Ken Walsh

Ken Walsh serves as Vice President for Strategic Initiatives and Chief of Staff in the President’s Office at George Mason University, a position he accepted in 2020. In this role, he supports the President in realizing Mason's bold vision.

He previously served as Senior Assistant Dean and Chief of Staff in the Samueli School of Engineering at the University of California, Irvine. In this capacity, he was responsible for the entire scope of planning, operations, and resource management for the School. He directed financial operations, oversaw IT support, human resources management, and capital asset management. Building on his experience in industry and at many levels in higher education, he marshalled the skill and dedication of the staff to fuel the excellence of the faculty and students.

From 2002 to 2018, Dr. Walsh served in a number of roles at San Diego State University. Here he founded the J.R. Filanc Construction Engineering and Management program and later served as chair of the Department of Civil, Construction, and Environmental Engineering. He also served as the founding Dean for SDSU-Georgia. This innovative program funded through the Millennium Challenge Corporation and the Government of Georgia to provides US-accredited science and engineering degrees in Tbilisi, Georgia, where he lived and worked for four years.

He started his academic career in the Del E. Webb School of Construction at Arizona State University, after several years in consulting engineering practice in the Phoenix area. Ken holds BSE, MS, and Ph.D. degrees in Civil Engineering from Arizona State University. With over $30 million in research activity, his research interests lie in production systems design in a construction setting, He has published over 100 papers in journals and conferences and served as editor of conferences sponsored by the International Group for Lean Construction and the American Society of Civil Engineers.

Ken is married, with 3 grown children, the youngest a student at Arizona State leaving the cats as the only remaining denizens of the nest. In his spare time, he enjoys woodworking, travel, and international films.