By Chelsea Hadaway
chadaway@scbiznews.com

One of Alan Shao’s earliest memories is of his father flying paper airplanes out his office window at Old Dominion University.

His father was a business professor there and taught finance and accounting at the school for 34 years. Although Shao might not be sending paper airplanes down Liberty Street, he is following in his father’s footsteps — and he’ll be the first to say it.

“My father was my biggest influence,” Shao said. “He achieved respect from everyone he knows.”

Shao was the fifth one in his family — after his father and three older brothers — to earn a doctorate in business.

“It was the natural thing for me to do, and I knew I wanted to focus on marketing,” he said. And, like his father, he went into education. In March, Shao took a position as dean of the School of Business and Economics at the College of Charleston. “I’m very much an academic.”

His first job was at a computer company, and he has owned importing businesses and worked as a consultant to corporations, providing market research and strategic planning.

But teaching spans the largest stretch of his professional life. After teaching at the University of South Florida in Tampa and at Kennesaw State University in Georgia, Shao settled at the University of North Carolina at Charlotte, where he was for the past 19 years before coming to the College of Charleston. He taught marketing and global business and was associate dean for global and professional programs.

“I was very happy at UNC Charlotte,” he said. “It took a special place to take me away from Charlotte.”

While at UNC Charlotte, Shao developed and launched international MBA programs in such places as Mexico, Hong Kong, Taiwan and Denmark.

“He’s highly regarded for getting those global programs up and running and for being so successful at it,” said Linda Swayne, a marketing professor in the business school at UNC Charlotte who worked with Shao for 19 years. “Alan became chair and the program blossomed.”

He’s using a similar model to start global programs at the business school here, and he plans eventually to have programs in China, Bahrain, Switzerland, Singapore and Taiwan.

“I don’t believe we can be an effective business school without being a globalized business school,” Shao said.

One of his other priorities is creation of a full-time MBA program at the school. CofC is currently working on getting the program through the different levels of approval, starting with the Commission on Higher Education. Shao hopes the program will be open to students by fall 2010.

Shao said the school also has a need for concentration on executive education training programs.

“I feel like there’s a tremendous need for executive education in the Charleston region,” he said. These training opportunities can run the gamut, including leadership, real estate and economics.

Another of Shao’s goals is to woo an “impactful individual or company” to leave an endowment, and then to name the school for the person. It hurts the school’s branding to not have a name, he said, pointing to the University of South Carolina has the Moore School of Business, UNC Charlotte has the Belk College of Business as two examples.

Shao, always within arm’s reach of his Blackberry, counts accessibility and constant communication as important to him. And even with the daunting slate of goals in front of him, he remains disciplined and passionate, two traits he observed in his father.

“He always said the key to success is preparation, and when that preparation meets opportunity.”

Reach Chelsea Hadaway at 843-849-3142.