Management professor Pamela Schindler looks the epitome of confidence clad in a royal-blue blazer, a striped sweater paired with navy blue pants and matching accessories. Working side by side with a student in Carnegie Hall’s computer lab, Schindler spends a few extra minutes with the student before turning her attention to the journalist now seated in the room.

In that moment, without saying a word, Schindler reveals the reason she has remained in the collegiate teaching arena for more than 25 years — the students, many of whom have inspired, challenged and motivated her to excel in her profession. They come first in the mind of this beloved professor, who demands much from her students, but who will do whatever it takes to help them succeed.

It’s that commitment to her students combined with her confident demeanor laced with humor and gratitude that recently earned her Wittenberg’s top faculty prize, the 2003 Alumni Association Award for Distinguished Teaching.

Surprised and honored to receive the award, Schindler wished her late mother could have been there as it was her mother who instilled in her an intense desire to learn.

“I silently thanked my mother, a voracious reader and debater, for the three gifts she gave me: a love of learning, the confidence to try the untried, and most of all, the capacity to embrace and welcome change,” Schindler says. “These three gifts influence my motivation to teach, and possibly more subtly, how I teach.”

A self-described marketing consultant who happens to teach, Schindler refuses to define herself by what goes on in the classroom. “I don’t think what you learn is from the classroom,” she explains.

As a result, Schindler decided to develop her own teaching model, one that involves rigorous hands-on learning environments where students learn to harness the power of change and push themselves to challenge conventional thinking in the areas of marketing, advertising, public relations, small business and management.

She has also transformed the management curriculum during her tenure to provide students with unique opportunities to take what they learn in the classroom and apply it in practical, thought-provoking ways outside of it.

Just two years ago, four students in Schindler’s self-designed Creative Advertising Partnership completed an award-winning campaign for the Inn at Fox Run, a local assisted living facility. In addition, her students have earned national and regional awards in management case competitions. Local internships and Schindler’s vast connections with industry leaders also provide students with unlimited networking and learning opportunities.

“I want to convince each new generation of students that learning should not stop at the end of a project, at the end of a course, even at the culmination of a degree,” Schindler says. At the same time, she understands that every student needs to find his or her own path to learning.

“While I might try to encourage a student to try my recommendations, I reward them more for finding their own way,” she says.

Students, alumni and colleagues applaud Schindler’s approach to teaching.

"She is the type of educator who pushes beyond the required role to find the excellence in her students. As an educator, she has the unique ability to identify each particular student's capabilities and talents in order to maximize their potential," shared one of the nominators for the Distinguished Teaching Award.

“She is always willing to go that extra step,” shared another.

Schindler has also made significant strides outside of the classroom. The 2001 Fellow of the Small Business Institute Directors’ Association, Schindler has been recognized numerous times in her career. In 1986, she received the Leavey Foundation Award for Excellence in Private Enterprise Education followed by a Hugh G. Wales Citation from the American Marketing Association in 1987. Closer to home, Wittenberg students named her Adviser of the Year in 1988.

Widely published and a sought-after consultant, Schindler regularly stresses the importance of finding opportunity in a constantly changing environment in her books, papers, presentations, association work and professional service activities as well.

“If you’re willing to stretch out your neck, you have to be willing to fail once in a while,” she explains. “I like to grow, and I like to challenge myself. I embrace change.”

That desire to take risks, to keep learning at all costs and to provide encouragement at every turn has made Schinder one of the best known and most respected Wittenberg professors on campus and in the community. Local businesses consistently compete to have the students in Schindler’s self-designed Center for Applied Management (WittCAM) tackle one of their problems, and it’s well known that if they don’t apply early, their chances of being selected diminish rapidly. They know that Schindler’s students help small businesses succeed, and they rely on WittCAM so much that the program will soon expand to assist a larger geographical area.

Yet, despite the accolades and awards for her superb teaching, scholarship and community impact, Schindler remains content in the classroom and grateful to Wittenberg for the opportunities afforded her.

“I’d like to believe that I might do this type of teaching anywhere but hundreds of colleagues in business programs around the country tell me I’m wrong,” she says.

“So I’m ever so glad I found Wittenberg. Wittenberg gave me the freedom to pursue my own teaching model — not a model crafted by a teacher with a different personality or a different mindset, and not a model that had been in place before I joined the faculty.”

At Wittenberg, she also discovered a place that reinforced the value of her mother’s gifts along with a venue for passing them on to others.

“I’m pleased that my teaching was the catalyst for changes at Wittenberg as I know that these changes have benefited countless students,” Schindler explains, and though honored by all the recognition she has received, it’s still the students that make her smile.

“Hearing students say that their time in my classroom was an awesome experience is all I need,” Schindler says. The awards are more “like dessert accompanying an already sumptuous dinner” — more than she really needs but very satisfying all the same.

“I’m so lucky,” she says as a student nears to ask a question. “I love what I do.”