H. Leslie Furr (d. 2020)

Professor Howard “Les” Furr Jr., Ph.D., of Statesboro died Nov. 20, 2020, at East Georgia Regional Medical Center. He worked at three different universities throughout his career teaching hospitality, accounting and finance, hotel operations, marketing and sales and restaurant management. He finished his career at Georgia Southern, retiring in 2018. He was awarded emeriti status on June 1, 2018.

 

After leaving law school, He left Louisiana to begin his first decade-long portion of his forty-year professional career with the Hospitality Industry. During these ten years, he opened a restaurant with Steak and Ale, worked night audit with a Marriott Hotel, supervised the Front Desk for Silver Bay Resort, and completed a management-training course with the Capitol Hyatt in Washington, DC.

 

During the next decade, He completed his PhD at Texas A&M University and initiated the teaching portion of his career at Appalachian State University. He taught hospitality operations courses for the Business school there, consulted with local and Caribbean tourism businesses and coordinated the business internship program with the Condado Plaza hotel (where Dr. Stalcup was working as an HR manager).

 

His  next appointment was California State University at Chico. He developed the Resort and Lodging Curriculum and built the number of majors from zero to 150 in five years. He consulted for Oxford Suites Hotels, Spectravision (Hyatt), Colonial Mutual Life Insurance in Fiji, and California Department of Forestry – $20,000 grant. He spent two wonderful summers overseas teaching for the Suan Dusit Business School in Bangkok, Thailand.  At Chico, he was promoted to Full Professor and served as the Program Director there for seven years.

 

He came to Georgia Southern as director of the Hotel and Restaurant Management program in 1996 and served in that capacity until the move the College of Business. Since 1996, he consulted with the Tampa/Hillsborough County Convention & Visitors to develop a linear survey pool, 400 interviewees each month.

 

He published in a number of professional journals, and gave presentations at marketing and international tourism venues including Bangkok, Vienna, Montreal, Glasgow and Heidelberg.