LeBow Professor: Shanti Agung, Ph.D.

Half a world away from her hometown, Shanti Agung, Ph.D., is making a new home here at Drexel LeBow as she settles into her position as assistant professor of management.

A recent Ph.D. graduate from Georgia Tech, Agung was born and raised in Indonesia. The distance between Philadelphia and Bandung, the Indonesian town where she was born, is about 10,000 miles – nearly half the Earth’s circumference, she points out. She’s spent the last nine years in the United States and says one of her first impressions of Philadelphia is that it’s the “heaven of food.”

Agung loves the study of management because of its importance to economic development. “It’s not uncommon that firms and countries have a strong technology base but are unable to perform because of mismanagement or under-management,” she says. Her current research project focuses on academic entrepreneurship and knowledge creation in teams. Other areas of research that especially interest her include scientists, technology transfer and innovation.

Agung says Drexel LeBow’s collegial atmosphere and the “strategy-entrepreneurship nuance” of our Department of Management attracted her. “From a teaching point of view, I like the University’s experiential learning approach. I also admire that Drexel embraces diversity, which is reflected in the student population as well as our faculty and staff.” She’s teaching “Intro to Entrepreneurship” for undergraduates this term and next.

Little-Known Fact:

Back in Indonesia, Agung was a member of a traditional Balinese dance troupe that traveled as far as Moscow, St. Petersburg and Paris to perform.