Dean of all trades: Eastman named to Spears Business Hall of Fame

Tuesday, August 20, 2024

Media Contact: Hallie Hart | Communications Coordinator | 405-744-1050 | hallie.hart@okstate.edu

Editor's note: The Spears School of Business is releasing a series of feature stories to celebrate the 2024 Spears Business Hall of Fame inductees and Outstanding Young Alumni. Previous profiles highlighted Vickie Carr and Eddy Ditzler. Check back each week for a new profile leading up to the Oct. 4 ceremony.

As a teenager envisioning his future, Dr. Ken Eastman pictured a modest family farm where hogs roamed and corn sprouted near a tiny Iowa town.

Eastman grew up there and figured he would stay, not bothering with the college preparatory route in high school.

The Dean Emeritus of Oklahoma State University’s Spears School of Business recently retired in Des Moines, Iowa, not far from the agrarian scenery of his childhood. But a meandering road of surprises led to this full-circle moment.

"Too often, we look at the people who have this straight-line trajectory,” Eastman said. “Really, life is more like a roller coaster in a maze.”

From tinkering with farm machinery to spinning vinyl records, each of Eastman’s quirky work experiences enriched his perspective as the Spears Business dean, a position he held for a decade. His eclectic background shaped him into a relatable, bow-tie-wearing man of the people, a guide who encouraged numerous students to keep trying until a career path clicked.

The age-old question of “What do you want to be when you grow up?” isn’t easy for an overwhelmed undergraduate to answer, and Eastman knows that well.

He tried to be a farmer. A broadcaster. A warehouse supervisor.

Now, he’s a 2024 Spears Business Hall of Fame inductee.

Eastman found a calling he never expected, delving into academia for 34 years and earning the distinguished position of dean. To achieve this level of success, he had to give up some short-lived pursuits.

“If I were to finish some things just because I started it, I would have gone down some dead ends and really been miserable,” Eastman said. “I tell students, oftentimes it takes more courage to quit than to stick it out and do stuff. The trick in life is you’ve got to figure out what not to give up too soon on, but also what not to stay too long on.”

In the late 1970s, those wise words could have reassured a young, uncertain Eastman.

Although Eastman saw himself as a future farmer of America — literally, he thrived as an FFA member — a high school friend persuaded him to try college and pursue something new.

It didn’t last long.

Eastman enrolled at the University of Iowa with grand visions of becoming an attorney, but the law students in his residence hall scared him away.

“They told me these horror stories about students ripping pages out of books, hiding books (from each other because) they were so competitive and cutthroat,” Eastman said. “I thought, ‘I don’t want to do this, and if I don’t want to do this, what am I doing here?’”

After two weeks, Eastman bid farewell to Iowa City and returned to the comforts of the family farm outside Callender, his hometown with a population of about 450. More content with corralling hogs than dealing with rivalries between attorneys-to-be, he found himself where he had initially expected to spend his working years.

Farming was the self-sufficient lifestyle he knew, the lifestyle of two generations before him, but Eastman didn’t stay. On the weekends, high school friends came home and chatted about their experiences as Iowa State students, painting a more optimistic picture of college than what he had seen for himself. Eastman was curious, so he dipped his toe into higher education once more, enrolling at Iowa Central Community College in Fort Dodge.

There, he was bitten by the broadcasting bug. While pursuing his new dream of working as a newscaster, Eastman landed a gig as a disc jockey for a country radio station. The familiar, folksy sounds of Merle Haggard, Willie Nelson and Emmylou Harris surrounded him as he placed vinyl records on the turntable and gained invaluable job experience.

Eastman said his time as a DJ gave him even more training for his role as dean than his Ph.D. program did.

“All of those skills really were helpful because part of my job as a dean was to be a figurehead and an emcee at times,” Eastman said.

The young DJ learned to project, enunciate and endear himself to an audience he couldn’t see. Years later, his authoritative but conversational tone would come in handy as he recorded lectures for online classes.

After receiving his associate’s degree in 1980 from Iowa Central Community College, Eastman continued his education at Iowa State, stepping out of broadcasting but not yet planning to be a professor. With the goal of working in business, Eastman obtained his bachelor’s degree in management and faced the harsh reality of searching for jobs during the 1982 economic recession.

“I interviewed for all sorts of jobs,” Eastman said. “Nobody was hiring.”

Finally, fast-food restaurant Hardee’s hired him as an assistant manager, and he received an annual salary of little more than $10,000. Eastman then received a considerable raise as a supervisor for grocery warehouse chain SuperValu, but he didn’t enjoy the job.

Discouraged, Eastman turned to his Iowa State business school mentors to vent. Dr. Paula Morrow and Dr. James McElroy, an OSU Ph.D. graduate who later made the “Spears School Tributes: 100 For 100” list, didn’t tell Eastman to stick it out.

They suggested a new career path.

Eastman said he lacked the confidence at first, comparing himself to the professors he revered. But those professors taught him to believe in himself, so with support from Morrow and McElroy, Eastman obtained his graduate degree from Iowa State and his Ph.D. from Nebraska.

“I’ve told them many times I really appreciate the nudge,” Eastman said, “and I try to pass that forward.”

He accomplished that goal in OSU’s business school, where he spent his entire post-doctorate career. Starting in 1989 as an assistant professor, Eastman eventually advanced to associate professor, director of the MBA program and head of the Department of Management.

Years of early mornings as a farm kid served him well when he taught 7:30 a.m. classes, and he maintained that go-getter energy later in his career, leading Spears through a transformational decade. As dean from 2013-23, Eastman ushered in many innovative developments. Unable to choose a single proudest accomplishment, he instead pointed to an interconnected “trifecta”: the new Business Building, the updated curriculum and the introduction of the Eastin Center for Career Readiness.

“(They) really created the nexus to give us a wonderful story to tell that made us unique from our competitors,” Eastman said. “I think you see the results in not only our enrollment, but also our placement and the feedback we got from employers — just how impressed they were with our students, how prepared they were.”

Eastman also presided over a Spears rebrand featuring the “Power of Personal” slogan, a motto he embodied before the business school put it into words. From appearing in Spears promotional videos to chatting with students in the hallways, Eastman made sure he was a visible person who memorized names and faces.

Faculty, staff and students quickly grew to adore the guy in the bright orange bow tie.

Eastman’s wife, Laurie, encouraged him to try on the dapper accessory, so he started a collection. Soon, the orange bow tie was his version of Pistol Pete’s cowboy hat. He remembered students at Spears football tailgates even asking him why he wasn’t wearing one at the casual weekend events.

The dean chuckled.

“It’s a football game,” he said. “I don’t wear this thing to bed or to mow the lawn.”

Inside the Business Building, the bow tie turned into an iconic symbol of not only Eastman, but also Spears as a whole. Students looked to Eastman as a genial leader, and his personal story offered inspiration as they navigated the twists and turns of job searches.

“I told that to students all the time, ‘Look, don’t ever think what you did was a waste,’” Eastman said. “It’s all about, ‘How can you leverage what you did?’”

Eastman answered that question throughout his career, paving his unique route into the Spears Business Hall of Fame. Eastman will be honored in the 2024 Hall of Fame class Oct. 4 at the ConocoPhillips OSU Alumni Center, joining a group he admired throughout his time as dean.

“We inducted these people who are pretty amazing, so I don’t know if I belong,” Eastman said. “But even though I didn’t graduate from Oklahoma State, it holds a very special place in my heart and my soul. Obviously, the business school particularly does. To be honored by a place where I spent 34 years and really grew as a human being is a very, very nice honor, so I’m humbled and appreciative of that.”