Each academic year, members of the Whitman School’s graduating class cast their votes for Faculty of the Year, a designation honoring an outstanding professor who has made a significant impact on his or her students. This year’s award was presented to Professor of Entrepreneurial Practice Ken Walsleben, a member of the Department of Entrepreneurship and Emerging Enterprises (EEE).

As Faculty of the Year, he was the keynote speaker for the Class of ’24 at the Whitman School’s convocation ceremony on May 11 in the JMA Wireless Dome. In his message, Walsleben told Whitman’s graduates that they take a back seat to no one and that they are now completely prepared to be tomorrow’s movers and shakers in a fast-changing world. This was the third Faculty of the Year award Walsleben has received in his 10 years of full-time teaching at Whitman.

“It’s super rewarding to know that I was chosen for this award by the students,” says Walsleben. “I push them as hard or harder than any professor in the building to get them through their Capstone course. So for them to transition through and then say, ‘Ken Walsleben made a difference’… well, that’s pretty magical to me.”

Each semester, Walsleben teaches two sections of the Capstone course, a graduation requirement that brings together seniors across all Whitman majors to demonstrate their collective business knowledge through the creation of a product or service concept. Seniors take this course in either the fall or spring, presenting their final ideas in front of faculty and alumni judges at Capstone Day held at the end of each semester. At the spring 2024 Capstone Day, Walsleben’s groups won first place in five of the nine competition rooms and second place in seven, which made him very proud. Ultimately, two of his groups made it to the Top 5 of the finals.

His other courses include Entrepreneurial Turnarounds, a class he created to help students understand and deal with the obstacles and failures that can come with business management, and Foundations of Entrepreneurship, which he teaches to both undergraduate and online graduate students. In addition, he can often be found at Whitman’s Couri Hatchery Student Business Incubator brainstorming with entrepreneurial-minded students on their latest ideas.

“In my mind, there is no one more deserving of the Faculty of the Year award than Professor Walsleben. I give him great thanks for helping completely transform my career path both through his classes and his mentorship,” says Phoebe Gullingsrud ’24 (WSM/NEW), who started POV Marketing Co. as an undergraduate. “Professor Walsleben taught me so much about the start-up world and entrepreneurship as a whole. He did a great job of tying in his personal experiences and those of industry professionals to make his courses very real-world applicable.”

“Even beyond my time as his student, he has continued to reach out, wondering how my business has progressed and offering countless pieces of advice that have been crucial in my decision to take on my entrepreneurial endeavors full-time now that I’ve graduated,” she adds. “The Whitman School is lucky to have a professor who is so dedicated to engaging students in their entrepreneurial efforts.”

It was, in fact, the Capstone competition that drew Walsleben back to Syracuse University, where he completed a bachelor’s degree in economics in 1983. In 2009, he had been an entrepreneur for years and was currently running his own business as founder and principal of the Hamilton Group, a financing company, when he was asked to be a Capstone judge. He was truly impressed by the ideas presented by the Whitman students, but he also mentioned to former Dean George Burman how they might expand on the finance portion of their presentations. Burman, who was running the EEE department at the time, challenged Walsleben to bring that knowledge to the students as an adjunct instructor at the Whitman School.

“It got my tail wagging. It was fun!” he says of his five years as an adjunct. “I wasn’t dissatisfied with my business, but teaching got me to do some soul searching about what I really wanted to do. I saw a great opportunity to truly make a difference during the final stage of my working career. So when a full-time position on the Whitman faculty opened up in 2014, I made the transition to teaching, and I’ve been thrilled ever since.”

Walsleben says he has never regretted his decision to join the Whitman School and is happy with the way his career has played out over the last decade.

“I spent 25 years running my business, which involved saving companies, jobs and careers, but that was never as rewarding as the joy of seeing the transformation of students at the Whitman School,” he says. “Being selected as Faculty of the Year by the students only reinforces that, and I am truly honored and grateful.”

By Caroline K. Reff