Supporting Teaching Excellence at K-State
Finance alumnus Jim Duensing and his family established the Duensing Business Teaching Scholar Award to recognize “student-focused” faculty members dedicated to teaching excellence at K-State – reflecting his positive experience at the College of Business Administration and its ongoing commitment to shaping future global business leaders.
Before starting his 37-year career in finance at the industrial equipment manufacturer Caterpillar Inc., Jim Duensing was shaped by many of his professors at Kansas State. He especially remembers the support and mentorship of long-serving Finance Department chair Professor Verlyn Richards, who “had a big influence on me and many others during our years at K-State.”
“I always saw him as an enthusiastic supporter of his students. He wanted us to do well and helped prepare us for professional careers in the global business world” Duensing said.
So it’s little surprise that when Duensing and his wife Julie considered ways to give back to Kansas State they looked for an approach that would identify and reward educators with similar skills. They recently established the Duensing Business Teaching Scholar Award, which recognizes and provides an annual stipend to faculty members “who are very student-focused, who dedicate themselves to creating outstanding learning experiences for students, and who continually challenge them,” as Duensing described it. Associate Professor Tareque Nasser was recently named the first recipient of the award in the fall of 2023.
“Better teachers develop better quality students who are ready to succeed,” Duensing said.
“The inception of the Duensing Business Teaching Scholar Award embodies the true spirit of education by strengthening the foundation of our college – the faculty,” said Kevin Gwinner, Edgerley Family Dean of the College of Business Administration.
“Thanks to the Duensing’s generous support, we are able to shape the minds and the futures of our graduates by rewarding excellent teachers like Dr. Nasser for his outstanding commitment to his students.”
That commitment to students was also a crucial part of the College of Business Administration’s 2024 accreditation by AACSB, a global nonprofit association that connects educators, students, and business to create the next generation of great leaders. Only six percent of business schools worldwide have achieved AACSB accreditation, while 70 percent of Fortune 100 CEOs have a business degree from an AACSB-accredited school.
“[Accreditation] signifies our success in shaping future business leaders, fostering innovation, and making a positive impact on Kansas and society in general,” Gwinner said. “Our faculty's expertise, cutting-edge research, and student-centered approach have propelled us to these milestones."
Duensing was one of those future business leaders who was ready to succeed. Curious and taking advantage of every available opportunity, he also pursued leadership roles on campus, including election to the K-State Student Council during his junior year. That was also about the same time he began to frequent what was then the Center for Career Placement in Anderson Hall.
“This was all pre-internet and computerization, and the recruiting platform centered around a corkboard in the main hallway, as I recall it. Companies would list the job types they were traveling to campus to interview for and what majors they were interested in. You’d bring your pen and put your name and phone number directly on the interview sheet on the numbered lines provided,” he said.
Slots were limited, “so you had to be timely. I tried to go first thing most mornings during the early and middle part of my senior year to see which companies were coming to campus for interviews. I was playing the averages.”
Persistence ultimately paid, and he scored eight to 10 interviews in the spring of 1981, his senior year. Five of those interviews turned into formal job offers – four in Texas and one in Peoria, Illinois. Although moving to Texas was his preference at the time, he opted to go with Caterpillar Inc. and headed to Peoria.
“Caterpillar was a Fortune 50 company, a multinational, with a dedicated management training program for college finance recruits,” Duensing said. “It was exciting stuff at the time.”
The exciting stuff kept coming. Within a couple of years, in the depths of a global recession, Caterpillar decided to launch its own finance company providing credit directly to Caterpillar customers for retail equipment leases and purchases. It started as a joint venture with General Electric Credit, and Duensing was selected to join the operation as the initial credit analyst on the fledgling team. He went to learn the ropes from more experienced hands at GE and help translate it to Caterpillar’s business model on a range of topics in risk management, legal, marketing, and related issues.
Though an integral part of the business model of most U.S. auto manufacturers at the time, Caterpillar’s leadership had been somewhat cautious to applying the approach within an industrial equipment environment.
“For over 50 years, Cat had elected to allow banks and independent finance companies to handle the retail financing business on product sales. They had a network of large, well-capitalized dealerships in most regions who worked directly with many big companies. Those organizations many times already had credit [available to them], but it was not always reliable through economic cycles,” he explained.
Caterpillar Financial Services Corporation – now 40 years old – was a success, nonetheless. It is now a key part of Caterpillar’s overall business strategy.
With stints across the business and in cities throughout the United States and Europe, Duensing retired from Caterpillar in 2017. He spent his last decade at Caterpillar Financial Services Corporation as its Executive Vice President and Chief Financial Officer. By then Cat Financial Services was operating in around 115 countries and managing about $30 billion in assets. He currently sits on the boards of Kansas State’s Department of Finance, serves as board chair of TriStar Centennial Medical Center in Nashville and several other local non-profit boards in the Nashville area.. He also previously served on the boards of The United Way of Middle Tennessee and Junior Achievement of Middle Tennessee. He was named “CFO of the Year” in his business category by the Nashville Business Journal in 2012 and was the recipient of the Ned McWherter Leadership Award, named after former Tennessee Governor Ned McWherter and awarded by the Tennessee Center for Performance Excellence, in 2017.
“Throughout college and my career, I was always determined to work hard, find ways to improve and help others along the way,” Duensing said. “KSU helped provide a solid foundation and prepared me for future challenges and opportunities in the business world.”