Reaching for the High Bar – Yields Hankamer Teaching Award

Dr. Andrea Dixon sets a high bar for the students in the Professional Selling program, but she sets an equally high bar for herself. Striving for excellence means hard work, work that her students, academic peers, and university administrators all notice. As a result, Dr. Andrea Dixon just received the Hankamer School of Business Teaching Excellence Award. Reaching for the high bar creates a strong work ethic…and sometimes those efforts result in acclaim from others.

According to the chair of the Marketing Department, Dr. Chris Pullig, “Dr. Dixon is committed to challenging her students in a way that truly prepares them to succeed. She is innovative in her pedagogy and is definitely at the top of our profession in touching students’ lives and the sales profession as a whole….Overall, her contributions in teaching are outstanding in terms of student feedback, variety of contributions, willingness to engage with students and ability to attract other faculty to participate in extracurricular learning experiences for Baylor students. Professor Dixon is extremely committed to our students’ learning and development and is very successful in preparing to impact the business world in a positive manner.”

Teaching awards are typically based on feedback from collegial peers and supervisors. Student input also plays a critical role in determining which outstanding faculty should be honored. Feedback from students indicates that Dr. Dixon also holds the bar high for her students. “She constantly challenges us and puts us through a lot of work and with the interest of truly helping us prepare for our futures. She makes it possible for a busy football player to get the most out of a very involved selling program. Above all, she strives to help us grow in our faith and give God all the glory in our failures and successes,” according to Collin Brence, a junior Professional Selling major.

Holding an endowed professorship, Dr. Andrea Dixon provides academic leadership for Baylor University’s Center for Professional Selling and the Keller Center for Research. Since assuming leadership of the Center for Professional Selling in 2009, Dr. Dixon has raised the profile of Baylor’s center by commemorating its 25th Anniversary (as the oldest sales center in the United States), editing the 30th Anniversary issue of the Journal of Personal Selling and Sales Management, and driving student involvement from six students in 2009 to seventy students in 2014.

Dr. Dixon completed her Ph.D. at Indiana University-Bloomington. Since that time, she has received numerous teaching awards. In addition to the Hankamer Excellence in Teaching Award, she received the MBA Teaching Award (at the University of Cincinnati), Irwin Publishing’s national teaching award, Distinguished Professorship award (from Indiana University MBA students), the University-wide teaching award (at Indiana University) and the Ronald J. Dornoff Teaching Fellow (at the University of Cincinnati). Dixon was named the international Academy of Marketing Science’s Marketing Teacher Award winner in 2008.

About the Center for Professional Selling
Dedicated to excellence in sales education and based in the university’s Hankamer School of Business, the Center for Professional Selling is recognized as one of the premier global information resources for the sales profession. For more information on the Center for Professional Selling, visit https://hankamer.baylor.edu/prosales.