culture to the graduate students at the prestigious school.

this very Catholic, deeply dedicated family man is not simply a translator of diverse business cultures. When he goes to vietnam, thailand, Mongolia, singa-pore, the Philippines, sri lanka, among other destinations, his principal mission is generally to carry and transmit the most advanced understanding of quality control, productivity, strategic planning and other

aspects of best business practices – the same body of knowledge he im-parts to american organizations and students. invariably in the course of his consultative engagements, Calingo teaches the businessmen of vietnam, for example, how to talk to and work with the businessmen of California…and ohio. With his american listeners, he pursues the obverse mission.

as the friends of his three daughters might say, Calingo is “hooked up;” he has strong lines of connection with a wide range

of academic and business leaders on both sides of the Pacifi c basin, as well as in other parts of the world. Before coming to John Carroll, he was previously, in turn, the dean of the business schools at California state university, Fresno and California state uni-versity, long Beach. at nanyang university in singapore, asia’s largest academic busi-ness center, Calingo was the leader of the new program in international business that he helped shape in the mid ’90s.

Calingo is a veteran member of the board of examiners of the Malcolm Bal-dridge national Quality award, a sig-nifi cant vehicle for the communication of best business practices in this country. he helped establish a similar award in the Philippines and in so doing came to the attention of leaders in vietnam. Meta-phorically speaking, vietnam told thai-land, which told Mongolia, which told sri lanka… that’s not quite the way the communication process occurred, but the outcome is the same: Dr. luis Calingo has become a presence in the asian move-ment to improve productivity and quality. next year there will be a brief Fulbright-sponsored teaching presence in Bangkok in which he will lecture about quality indicators to academics at thailand’s fi nest educational institutions.

all of this means that the new Boler dean’s rolodex is likely to become an im-portant asset for John Carroll. For example, when he was at long Beach, he was able to achieve a signifi cant academic alliance with Bangkok’s thammasat university, an institution which normally scorns partner-ing liaisons with schools that, like long Beach and JCu, do not grant doctorates.

Calingo says, “ten years from now, China is going to be the world’s largest economy, and i hope that John Carroll will look across the Pacifi c, not only across the atlantic, and i look forward to contribut-ing to that process.” While at long Beach, he established educational partnerships with institutions in Guangdong, Jiangsu, liaoning and sichuan provinces of China.

luis Calingo was born in 1955 in Que-

Baby Luis with his family in Quezon City, Philippines

1� John Carroll university • suMMer 2006

John Carroll university • suMMer 2006 1� John Carroll university • suMMer 2006 1�

zon City, the second most populous city in the Philippines and a part of Metropolitan Manila. Mariano and lucia Calingo were graduates of a private engineering college. their son says now: “i probably inherited my bias for systematic approaches from both my parents.” Mari-ano worked in mosquito control and lucia was a cum laude grad in chemi-cal engineering. Circum-stances led to their both being employees of the nation’s bureau of motor vehicles.

though, with both parents employed in good government jobs, the Calingos were not poor, the fact that there were six children dic-tated that, when he was in the sixth grade, the Calingo brood switched from private Catholic to public schools.

life changed dramatically shortly after as lucia Calingo died at the time luis was 12. With fi ve younger siblings, the new dean refl ects, “i became a surrogate mother very early on.” he knew and was ever after faith-ful to the cultural principle that the Filipino child carries a high responsibility for the care and education of the younger children. some years later, luis was a student activist who, amidst a Ferdinand Marcos-imposed martial law, curtailed his protest activities because of family responsibilities.

he says he was a lonely, motherless boy during his fi rst years at the selective university of the Philippines high school. his alienation was exacerbated by the fact that most classmates were from wealthier Filipino families. When he talks about this period, Calingo stresses that he became aware of poverty – not that of his family, but the crippling deprivation affl icting so much of Philippine society.

a passion for social justice grew and shaped his life. though he came to see

business and economic development as his chosen agency of social change, Calingo’s conversation makes it crystalline that he has never lost his sensitivity to poverty and his determination to help make things better. he says he thought for a time of becoming a

lawyer and that if he had, he would probably have been a human rights lawyer. he also had his fi rst exposure to the Jesuits during his high school years, and he caught from them a passion to be a man for others.

one of the interesting aspects of Calin-go is that he was a student activist with a deep commitment to social justice, who was also an ardent member of the legion of Mary, which is where he met his future wife, Gemeline. after early elementary education with stern spanish augustinian recollect friars, his education was at public institutions, but in Catholic Philippines, supplemental religious instruction is nor-mative, and for luis Calingo that became a strong line to orthodox Catholicism.

after his mother’s death, he was moved by her conviction that “life is what you make it.” he created a church choir when he was in high school. as his managerial drive bubbled up, it found expression in organizing the altar boys and leading them to weekend discussions of Catholic social

teaching. talking about being drawn to lib-eration theology, with its radical social and economic critique, Calingo’s often smiling face refl ects the awareness that this leftist version of Catholic social thinking went out of favor during the papacy of John Paul ii.

his defi nitive judgment is, “i cannot be a cafeteria Catholic.” though he hap-pily does much of his work with those of other reli-gions, Calingo is a deeply committed Catholic, espe-cially in recent years. he said the practice of his faith had become lukewarm about the time he went to singapore, but that some health issues and his spiri-tual path led him toward a more fervent commitment to Gospel values.

his parents imbued him with the conviction that government could

be a vehicle for change. When he graduated from the university of the Philippines with a degree in industrial engineering, Calingo went to work with a governmental, aiD-funded, development project that sought to organize farmer associa-tions, fi nance and build small-scale irrigation systems and mechanize farming to serve the impoverished people of the land.

he earned a master’s in urban and re-gional planning during this late ’70s period. he was later seconded to imelda Marco’s ministry of human settlements, where the led the development of a program to build model communities run by housing cooperatives in the countryside. Calingo says the progress was important, and that there were times he brought a change of clothes because he chose to work through the night.

