Meet AIU Faculty/Staff
Dr. Allan Plath MBA, PhD
Assistant Professor
Phone: +44 (0) 207 467 5612
Email: aplath@aiulondon.ac.uk
Subjects taught at AIU:
MBA Internship
Special Topic in Business
International Marketing
MBA Thesis
Meet Dr. Allan Plath: Combining a Real-World Education with a Worldly One
Degrees:
- Ph.D., Brunel University, 1994
- M.B.A., Syracuse University, 1978
- B.A., University of Minnesota, 1965
In the Classroom:
International Marketing and "anything else that comes my way;" Dr. Plath is also the Dean of Business Programs.
Out of the Classroom:
Dr. Plath has rebuilt a 1949 Triumph Roadster.
A U.S. national who has lived abroad most of his adult life, Dr. Allan Plath is uniquely suited to bring an international perspective to the Business and Marketing classes he teaches at AIU London. And not only has he lived around the world—in such places as Hungary, Slovakia, Pakistan, Holland and Asia to name but a few—he has worked around the globe as well. Dr. Plath understands international business well beyond the textbook. And, of course, he shares this all with his AIU students.
"Academic ideas are, in my mind, a tool for accomplishing real things. The end has to be the development of and understanding of the practical, complicated and difficult-to-define reality that confronts us all once we leave the classroom."
While Dr. Plath is suited to speak to a number of very different professions and businesses (he has worked as everything from singer to a welder-machinist), he focuses most on his real world experience in marketing, business strategy, and international business. But students probably wouldn't be surprised to hear him break into song. He is known as one of the more entertaining professors on campus—"except," he says, "by music lovers."
While Dr. Plath's classes are both interesting and enlightening, the educator encourages students to travel for themselves—whether it is through a study abroad experience or solo—rather than merely trusting in textbooks and his lectures.
"I think students can learn as much through traveling as Adlai Stevenson Stephenson said about age:" "What a man knows at 50 he did not know at 20 is, for the most part, incommunicable. The knowledge he has acquired with age is not the knowledge of formulas, or forms of words, but of people, places, actions—a knowledge gained not only by words but by touch, sight, sound, victories, failures, sleeplessness, devotion, love—the human experiences and emotions of this earth and of oneself and other men; and perhaps too, a little faith, a little reverence for the things one cannot see."
"Substitute 'travel' for 'age' and you have my thoughts on the importance of getting out and seeing the world, both for an academic and personal education."
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