Featuring Dr. Jeryl Nelson, business professor at Wayne State College.
When Dr. Jeryl Nelson was a Wayne State student 40 years ago, he probably had no idea he would never leave campus. Nelson, a professor of business at Wayne State, is this week’s subject of the Faculty Spotlight Series.
“I enrolled at Wayne State College for my undergraduate degree and never really left,” said Nelson, a native of Oakland, Neb. “I started working at Wayne State in 1986 as the director of the Nebraska Business Development Center, and I worked on my MBA part time at the University of South Dakota. In 1989, I moved into a full-time faculty position.”
Today, Nelson teaches classes in finance and supply chain management, which he says both allow students to apply their analytical skills to real-world issues.
“Supply chain in particular has gone from more of a back-of-the-house operation to the forefront of being a competitive advantage for a company,” said Nelson. “Companies are looking for new employees that can utilize new technologies to make firms more efficient. We are going to continue to see major changes for the next five to 10 years.”
“One of the best aspects of this job is the ability to keep in touch with former students,” continued Nelson. “This semester, I was able to bring in eight former students to speak to my Bank Management class. They ranged from my first students in 1990 to more recent students in 2015. It is great to talk to them and learn about the evolution of their careers. When I fly to a conference or a meeting, I usually wear some type of WSC shirt, and almost always, somebody comes up to me and we catch up with what has been happening in their lives.”
Nelson’s never leaving Wayne turned out to be a good thing for Wayne Community Schools as well. He served on the Board of Education for Wayne Community Schools from 2007 to 2019 and again from 2020 to 2024, serving more than 10 years as board vice president and one term as president. He served as the president of the Wayne Ambassadors in 2007 and continues as a member of the organization committee of Wayne America, Inc., the economic development arm of the city of Wayne.
“I underestimated the benefit of being on the school board and how much it would impact my teaching,” said Nelson. “I have a great appreciation for the work of teachers and staff in public schools, and my goal was to try to make the change to college more seamless. It also helped to keep me connected with younger students and how they have changed.”
Since 1994, Nelson has served as a paper reviewer for the Decision Sciences Institute (DSI) and was the track chair at their annual meeting in 2008. He has presented more than 12 papers at the national meeting of DSI over the last 25 years, most recently in 2020. He was a case reviewer for the Society for Case Research from 1989 to 2009. He served as its proceedings editor from 1997 to 1998, advanced to the publications chair from 1998 to 1999, and was elected president from 1999 to 2000.
In 2001, Nelson was awarded the Best Paper Award by the North American Management Society. He received Wayne State College Instructional Improvement Grants in 1996, 1997, 2000, 2006, and 2015 and the Wayne State Faculty Renewal Grant in 1996 and 2008.
Nelson's teaching interests are finance and management, while his research interests include corporate governance and supply chain management strategies.
Nelson earned his bachelor’s degree in Business Administration/Finance from Wayne State College, his master’s degree in Business Administration/Management (MBA) from the University of South Dakota, and his Ph.D. from the University of Nebraska-Lincoln.
Fun Fact: “I earned my commercial driver’s license while working on my undergraduate degree. A bedding company in Wayne needed drivers, and I managed to drive through 38 states in five weeks one summer. There’s still a couple of the lower 48 states I haven’t visited, and they are on my bucket list.”