UNIVERSITY PARK, Pa. — The Penn State Smeal College of Business has announced that Luke Wagner is the inaugural recipient of the Steve Bisbee Award in the Smeal College of Business. Wagner, a senior from Sparks Glencoe, Maryland, is majoring in finance and pursuing a certificate in real estate analysis and development.
Bisbee, who passed away unexpectedly in May of 2024, was an instructor in Smeal’s Department of Risk Management. He taught Risk Management 497, a class designed to help prepare students to compete in real estate case competitions. A 2006 graduate of the Smeal MBA program and a former U.S. Army officer, he was proprietor of Hideaway Ventures, a real estate company focused on acquisitions, development and property management in the State College area.
“There was a lot of emotion,” Wagner said when he learned he was the inaugural recipient. “I got pretty close with him. I worked with Steve for a summer. That’s how I found my passion for commercial real estate.”
After Bisbee’s passing, a group of family members, friends and colleagues collaborated to contribute and collect funds to create the Bisbee Award to celebrate his passion and contributions to Smeal. The award honors him as a dedicated mentor to students who was deeply invested in the real estate competition class.
“We were very fortunate to have Steve be part of our group,” said Brent Ambrose, Borrelli Faculty Chair in Real Estate. “It was inspiring to watch him interact with our students. We miss him and are glad that we can honor his memory with this award.”
Recipients are selected from students who have excelled in the Real Estate program, by displaying a record of academic excellence and having demonstrated leadership.
“He was always very straight forward and blunt, but we respected and trusted him because of that approach. He genuinely cared about his students,” Wagner said. “Steve was particularly a great professor. He pushed everyone to be the best version of who they could be.”
Wagner told the story of how Bisbee helped him and a group of students to start "Old State Realty," a mock real estate group.
“Everyone loved Steve. He had such a vision for how great things could be at Penn State,” Wagner said. “Steve and I worked really closely to form Old State Realty. It simulates a real-world real estate investment environment. That was what he wanted us to learn through his class, how to bring the real-world experience into the classroom.”
Wagner said that he was keenly interested in landing a banking internship, which are known to be highly competitive. Although it fell outside of his purview, Wagner said Bisbee volunteered to help with the process.
“Steve said ‘Let’s look into this and work together to train you to properly go out and do it,’” Wagner said. “A lot of that came from his military experiences. The leadership lessons he taught helped us become better people and leaders after we worked with him.”
Wagner obtained an internship with Wells Fargo in Charlotte, North Carolina, and after he graduates in May, Wagner said, he’ll return to Wells Fargo as an analyst on the commercial real estate team.
“We miss him [Steve] every day," Wagner said. "Old State Realty had a conversation as a group at the beginning of the semester. We decided that one of our new goals is to continue Steve’s legacy, to continue all of the things he did.
“We have a lot of fun and we always bring up something Steve said or use one of the principles he taught us," Wagner added. "He was a really good friend to all of us.”