Planned gift creates business competition, scholarships for KU students

An annual competition and scholarships for business and engineering students in BUS 150 Foundations of Business will memorialize brothers and KU School of Business alumni Scott and David Kirkendall.

Scott, a 1987 graduate, and David, a 1988 graduate, grew up in the Overland Park, Kansas, area with their parents Bob and Gail. The brothers worked for Bob’s company, The Roberts Plastic Group Inc. Both had successful careers within the plastics industry with David working in sales and Scott running the day-to-day of the family business after Bob died in 2001. The sons carried a spirit of entrepreneurship, business and customer sales talents that they learned from Bob, who had a chemical engineering degree from Ohio University and an MBA from the University of Pittsburgh.

While all members of the Kirkendall family have passed away, their legacy lives on in new scholarship opportunities. The Kirkendall Competition is a tournament-like competition in which groups of 2-to-4 students present their best ideas to be further developed and presented to a panel of judges. The competition is open to business and non-business students and projects will be evaluated on content, creativity, form and effectiveness. The top finishers will be awarded the Kirkendall Prize, a cash prize.

“Our world is evolving at a mind-boggling pace,” said Phil Walton, executor of the Kirkendall Estate. “Keeping up is harder and harder. Successful business students must develop their finance, marketing, and accounting skills, as well as their technical and analytical skills. Similarly, engineering students must not only be technically proficient in their areas of expertise, but they must also possess a strong understanding of business and entrepreneurial skills to be successful. The Kirkendall Competition helps achieve these cross-trainings so that these students are well-rounded and well-prepared to tackle the global and competitive challenges awaiting them.”

Walton and the Kirkendall Estate hope that students walk away from the Kirkendall Competition with a better understanding of real-world situations that require business and engineering expertise. Walton encourages students interested in a “Shark Tank”-like experience in which they can use analytical, entrepreneurial and technical skills to go out for the Kirkendall Prize.

“Each competition will have a focus on a particular industry like technology, industry or social,” said Keith Chauvin, interim associate dean for undergraduate recruiting and student success. “Students will identify, analyze and present on the market potential of emerging technologies or business models to disrupt or displace existing businesses or industries while creating value for customers and helping to solve public problems.”

The competition was inspired by the core concepts taught in BUS 150 to encourage students to be creative and work toward improving society. Students can to apply the concepts from this initiative to understand and explain how businesses and entrepreneurs in a market economy help to solve public problems.

“All competitors will learn from the competition itself,” Walton said. “Working jointly with other teammates, each student will work in a real-life team situation, where they must collaborate with others possessing different skill sets to achieve a common objective. I think Bob, Gail, Scott and David will all be looking down with a smile. Especially when they see those first students collecting their awards after winning the Kirkendall Prize.”