UC Carl H. Lindner College of Business Faculty Earn Leavey Award

Two professors at the University of Cincinnati Carl H. Lindner College of Business are among three university faculty in the nation to receive a Leavey Award for excellence in private enterprise education from the Freedoms Foundation.

Valerie Krugh and Thomas Dalziel are this year’s award recipients. Krugh is an associate professor-educator and director of Student Enterprise Program (StEP) for the Economics Center. Dalziel is assistant professor of Entrepreneurship and Strategic Management, Entrepreneurship Program Director for undergraduate students and incoming Small Business Institute director.

The Leavey Awards are bestowed amid a partnership between the Freedoms Foundation and the Thomas and Dorothy Leavey Foundation. Together, the non-profits annually recognize outstanding teachers for excellence in free enterprise and entrepreneurial education. The award, now in its 35th year, will award 15 total recipients.

Dalziel was selected for his design of the Undergraduate Field Case Consulting Program, where he supervises UC students in supporting local entrepreneurs and managers. He guides students in developing strategic plans, feasibility studies, financial analysis, market research and valuations for startups and established enterprises.

The result, Dalziel says, is a 98 percent customer satisfaction rating. “Our clients have attributed hundreds of thousands of dollars in new venture financing, dramatic growth in revenues and profits, entry into new markets, and the creation of hundreds of new jobs to implementing the recommendations of our student consultants.”

Krugh was selected for a project she helped launch at Fairfield City Schools in January 2011 called The Traveling T-Shirt Company. She designed curriculum that used T-shirts as a connection to service learning, math, language arts and entrepreneurship.

“The curriculum provided students with the opportunity to grasp business concepts and understand the life of an entrepreneur as they use T-shirt profits to fund a global non-profit cause of their choice,” Krugh says.

Dalziel and Krugh will be recognized at the Freedoms Foundation award ceremony March 15–18 in Philadelphia.

Since 1949, the Freedoms Foundation has awarded more than $3 million in grants to nearly 500 teachers across the country. The non-profit was founded by Ken Wells, Don Belding and E.F. Hutton, and President Dwight D. Eisenhower served as its first chairman and chairman emeritus until his death in 1969.

The group’s mission remains devoted to helping students, teachers and citizens gain a greater awareness and appreciation of the principles of a free and democratic society.