Dwayne D. Gremler
Meet Your Instructor
My name is Dwayne D. Gremler. I was born in Springfield, Ohio, and was the first child of David and Patricia Gremler. (My grandfather moved to Ohio from Germany when he was 21...click here for a family history.) I have two younger sisters and grew up in the country next to a farm. After I turned 10 I spent most of my summers working on that farm.
I graduated as the valedictorian of my class from Northwestern High School (in Clark Country, just outside of Springfield). While in high school I was involved in almost everything--I was captain of the basketball, cross country, and track teams, was drum major of the marching band, participated in the Spanish Club, and had 9 consecutive years of perfect attendance. I started college at Miami University in Oxford, Ohio, but after two years of cold winters (including the blizzard of 1978) I transferred to Arizona State University, where I received a BA degree in Mathematics.
I started to work at Honeywell Information Systems right after graduating from college. I worked at Honeywell for 10 years (in 1987 this division was sold to Bull HN Information Systems). My responsibilities at Honeywell/Bull started with computer programming and evolved to project management. Toward the end of my career at Bull I managed a team of eight engineers from six countries. In the mid-1980s I began to pursue an MBA degree from Arizona State University. However, before entering the MBA program I had no previous formal education in business, so I had to take many required prerequisite courses. Going to school part-time while working full-time, I took about 5 years to complete the program.
Before I got married (in 1985), I was an active guy who liked to stay busy doing many different things. I went hang-gliding, hiked across Grand Canyon (rim-to-rim-to-rim!) and down Havasupai Canyon, played tennis, basketball, and softball, and took several girls out on creative dates. I met my wife Candy on a Christian leadership training trip to Europe. Our first (creative) date was in Lucerne, Switzerland! Cities of some of our subsequent dates included Rome, Athens, Nairobi, Jerusalem, and Edinburgh. After we returned to the states, we dated long-distance for about a year and then were married. We have been married for nearly 36 years now, and have two daughters: Samantha (a graduate of the University of Pittsburgh, with a Masters degree in education, and now married to a captain in the Air Force and stationed at Wright-Patterson Air Force Base near Dayton) and Mallory (a 2019 graduate of BGSU who married a Falcon Flame in March, 2020).
Two factors were instrumental in my decision to pursue a career as a professor. One influencing factor is the Services Marketing class I took (from Mary Jo Bitner) as part of my MBA program. My interest in this area helped me in deciding to pursue an academic career in marketing, particularly services marketing. The second factor is related to my experience as the Basketball Coach at Arizona College of the Bible. I coached at the school for six years. In spite of my coaching we had several good seasons, including a fifth place finish in the NBCAA tournament in 1988-89. And, we even beat Paul Westphal’s team, Southwestern, before he became head coach of the Phoenix Suns! (That is, he went on to become an NBA head coach of the Phoenix Suns, Seattle SuperSonics, and the Sacramento Kings, and is in the Basketball Hall of Fame.) I found I really enjoyed the college environment, so in 1990 I left my position at Bull and began studies at ASU (again).
During my PhD program at ASU, I did consulting work with several firms, including Dial Corporation's Restaura Division, AT&T’s Long Distance Services Division, First Interstate Bank of Arizona, Walker Research--CSM Worldwide, and a large dental practice in Tempe, Arizona. I have developed research interests in several areas, including services marketing, customer loyalty, relationship marketing, and word-of-mouth communication. I completed my PhD degree in 1995 and taught at the University of Idaho for five years. The 2021-2022 school year is my twenty-second year at Bowling Green State University. I have taught several different classes, including Services Marketing, Marketing Management, Servicescape Design, Managing the Service Experience, Marketing on the Internet, Principles of Marketing, and Consumer Behavior. I have also taught MBA classes, including Services Marketing and Marketing Management and Strategy.
I am a Christian, although I usually do not discuss my religious beliefs in the classroom...in accordance with State of Ohio guidelines. (I would certainly be willing to have further discussions on this topic with anyone outside of class.) My family attended Cedar Creek Church (in Perrysburg) for seven years and have now attended Grace Church in Perrysburg for more than fifteen years (you'll often see my wife singing with a vocal team during worship services).
I like to travel, and have spoken at conferences in Sweden and Austria (1996), the Netherlands (2002, 2012, 2014, 2016), France (2003, 2016), England (2008, 2010), Portugal (2010, 2017), and Belgium (2015, 2016). I have also been invited to speak at universities in the Netherlands (1998, 2002, 2008, 2011, 2012, 2016), New Zealand (2001), Australia (2001, 2016), Italy (2002), Switzerland (2002, 2003, 2004, and 2006), Germany (2002, 2004, 2006, 2007, 2012, 2015, 2016, 2017, 2018, 2019, 2020, 2021), France (2004, 2006, 2007, 2008, 2014, 2017, 2018, 2019), Spain (2005, 2012), Sweden (2006, 2007), England (2006, 2008, 2015, 2017), Norway (2007), Belgium (2011, 2013, 2015, 2016, 2019, 2021), and even the U.S. (University of Alabama in 2011 and University of Texas-Pan American in 2012). I received a Fulbright Scholarship from the U.S. Government for Spring, 2006, and as a result I taught and conducted research at Maastricht University in The Netherlands. In December (2009) I returned to Maastricht for the Ph.D. defense of one of my students there. For my sabbatical in 2015-16, I was invited to be a Visiting Professor at the University of Liege, Belgium, for five months and to be the Audi Visiting Professor at the Catholic University of Eichstadt-Ingolstadt, Germany. In 2018 I was appointed as Visiting International Professor at the University of Muenster, where I teach a Masters-level class on Service Management annually.
When I’m not doing university-related work, I love to play (and coach) basketball, hike, soak in my hot tub, and watch old re-runs of M*A*S*H and Andy Griffith. What else would I like to do? Go on a raft trip through the Grand Canyon, and visit the Mayan pyramids, and travel to eastern Europe, Central America, South America, or eastern Asia.
This page was last updated on 08/19/2021.
