Professor William Meek, Campbell Jr Rutledge & Eleanor Rutledge Chair in Management & Entrepreneurship and Professor of Management and Entrepreneurship in Management and Organizations (MORS), has been awarded The Bucknellian’s Faculty of the Year Award, after being nominated by the student body.
As a member of Bucknell’s faculty for three years now, Meek has taught a range of courses, from MORS 240 (Introduction to Entrepreneurship), and MORS 241 (Social and Sustainable Entrepreneurship) and MORS 340 (Advanced Entrepreneurship).
Meek developed many memories this year, notably the official release of the new Entrepreneurship minor in the Fall of 2023. Meek said if he had to narrow it down to something that happened in just this last year, he would say that this it was very memorable for him to design, develop, and teach advanced entrepreneurship (MORS 340) class for the first time.
“It was the first time I engaged deeply with external experts to help develop the content for the class,” said Meek. “As such, I had the opportunity to work with many different groups of people over the last year to design and deliver this new course.”
As someone who spent a lot of time connecting with his students, Meek claimed that he is excited to see what this graduate class will accomplish to create the world they want to live in.
“I want them to remember that in these very polarized times we are living in, a positive attitude, a ‘can do’ attitude, and taking purposeful action towards a goal will do a lot more good than simply criticizing things and doing nothing,” said Meek.
While Meek may not have much free time outside of work due to him having three kids under eleven, he says he enjoys “jumping in with both feet to many new initiatives at Bucknell and also in the Lewisburg community.” He also said that a hobby he would like to pursue in the future is golf.
This year, Meek collaborated with his students in his research endeavors to study how to reconfigure universities for entrepreneurship education that goes far beyond economic impact and can be meaningful to many different groups in the university.
For those interested in Meek’s research, some of his recent papers such as his 2023 paper, The Death and rebirth of the Entrepreneurial University Model (Academy of Management Perspectives), his 2020 paper Entrepreneurial education for the Entrepreneurial university (Journal of Technology Transfer) or his 2022 edited book Volume 1: Social and Environmental Entrepreneurship, in the World Scientific Encyclopedia of Business Sustainability, Ethics, and Entrepreneurship.
Meek believes “teaching entrepreneurship is first and foremost about personal empowerment; I believe that in these polarized times, instilling skills and confidence in our young people to pursue new solutions to the myriad problems we face as a society is something that is desperately needed for our future.”
Meek obtained a Bachelor in Science (BS) in Business Management & Administration from Bradley University in 2003. He then completed his Masters in Business Administration (MBA) from Bradley University in 2004 before going on to get a PhD in Entrepreneurship from the University of Louisville in 2010.
