Management Professor Mindy Myunghee Jeon has developed 15 different courses since joining the Salem State faculty in 2010. Her teaching is grounded in over a dozen years of hospitality industry experience, including five years in the U.S. and seven in South Korea. Whether offering introductory business classes, specialized hospitality and tourism courses, or a First Year Seminar exploring Korean culture and traditions, Professor Jeon’s teaching seeks to create purposeful, thoughtful, and beneficial outcomes for students and their learning.
Jeon’s extensive scholarship includes research on customer behavioral intention, hospitality marketing, quality of life, sustainability, and corporate social responsibility (CSR). For example, website quality was the focus of her dissertation research. Even 15 years later, she is still contacted by researchers to see if they can adopt the survey instrument she developed in her dissertation, for their research. Her work on customer-generated media on hotel reviews has been consistently cited by other researchers because of her early adoption of the term. At a time when UBER was the subject of scandals and fears for passenger safety, Jeon published a research paper about CSR of the ride-sharing company. Exploring whether customers were aware of these incidents, she investigated how corporate image influenced customer behavior and satisfaction. Jeon’s scholarship applies accepted theories to create new knowledge for practical benefit adopting mainly empirical approaches. While striving to maintain the quality of the research, Jeon averaged at least one publication per year, in addition to regular conference presentations.
More than Witch City
Salem is a rich source of inquiry for a hospitality and tourism scholar who is curious about customer behavior. Jeon has conducted three research projects in the city to date. She wrote a book chapter about Haunted Happenings and the impact of festivals and events, which appears in Routledge Handbook series, which is often used as textbooks or additional readings in graduate hospitality programs.
Jeon explored a quintessential research question of interest to many regional constituencies, exploring how Salem residents feel about living in the city in October? Expecting to find many reasons why Salem residents were not happy to live here, her findings were quite the opposite. City residents reported feeling proud to live in Salem and they were surprisingly tolerant when they reflected on the day-to-day challenges faced in October. Her extensive questionnaire administered over multiple years to hundreds of residents demonstrated their civic pride and general acceptance of the noise, litter, traffic, lack of parking, and other difficulties during this peak tourist time.
While Salem is widely known for Halloween and the witch trials, there is much more history here. Her latest Salem project includes working with local destination marketing organizations to collect data from visitors to find out how they perceive the city. Jeon will examine why tourists visit Salem, their awareness of the city’s rich history and community-based tourism efforts, and its literary history, as exemplified by authors such as Nathaniel Hawthorne. In an effort to spotlight local hospitality businesses, Jeon also conducted case studies for the Hawthorne Hotel in Salem and Castle Hill in Ipswich.
Living the Butterfly Effect
Jeon likens her efforts to the “butterfly effect;” the idea that small events may serve as catalysts for change. In her introductory business courses, for instance, she challenges students with an assignment to create an innovative business idea to benefit society. Partnering with an institution in Thailand, Jeon also paired SSU students with undergraduates abroad, assigning them to collaborate in teams to create a marketing plan together in her Cooperative Online International Learning (COIL) course. The resulting business ideas from this course also serve as the entry for the Bertolon School of Business' (BSB) competitive Viking Business Pitch.
Experiential learning is an important teaching tool for Jeon. For example, in her introduction to hospitality course, she sends students to local tourism and hospitality businesses to explore the organization's sustainable practices and operations. In her hospitality courses, Jeon also takes students on field trips to local hospitality establishments, including local hotels, country clubs, event venues, and tourism attractions. Her casino management course requires a report on the students' casino experiences, interviews with customers to understand their gaming behaviors and motivations, and with employees to find out about the duties, skills, education, and experience required for their positions, as well as their job satisfaction and career opportunities in the field. Impressing upon students the breadth of the hospitality community and the different related perspectives is an important goal for these projects. Jeon values maintaining and expanding her network with local hospitality professionals to secure internship and job opportunities for students. Jeon is a recipient of all three categories of the BSB's McNamara Award in Distinguished Research, Teaching, and Service.
Jeon appreciates how inter-connected the world has become, which also informs her values and interests. She enjoys yoga and meditation, working regularly with an online instructor in Hong Kong. Seeking to simplify her life, she’s chosen to downsize and de-clutter, rather than perpetually being a maximal consumer. An avid gardener, Jeon enjoys earthing; using bare hands or feet to positively connect with nature by walking on a beach, a dirt path, in a forest, or near the ocean or a lake. She’s passionate about getting closer to the earth, woods, or water to feel calmer, reduce stress, and renew energy. She feels that earthing radiates warmth, improving her sense of health and wellness overall. Like the butterfly’s fluttering wings, Jeon’s belief that small contributions can impact complex systems is alive and evident in her scholarship, her teaching, and her life.