Page 30 - Laker Connection Spring 2015

Faculty Profile
“IN ORDER TO LIvE yOUR DREAM, yOU
HAvETO BUILD yOUR DREAM. NO ONE wAKES UP ONE MORNING AND IS SUCCESSFUL.
DR. LEON PRIETO
Assistant Professor of Management
Assistant Professor of Management Dr. Leon Pri- eto finds success in helping students become better equipped to achieve their goals through confidence building backed by experiential learning.
Due to his engaging experiential activities, Prieto was awarded Outstanding Educator Award for In- novative and Creative Teaching by the Academy of Educational Leadership. He is also the faculty advisor for Society for Human Resource Manage- ment Chapter at Clayton State which he helped guide into winning 2014 Best Student Chapter in the State of Georgia.
Prieto has been with Clayton State for three years. Originally from Trinidad, he brings his life stories to the classroom to motivate students, particularly in the importance of having and becoming a men- tor. He attributes his realization of becoming a scholar to his uncle in Trinidad, who was the first to recognize the possibilities in Prieto and urged him to achieve bigger dreams than Prieto had thought possible.
Prieto hopes to pay the encouragement forward by helping his students achieve their dreams. He exer- cises an open door policy with all his pupils, offering guidance to create and better student’s action plans.
“In order to live your dream, you have to build your dream. No one wakes up one morning and is successful,” Prieto says, mentioning the importance of everyone having their own personal board of di- rectors and of working together to accomplish goals.
Prieto works alongside colleagues Sanford Dennis, career advisor in the College of Business, and Dr. Margaret Thompson, another associate professor of Management, to help students acquire intern- ships and ultimately become successful.
Prieto’s focus on experiential learning allows stu- dents to become more confident in their fields by working with real world problems. He has worked with several corporate entities to bring these projects to the classroom and further the student’s job readiness.
Prieto has also volunteered in the community to help further college and career readiness by visit- ing with Boys and Girls Scouts in Macon, Ga., in the “Money Matters” program, and with Henry County High School students to help improve their interview skills.
While his editorials and articles can be found in Talent Management, Diversity Executive, Diverse Issues in Higher Education, and Business Excel- lence magazine, Prieto has also worked for his stu- dents to become published authors as well. One such prodigy is Xavier Smith, who Prieto guided to apply for Clayton State’s Undergraduate Re- search and Creative Activities (URCA) mini-grant to further his research that would ultimately lead to the paper entitled “Frances Perkins, Rose Schneiderman, and the Early Labor Movement: A Feminist Ethic of Care Approach to Labor & Safety Reform,” which was accepted by the Labor and Employment Relations Association’s (LERA) 67th Annual Conference.
Smith attributes his success to Prieto, saying: “My experience with Dr. Prieto has been a life changer. Through countless meetings and mentor talks, I felt like he was truly grooming me to make my dreams of becoming a scholar real.”
“Success as a professor is seeing students accom- plish their goals,” Prieto says. “Through diligence, discipline, and direction, all dreams are possible.”
BY SIERA BLASCO
28
THE LAKER CONNECTION
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