Award-winning Wertheim College teacher, healthcare scholar embraces visibility, FSU

He displays his love for teaching and his students on his office door and walls, reaffirms his dedication to life-changing research in his steady stream of awards and wears his commitment to his job and university literally on his sleeve. 

Riley Krotz leaves no doubt that he cherishes his work at Florida State University’s Herbert Wertheim College of Business. 

“I love this college and university,” he says. “The students, staff and faculty I interact with every day give me joy and make my heart full.” 

Krotz, an assistant professor and a Dr. Persis E. Rockwood Emerging Scholar in the Wertheim College’s Dr. Persis E. Rockwood School of Marketing, stands among the most recognized and decorated junior faculty members at FSU.  

Start with his custom-made FSU suit, which he proudly sports in his Wertheim College profile photo. His LinkedIn photo shows him in the same suit holding Grandpa, a small, frail and toothless dog he adopted and nursed for nine years until his pet’s passing early this year.  

For the background on his suit, which he now considers vintage after FSU’s new branding two years ago, Krotz recalls 2023 when he became an assistant professor at the Rockwood School. Michael Brady, the school’s director at the time and now an FSU assistant provost, impressed upon Krotz and other faculty members the importance of visibility in upholding the FSU brand.  

Krotz promptly visited a tailor and ordered a suit that flaunted, from shoulders to ankles, “FSU” and the Seminole athletics logo. A couple of weeks later, he showed up at a departmental meeting, oozing garnet, gold and gaudiness. 

Brady looked at him, his mouth agape. 

“You told me to be visible,” Krotz said to Brady with a smile. “I’m visible.” 

You bet he is. Less than five years after receiving his doctorate, Krotz made history early this year when he received the American Marketing Association’s Marketing and Society Special Interest Group Emerging Scholar Award. He thereby became the first scholar to receive AMA emerging or young-scholar awards in four different special-interest groups. He previously received AMA awards for retail and pricing, doctoral students and organizational frontlines. 

“Riley’s achievements in scholarship, teaching and service exemplify the high standard of excellence we strive for in our faculty,” said Michael D. Hartline, dean of the Wertheim College. “We applaud his dedication, enthusiasm, intellectual energy and commitment to our college, especially our students.” 

Hartline added with a smile: “And we love his FSU suit.” 

Krotz primarily studies complex challenges at the intersection of healthcare, frontline employee management and public policy, with an emphasis on getting people to donate blood and save lives. Recent studies include “Saving Lives in the Social Media Era: Increasing Blood Donations,” the title of his keynote presentation during a conference of the Association for Blood Donor Professionals. 

Krotz’s focus aligns with his conviction that the role of marketing extends beyond helping businesses thrive. 

“There’s a movement in the marketing discipline: better marketing for a better world,” Krotz says. “And I feel my research aligns with that.” 

“There’s a movement in the marketing discipline: better marketing for a better world. And I feel my research aligns with that.” 

– Riley Krotz, assistant professor and a Dr. Persis E. Rockwood Emerging Scholar

His work also aligns with, as Hartline emphasizes, the Wertheim College’s ever-growing partnership with FSU Health, an integrated health system that now includes Tallahassee Memorial HealthCare and brings together hospitals, physicians, clinics, research, education and innovation to improve the health of the communities the university serves, including rural and other underserved areas. Krotz’s efforts to increase blood donations earned him a commendation from the U.S. Senate in 2023 and the Advancement in Healthcare Access Award from a major blood center in the Southeastern U.S. in 2024. 

“I don’t know how I got so lucky to land at a place where my research interests are so fundamentally aligned with the mission of the college,” he says. “This college and university are such a perfect fit for me.” 

Colleagues salute him for his lively personality, his passion for his work, his devotion to his students and his students’ esteem for him. 

That sentiment started a decade ago when he taught sixth-grade science and middle-school robotics in his hometown of Jacksonville. He’d do anything to make learning fun and interesting. He’d tell a corny joke. He’d express his love for Starbucks. He’d jump on a table and sing. To emphasize the musculoskeletal system, he once even conducted an arm-wrestling competition in class. 

Krotz, a first-generation college student who earned his bachelor’s degree in biology from the University of North Florida, simultaneously yearned to make a difference as a university professor. He earned a Master of Business Administration from UNF and got accepted into the University of Tennessee’s marketing program, both in 2016 while he was still teaching middle school. He told his students of his decision to leave his teaching job so that he could study to become a university marketing professor, prompting dozens of admiring and entertaining hand-written “thank you” and “goodbye” notes and drawings from his young students.  

Today those notes and drawings, one of which portrays Krotz as the siren in the Starbucks logo, cover the door and walls of his office at the Herbert Wertheim Center for Business Excellence. 

Wrote Keily: “You manage to make us learn and have fun at the same time. … You’re gonna kill it as a professor.” 

Keily knew. Krotz, who earned his doctorate in 2021, received the Wertheim College’s Charles Hardwick Outstanding Undergraduate Teaching Award last year, two years after joining the faculty. 

Like his students, he credits and celebrates his mentors. Those include Stephanie Noble, a University of Tennessee business professor who advised him on his dissertation, and Greg Gundlach, a University of North Florida marketing professor who urged him to get his Ph.D.  

Of course, he still enjoys helping students build confidence, think critically and find new and entertaining ways to stay engaged and solve problems. In one ice-breaking exercise at the beginning of each semester, he asks a student to fetch a student outside the classroom, come back inside and together sing the nursery rhyme “I’m a Little Teapot.”  

“Riley’s name is consistently one of the first names students mention when talking about faculty who have impacted them,” said Luke Hopkins, a senior lecturer and assistant director of the Rockwood School of Marketing. “Students know he cares about them, and his ability to create an environment where students genuinely enjoy learning is rare.” Ruby Lee, the school’s director and Bob Sasser Professor of Marketing, hailed Krotz’s dedication “to everything and everyone in need.” 

In his marketing research classes, Krotz teaches students to use research offensively and defensively — offensively to make smarter business decisions and defensively to become more-informed consumers. 

Peyton Naylor, a senior majoring in marketing and real estate, largely credits Krotz for his goal to pursue a doctorate in marketing. Naylor recalls emailing Krotz on a Friday afternoon about information on the Ph.D. program. Krotz replied shortly thereafter with a comprehensive response and an offer to host a Zoom conversation that evening. They met on the first day of the following week and talked for 45 minutes. 

“His honesty, transparency and willingness to help have made the process a lot easier than I expected,” said Naylor, a former long snapper on FSU’s football team. 

Krotz’s influence extends to students’ families. After Krotz announced the passing of Grandpa, his dog and class mascot of sorts, Naylor asked his mother, art hobbyist Christy Naylor, to draw a portrait of the pet for his teacher. Using graphite pencils, she created a real-life rendering of the dog wearing an elegant bow, licking his glistening nose and looking lovingly at his beholder. Hanging from the dog’s collar is a tag that includes only one tender word: “Grandpa.” 

“I cried,” Krotz said, referring to his reaction to the drawing. “It was so meaningful.” 

About Krotz, Naylor added: “I consider him a ‘must-meet’ individual on FSU’s campus. The university is a better place because of him.”