(Posted March 15, 2010)

aHUNTINGDON, Pa. -- Juniata College business students will get a chance to spend extended time with a corporate executive as part of a weeklong residency program that will have Todd Kulp, senior vice president for finance for Pacific Drilling Inc. in Houston, Texas, sitting in on classes, performing resume reviews and helping students with interview skills.

Kulp, a 1980 Juniata graduate, has extensive experience in corporate finance for a variety of businesses. For Pacific Drilling, he oversees finance, accounting, payroll, investments and supply chain management for the Texas off-shore drilling firm.

"Our department is deeply committed to hands-on learning experiences for our students, while at the same time helping students to acquire tools that are genuinely useful in practice. Having accomplished executives and managers involved in our course delivery can only enhance what we do in the classroom."

Randy Rosenberger, associate professor of business

"The Executive in Residence program is such an obvious fit for our department, I'm disappointed we didn't think of it sooner," says Randy Rosenberger, associate professor of business and economics at Juniata. "Our department is deeply committed to hands-on learning experiences for our students, while at the same time helping students to acquire tools that are genuinely useful in practice. Having accomplished executives and managers involved in our course delivery can only enhance what we do in the classroom."

Kulp will give a public presentation at 8 p.m., Thursday, March 25, in Neff Lecture Hall in the von Liebig Center for Science, titled "My Life in the Very Real World: A Juniata Graduate's Life with Enron and Other Strange Events."

He will observe and participate in a variety of Juniata business courses, including Financial Management, the Management Process, Intermediate Accounting and Behavioral Analysis in Organizations.

Before moving to Pacific Drilling, Kulp spent almost seven years as vice president and treasurer and then vice president for global supply chain for Transocean Inc., a Houston-based off-shore drilling contractor. From 2001 to 2008, he revamped Transocean's global supply organization and also as treasurer oversaw corporate finance, investments, pension funds, insurance and cash management.

Kulp has visited Juniata previously in 2002, when he came to campus to lecture on "Ethics Today." He based his talk on his experience as a director of capital management at Enron Corporation, the energy company that spectacularly imploded in an accounting and financial scandal that led to the company's bankruptcy in 2001. Kulp worked at Enron approximately for one year, leaving voluntarily when he did not agree with the unethical behavior of Enron senior management.

After leaving Enron, he worked as assistant treasurer and director of corporate finance for Service Corporation International from 1997 to 2000. He also was assistant treasurer for Kinko's Inc. from 2000 to 2001.

Kulp started his career as a computer programmer in 1980 for Burroughs Corp. (now Unisys). In 1981, he switched to finance, working for First City Bancorporation, Calyon (Credit Lyonnais) and Bank of America.

In addition to his education at Juniata, Kulp earned a master's degree in business administration in 1990 from the University of Texas at Austin. He also has taken a series of certified treasury executive programs from 1998 to 1999 at the University of Michigan Graduate School of Business.

Contact April Feagley at feaglea@juniata.edu or (814) 641-3131 for more information.