Meet the Provost

Dr. Kenneth Walsh

Interim Provost and Executive Vice President Kenneth Walsh wearing a blue suit and patterned tie.

Dr. Kenneth Walsh serves as the interim provost and executive vice president of George Mason University, the largest public research university in Virginia and a Carnegie Research One (R1) institution. He joined Mason in 2020 as vice president for strategic initiatives and chief of staff in the Office of the President. He also currently serves as a professor in the Sid and Reva Dewberry Department of Civil, Environmental, and Infrastructure Engineering at Mason. Dr. Walsh began his tenure as interim provost on October 30, 2023.  

Dr. Walsh's career spans several decades as a professor, civil engineer, and skilled administrator. He has published extensively in the areas of lean construction and construction process improvement, residential construction, and the design-construction interface for geotechnical infrastructure. He has served as scientific chair and conference chair for the International Group for Lean Construction and the Construction Research Congress. In addition, he has lectured and presented at over 100 conferences, seminars and other educational meetings and professional development events, both within the United States and internationally. 

Biography

Prior to joining Mason, Dr. Walsh served as senior assistant dean and chief of staff at the Samueli School of Engineering at the University of California, Irvine. He was also a professor and chair of civil engineering at San Diego State University (SDSU), where he held the AGC-Paul S. Roel Chair in Construction Engineering and Management. Dr. Walsh was responsible for raising industry partnerships and external funding to support the J.R. Filanc Construction Engineering and Management Program, which launched hundreds of careers and transformed the recruiting landscape for construction in San Diego.

While at SDSU, Dr. Walsh was the founding dean of San Diego State University-Georgia in Tbilisi. This innovative program pulled together U.S. and Georgian government funding along with philanthropic support to transform STEM higher education in this democracy emerging from the former Soviet republic.

Dr. Walsh began his academic career at Arizona State University, after a career as a consulting foundation engineer in the Phoenix, Arizona, municipal area. He holds a BSE, MS, and a PhD in civil engineering from Arizona State University. 

Visit the Provost's official X account @ProvostGMU.