New dean uses mind to fulfill dreams

By Chan Tran
Daily Forty-Niner
 

Luis Calingo ran from shots of bullets when he was 17 in Manila, Philippines.

Lucky for him and his friends, a man was kind and agreed to open his store for them to hide.

"There were a group of riot goons shooting at us and all the stores were closed so there was no place for us to hide," said Calingo, remembering his days as a radical protester in the 70s. "I'm just glad I was on the track and field team."

"I don't know who he is, but if he had not let us in, I would not be here."

But this life changing moment is far from his mind.

Today Calingo is the new dean of the College of Business Administration at Cal State Long Beach.

Calingo has not excelled physically in his life, but rather mentally, starting from his childhood in the Philippines after the death of his mother.

"I was like a mother to my siblings," Calingo said. "Being the eldest of six, I had to learn responsibilities and self reliance at a young age. As many people know, traditional Asian families are very strict and I was pretty much the experimental child."

Encouraged by his father to have a "high premium education at a young age," Calingo earned a Bachelor of Science in industrial engineering in 1976 and a master of urban and regional planning in 1978 from the University of the Philippines.

After finishing the university's master's program, he went to work at the Ministry of Human Settlement in Manila for Emelda Marcos in her corporate office. Ironically, Marcos was one of Calingo's protesting targets in the early 70s.

In 1980, he pursued an MBA and a Ph.D. in the United States and enrolled at the University of Pittsburgh "because it was ranked among top three graduate school in strategic planning."

He would earn an MBA in 1981 but finished his Ph.D. in 1984 after relocating to Cal State Fresno in 1983 to become a professor of business policy and strategy before becoming dean of the Sid Craig School of Business.

"I was the youngest and one out of two Asian-American deans in the CSU system at the time," Calingo said. "

Calingo helped secure an endowment of $10 million at CSF, which was one of the 20 largest single gifts to a business school in the U.S. at the time. "It is the most significant accomplishment [at CSF]," he said.

However, in 1993, he left the administrative position and moved to Singapore to fulfill his fascination with international studies.

"I felt that I got drafted into administration positions at a very young age," Calingo said. "It was a feeling that you were moving so fast and (there were) other things that you wanted to do."

He was program director at the Nanyang Business School in Singapore, which led to studies in strategic planning, total quality management, international organizational behavior and the Southeast Asian business environment.

His expertise in strategic planning and total quality management resulted in his appointment to the board of examiners for the highest award for performance excellence in the corporate sector, the Malcolm Baldrige National Quality Award.

Before coming to CSULB, he served as professor of international management for the Fisher Graduate School of International Business at the Monterey Institute of International Studies.

So why go back to an administrative position when he's had a good life as an academic?

"I've pretty much reached my objective when it comes to my research." Calingo said. "I feel like going back to administration and do what I was not able to finish before."

Calingo continues to use his mind to further his goals.