But in 1980, the new guy in the Boler dean’s offi ce made a decision to become a change agent and a man for others by equipping himself with advanced knowledge tools. With Gemeline, who had become his wife, Calingo came to the university

From left, Luis, daughters Ashley, Alexandra and Arienne and wife, Gemeline.

1� John Carroll university • suMMer 2006

of Pittsburgh. During four years there, the couple experienced the harshness of winter, the absence of their culture, customary food and family. however, with his fi erce work ethic, luis earned an MBa and a P.h.D. in a far shorter period than usual and the couple was soon far away from winter in the too hot but academically hospitable climate of Cali-fornia state university at Fresno.

Calingo says that he felt that he had to work twice as hard there because he had come from a different culture, and that he did. as a management professor at Fresno, he published many books and articles, earned tenure, and became dean of a busi-ness school that then had 2600 majors. he was also instrumental in securing a $10 million gift that led to the school being named for sid Craig, the corporate leader of the Jenny Craig weight loss corporation.

luis and Gemeline also became the parents of their three daughters during these fi rst Fresno years. uCla alumna ashley is a graduate student in public health at san Diego state; alexandra is a freshman at Berkeley, and arienne is at home with her parents on Fairmount Blvd., and is a student at Gilmour academy.

Calingo had health issues at that time that were aggravated by the intense pace of his work life. his response – to move his family to hyperkinetic singapore and plunge into a highly productive period of his career – may seem amusingly contrain-dicated, but he attests that at that juncture, he re-prioritized his life, putting family fi rst and learning not to carry stress home. he was an academic force at nanyang techno-logical university, but he said he came out of this period healthier and happier.

on Calingo’s return to Fresno, the elite graduate business school at the Mon-terey institute, midway on the California Coast between l.a. and san Francisco, summoned him and Fresno said yes to an-other leave. the Boler dean spent the bet-ter part of three years there, and his main role was to be the institute’s leading voice on international organizational behavior: “‘Power distance’ is the belief that inequality is normal and superiors are entitled to more privi-

leges ... Eastern Europe, Latin American and Asian cultures tend to be collectivist.” Calingo analyzed the world’s varying cultures and articulated likely managerial strategies and tactics in light of the cultural typologies explored with his students.

in the context of his Monterey period, Calingo said, “everyone has a unique endowment, and i believe that in my case part of it is in teaching and being able to contribute to someone else’s learning. When you see someone’s eyes sparkle or detect an ‘ah ha,’ there is the validation that you have done quality work.”

California state university, long Beach, discerned that Calingo did quality work as a teacher and administrator. at the end of the millennium, he was recruited to be the dean of that los angeles area institution’s College of Business administration.

the task was challenging inasmuch as the college was on what amounted to accred-itation probation. Calingo hired more faculty with doctorates, oversaw greater research and publication and installed an assessment system. he also implemented a successful community and donor outreach effort – one of the blessings that came from that initiative was a transformational gift to fund the ukleja Center for ethical leadership.

the academic leader was at long Beach for six years. he commuted on weekends to his family home in Fresno, living from Monday through thursday with his father and brother in l.a. he did

the same thing when he was at Monterey. these commuting arrangements were indicative not of a casual commitment to family life, but of the opposite.

he, a self-described conservative on family matters, and Gemeline determined that they didn’t want to raise their children in southern California, and – in the case of the Monterey interlude – that the stability of home and school for the children were paramount. Calingo says now, “My wife looks forward to our being together seven days a week.” he attributes much of his pro-fessional success to the sacrifi ces and support that Gemeline and their three daughters have given him.

the Boler school of Business is much smaller than either of the business schools of which luis Calingo has been dean. he says the school’s “Catholic and Jesuit identity was at the heart of John Carroll’s appeal for me. he also says, “i liked Fr. niehoff’s theme of engaging the world. this is what i hope to accomplish.”

Part of what he hopes to accomplish! he says he is intent on curriculum re-newal so that the Boler school is able to attract the best students. “a great business school has four components,” declares Calingo, a man of modest but confi dent demeanor. “it has superior academic pro-grams and offerings, the best and brightest students, great faculty, and fi ne facilities, including technology.”

Calingo views being an external dean as a critical part of his mission, and he has begun conversations with alumni business leaders such as Jack Breen ’56, edward Muldoon ’48, and, of course, the man for whom JCu’s business school is named. the dean says his “emphasis for my fi rst six months will be on fi nding out what our customers expect from us and learning how we can be of better service and value to them.”

in the next issue, John Carroll plans to capture a dialogue between John Boler ’56 and Dean luis Maria Calingo about the strategy that will be employed to achieve an even higher level of excellence for the John and Mary Jo Boler school of Business.

1� John Carroll university • suMMer 2006