2026 Outstanding Teacher Award Recipient
The Outstanding Teacher Award recognizes faculty members for their excellence in teaching. Each year, alumni from the five most recent graduated classes nominate and vote for a faculty member who inspired, prepared and motivated them while upholding intellectual integrity and professional ethics. The 2026 Outstanding Teacher Award will be bestowed at Alumni Weekend on June 6, 2026.
Donald N. Lombardi, Ph.D., USMC(R)
University Teaching Professor, Business & Management Psychology
Executive Director, Stevens Healthcare Educational Partnership (SHEP)
Academic Director, Veterans Program at Stevens Institute of Technology
Stevens School of Business
Donald N. Lombardi, Ph.D., USMC(R) discovered his passion for teaching while still serving in the U.S. Marine Corps. “I was an adjunct at a community college in North Carolina,” he says. “I continued to adjunct after launching my career in industry and was fortunate enough to convert that avocation into a teaching and administrative position at Seton Hall University. I felt even more fortunate to be recruited to Stevens. It has been 20 years, and I am as grateful now as I was then. That feeling ignites me every day.”
Stevens is just as fortunate to have a faculty member with Lombardi’s expertise. The youngest officer commissioned in the U.S. Marine Corps during the 1970s, Lombardi instituted numerous educational and management systems which were lauded by both military and civilian experts.
Prior to joining Stevens in 2007, Lombardi was the regional human resources director for Cardinal Healthcare Corporation and director of education and development for Bristol-Myers, where he was instrumental in designing and implementing organizational management systems for American, Caribbean and European operations. While serving as director of planning and development at Seton Hall University, Lombardi led the development of that institution’s Millennium Strategic Plan.
He has acted as a healthcare advisor to several legislators and government administrators at both the state and federal level and has implemented strategic plans, educational systems and organizational development programs for Barnabas Health System, SUNY Stony Brook Medical Center, over 40 Veteran Administration Medical Centers, the Visiting Nursing Association of New Jersey, the University of Maryland Medical System and the Republic of the Marshall Islands.
In all, Lombardi has consulted to more than 170 healthcare organizations in all 50 states and 10 foreign countries, has developed several accreditation programs for the American College of Healthcare Executives, and has written more than 40 articles and twelve books, including Handbook for the New Healthcare Manager and, most recently, Manual of Healthcare Leadership and Management. In addition, Lombardi holds more than 50 U.S. copyrights on organizational planning, management, and development systems for text, on-site and online delivery.
Lombardi’s achievements have far exceeded his initial teaching aspirations. “As a Marine lieutenant with a B.A. in English, my initial career objective was to get a job teaching and coaching at the high school level,” he explains. “But I became fascinated with the various leadership styles and management dynamics. Thanks to the G.I. Bill, I was able to pursue my intellectual curiosity with two graduate programs, one in human resource management and the other in industrial/organizational psychology.”
“My discipline, the psychology of work, relates to everyone,” Lombardi continues. “Working with terrific, motivated students in exploring and mastering strategies that make people work smarter and happier has proven to be an unbeatable combination. And being able to use a variety of methods in both the physical and online Stevens classrooms is a lot of fun — and hopefully useful and productive for the students.”
Lombardi’s lessons transcend subject matter and emphasize good values and common sense, however, with advice ranging from “plan your work and work your plan” to “you didn’t get to Stevens by wishing for it — you worked hard and if you work hard here you will get to where you want to go.”
In addition to teaching, Lombardi is academic director and university military liaison for the university’s Veterans Program and executive director of the Stevens Healthcare Educational Partnership (SHEP). Under his leadership, SHEP has secured seven successive grants totaling more than $3.5 million from the State of New Jersey. He was also instrumental in launching programs designed to encourage high school students to consider and prepare for higher education in STEM disciplines, including the Stevens SATMax SAT-prep program, the S4 Stevens Select Summer Scholars Program and the ACTion Program.
In addition, Lombardi is involved in a wide variety of campus organizations, serving as the Association of Latino Professionals of America chair, a Department of Athletics team advisor, the Graduate Program in Healthcare Leadership and Management chair and more. Lombardi was selected as the Alexander Crombie Humphreys Distinguished Professor at Stevens (2014), Outstanding Teacher of the Year by the Stevens Alumni Association (2016), Outstanding Teacher of the Year by the Stevens Student Government Association (2017), and the recipient of the Henry Morton Award for Distinguished Teaching (2023) and the Edwin “Doc” Farrell Award (2024).
When asked about being chosen for the 2026 Outstanding Teacher Award, Lombardi’s thoughts turn to gratitude. “My overall emotion is one of thankfulness — to the university for being such an intrepid and supportive organization and, of course, to all of the Stevens students I’ve had the honor of working with over the years,” he says. “The word extraordinary, when broken down to extra ordinary, tells the story of our students. They are great scholars and even better people. The fact that I was selected for this award affirms that I’m doing a good job in giving them what they need to attain their part of the American Dream and that is both humbling and quite an honor.”