Accounting Alumni and Friends,
It’s been an exciting Fall semester so far at K-State. I’m delighted to share with you our fall electronic newsletter. We appreciate our many loyal alumni and friends and hope you enjoy hearing about our progress. As always, we invite you to partner with us in the exciting things we are doing at K-State Accounting.
Enjoy the remainder of the fall and Go Cats!
Brett Wilkinson PhD CMA
Department Head, K-State Accounting (Twitter: @KStateAcc)
This Summer, a group of 21 students traveled to Australia with a twofold mission: to gain a better understanding of the global marketplace and to work with Australian students at James Cook University. The group, led by accounting department head Brett Wilkinson and faculty member Jane Bloodgood, was also accompanied by two distinguished alumni, Barry and Marcia Robinson (Barry was the Accounting Hall of Fame inductee for 2015). The team spent five days in Sydney and five days in Cairns.
Prior to the trip, the K-State students worked in teams with Australian students from James Cook University on a transfer pricing related case. In Australia, the students met up with their Australian counterparts and presented their project conclusions. In addition to working with the Australian students, the team visited major international accounting firms and corporations, attended a briefing at the U.S. Consulate, and toured a sugar mill in northern Queensland.
Cultural highlights of the trip included a cruise on Sydney Harbour, a private tour of the iconic Sydney Opera House, a visit to a crocodile farm and a snorkeling excursion to the Great Barrier Reef.
This was a life-changing experience for our students, the majority of whom had never previously been outside the US. We are especially grateful to the alumni and friends whose scholarship support defrayed some of the costs and thus assisted our students in making this amazing trip. In particular, we thank Phillips66, ConocoPhillips, the Cole Family, the Day Family, and the Morrison Family for generous scholarship support.
e time when we celebrate the accomplishments of our alumni and induct a new member into our K-State Accounting Hall of Fame. This year we inducted Mr. Ken Selzer CPA, Kansas Insurance Commissioner, into our Accounting Hall of Fame. Mr. Selzer has a distinguished career record. Prior to serving as Commissioner, Mr. Selzer worked in the reinsurance industry for more than 30 years, most recently as an Executive Managing Director for a worldwide brokerage and insurance services firm.Our MAcc program was recently ranked at number 19 in the Top 50 Master of Accountancy programs nationwide. We were also the highest ranked program in Kansas and third among Big 12 schools. The ranking methodology takes into account CPA exams scores, pass rates, relative popularity for business students and average tuition, and applies to AACSB-accredited graduate accounting programs. For more information and to see the full listing from Online Accounting Degree Programs, see the following link:
K-Coe Isom Research Award: Our research award this year went to Dr. Terry Mason. Terry is an enthusiastic and energetic researcher and has been a great addition to our team. Since joining us two years ago, Terry has pursued an active research program and has been actively engaged in the research life of the department. In addition to his commitment to research, Terry is an outstanding classroom teacher and has made a positive impact at both the undergraduate and graduate levels.
BKD Teaching Award: This year’s award went to Ms. Kim Charland. Kim is an accomplished and dedicated teacher who shows a true commitment to our students and to our department. Her evaluations are consistently at a high level and students routinely comment about how much they learned in her classes. It is clear that Kim challenges her students but is extremely fair and always goes beyond expectations in her willingness to help her students succeed. In addition to that, Kim is an amazing team member who has taught multiple classes, has taken a major role in leading the Student Accounting Society (and Beta Alpha Psi prior to that) and is always willing to help out wherever needed.
This Fall we have welcomed two new faculty members to K-State Accounting.
Dr. Becky Heath joins us from St. Ambrose University. Becky completed her PhD at the University of Nebraska and is teaching the international accounting class in our MAcc program.
Dr. Brooke Beyer joins us from Virginia Tech. Brooke completed his PhD at Oklahoma State University and teaches in financial accounting and accounting theory.
We are excited to have both of them on our faculty team.
As you can see from our newsletter, so much of what we do here depends on the generous support we receive from our amazing alumni and friend base. We invite you to continue to partner with us in the coming year by making a financial contribution to one of our funds.
If you would like to explore the possibility of creating a specific scholarship, we would be delighted to talk further with you about this.