Newsletter

Reports from the Public Interest Section Officers are now available. See Reports for details.

(Revised on May 14, 2008. The webmaster inadvertently left off some of the original text.)

Alan’s Welcoming to the Mid-Year Meeting

I am thrilled to welcome you to the FIRST annual mid-year meeting of the Public Interest Section and to the Academy of Accounting Historians Research Conference.  None of us was sure the meeting would come off or not, but due to the hard work of two special individuals, our meeting will be a success.  Thank you so much Parveen Gupta and Dan Jensen, without them we would not be here!

Now, if I am not actually able to attend the meeting, it is not due to my lack of interest, but the cancer, I am going to beat, can be a nemesis at times.  Nevertheless, the illness has allowed me time to think and reflect over the past several months.  I will share some of those reflections with you today.

What does the public interest mean to me?  In the past, the meaning took on specific issues.  The public interest is ethics and the profession; ethics and education; symbolism versus real change; change the American Accounting Association; and etc,.  All these issues may influence the public interest but none of them has meaning as to what public interest is.

My own conclusion is that public interest is synonymous with “quality of life”.  When we serve the public interest, we should be improving the quality of life.  To me this would imply there are many avenues (and paradigms) to examining the public interest.  There can easily be more than one solution.

This calls for tolerance, openness, and a willingness to learn.  This is what I hope our Mid-year meeting is all about.  I wish you a wonderful meeting and I hope you leave the meeting thinking about how the meeting has affected the quality of life.

Thank you and welcome.

Alan

********************

CHAIR’S REPORT—SUMMER 2007

Well, here I go again.  It is that time to write a report and sharing my thoughts (oh oh, I can’t go down that road now, can I?).  I want to let all of you know the activities our section has been involved with and encourage you to become involved (in any little way you wish).

First, I want to thank Ann Watkins for her wonderful job as Vice-chair (Ann chose not to be re-nominated due to family priorities).  Ann’s hard work enabled the syllabus project to became a reality (please look at these in the syllabi section of this website).  Additionally Ann began the process of using our website as an outlet for academic recruiting.  Thank you Ann for your dedication to the section and we look forward to working with you again in the near future.

In our affirmation of the nominating committee’s nominees, John Thornton was affirmed as our new Vice-Chair and Michele Chwastiak was re-affirmed as our secretary-treasurer.  Congratulations, but condolences with being stuck working with yours truly!

and Parveen Gupta is our coordinator for the meeting.  More information will be forthcoming about the meeting in Chicago at the AAA Annual meeting.

The Accounting Exemplar Award Committee selected Lynn Turner, former SEC Chief Accountant for the 2007 Exemplar Award.  Congratulations Lynn!  We will be presenting the award to Lynn at the Exemplar Luncheon in Chicago, following the Professional and Ethics Symposium (Sunday August 5).  I hope you will be able to join us at the luncheon.

Now, to the future.  I anticipate we will continue our prior projects in the upcoming year.  Hence, if you have new syllabi, which relate to the public interest, please share them with us.  Send them to John Thornton at jthornt@tricity.wsu.edu  .  John will organize the syllabi and forward them to Brett for posting to our website.  I hope you will respond to the call for papers for our midyear meeting (the call will be out shortly).

There are two new areas I want to discuss.  First, each of you has been involved in activities that relate to the Public Interest.  Please share your stories and ideas with us.  Story telling is a wonderful thing.  We need to have a forum of ideas to give examples to each other on how each of us can be involved.  Send you stories and ideas to Brett_Wilkinson@baylor.edu , our webmaster who will post them to our website.  Please, please share.

Next, the AAA is developing a strategic plan for the future.  Where will the organization be when it becomes 100 years old in 2015 (I no doubt will be tottering by then, but hopefully some teetering as well)?  The AAA is considering the following mission statement:

We bring together and facilitate the academic community to advance the discipline and profession of accounting through:

The executive committee, and soon the council, will be reviewing the mission and proposed vision statements (which I have not included) on each of the above areas; they also will propose specific states and goals for the organization.  Our section needs to think about this.  What is the role of the AAA and the academic community?  I believe we need to give the mission and a strategic plan a strong public interest perspective.  We need to allow for independent voices and means to give transparency to issues that concern our profession. Serving society is not only the role of our section, but must be an integral mission of the Association.  All voices need to be heard in civil discourse.  When available, I will circulate the drafts of the strategic plan and anticipate you will provide feedback in our attempt to influence the final project.

Finally, I look forward to meeting you in Chicago.  Our annual business meeting will be held at 4:30 on the Monday of the conference.  Please refer to the program for the location.  All our reports will be posted to the website; therefore, we will not be bringing hard copies to Chicago.  Do let me hear from you!  My e-mail address is Mayper@unt.edu .  See you soon.

All the best,

Alan