John E. Walker

John E. Walker graduated from Clemson with a B.S. in Industrial Management in 1958. At the urging of Professor Hugh Macaulay, he entered the graduate program in Economics at the University of Virginia, where he studied under Ronald Coase, James Buchanan, Leland Yeager and Warren Nutter, receiving his Ph.D. in 1963. At Virginia, he was inducted into the Raven Society, the University's oldest and most distinguished honor society. Before graduation, he entered active military service as an artillery officer, rising to the rank of Captain. After concluding his military service, he was the Research Director of the Investment Bankers Association for three years. Then he joined the faculty of Lehigh University, where he remained until 1978, when he joined the firm of Covert and Associates. In 1983, he acquired a part of that firm to create Andesa Services, which now provides financial management services to thirteen of the top U.S.-based insurance companies and several large brokerage firms. John based Andesa's employee-centered structure and practices on the core ethical beliefs imbued in him by his father. In 2020, ownership of the firm was transferred entirely to its employees through an Employee Stock Ownership Plan.

The Department of Economics was named in honor of Walker in gratitude for his generous gift in the fall of 2001, which created an endowment fund that has propelled the expansion in size and quality that the department has subsequently achieved.