A Message from the Chair
Dasaratha V. Rama, Florida International University
I would like to begin by expressing my thanks to all colleagues who have
contributed their time and talents to further the T&C Section goals in the
past year. We have had a productive year due to the hard work and dedication of
numerous people.
First, I am grateful to the members of the T&C Executive Committee for
their support throughout the year. I appreciated the input of the Executive
Committee on how to respond to developments related to Issues in Accounting
Education and other T&C initiatives. Frank Buckless, Roselyn Morris,
Bill Cummings, and Bob Dean will continue to serve on the Executive Committee
next year, and I welcome Thomas Calderon, our incoming Vice-Chair Academic to
the Executive Committee.
I thank Roselyn Morris for her efforts in preparing the T&C Section
newsletter. Rosie is committed to enhancing the value of our newsletter and
offered several suggestions throughout the year. We tried to be proactive in
seeking contributions to the newsletter. For example, my discussions with the
Executive Committee members, committee chairs, or regional leaders resulted in
several of the newsletter articles that you may have read during the last year.
I thank all the contributors for taking the time to write for our newsletter.
I thank our regional directors and associate directors for their work in
organizing the reviews of papers, selecting best papers, and organizing other
T&C events at regional meetings. As you are aware, we have been giving a
best paper award at the regional meetings for the past two years. Details of
the best paper awards appeared in the previous newsletter.
Tim Fogarty played an invaluable role as program chair in planning our
annual meeting activities. The last newsletter includes an update from Tim. As
he notes, the T&C Section will be well represented in Hawaii with 30 papers
(10 concurrent sessions). One panel session was accepted for inclusion on the
program outside of the T&C Section allotment. The Section will be
sponsoring four CPE sessions. A list of these sessions is included in this
newsletter. Finally, note that the T&C breakfast and business meeting are
scheduled for August 4, 2003 from 6:45-8:15 AM (Monday). I hope many of you
will attend the meeting and other section offerings in Hawaii.
I thank the chairs of various committees and the members of these committees
for their efforts on behalf of the Section. I will briefly summarize the work
of T&C committees this year. Committee reports are included later in this
newsletter. Some committees are in the process of completing their work. Their
reports will be made available on the Section website.
The Shared Experiences Committee (chaired by Paul Solomon) has been one of
our most active committees since its inception. This year the committee
organized six panel sessions at various regional meetings. Paul's dedication
and efforts are greatly appreciated. I commend the members of the Research
Award Committee (chaired by Mahendra Gujarathi) for reviewing educational
research articles by assistant professors published in 2002 in the four
accounting education journals (Accounting Education (U.K.), Advances
in Accounting Education, Issues in Accounting Education, and Journal of
Accounting Education). Based on the award criteria, an award will not be
given this year. An important contribution of this committee is in developing
the award description such that it promotes the membership of the T&C
Section and clarifies the purpose and process of the award. Such a description
will facilitate the awards process in the future.
Given my role as T&C webmaster in the past, one of the areas that I have
tried to focus on during this year is the use of technology to enhance T&C
activities. Towards this end, I had created a new committee, T&C
Connections (chaired by Donald Wygal, Rider University). This newsletter
includes a report from this committee. Several members joined the T&C
Connections discussion forum initiated by this group and contributed to our
discussion on the proposed elimination of Issues in Accounting
Education. I hope that in the future the Section will continue to explore
ways to use technology for helping us staying connected throughout the year.
I had created two other committees to address technology-related issues of
relevance to accounting educators. This newsletter includes a report from Faye
Borthick, the chair of the Committee on Improving Teaching and Learning with
Technology. The other committee (chaired by Skip White) is examining the
profession's expectations in terms of IT skills and knowledge as well as the
curricular responses that can address such expectations. This committee is in
the process of completing their report. Their report will be posted on the
Section website.
The first-year committee is studying what schools include in their
first-year accounting courses. The committee is in the process of completing
their survey and identifying faculty to survey. The pedagogy committee (chaired
by Araya Debessay) is completing the analysis of a survey of accounting
administrators to determine how their accounting units have considered the
AICPA Core Competencies in developing their pedagogical approaches to their
classroom instruction.
Finally, I would like to thank the nominating committee chaired by Don
Wygal for their work. We conducted our officer elections by electronic ballot.
This process could be further refined in the future. For example, the
nominating and write-in process in the current bylaws is geared toward election
at the Section business meeting. Over time this process can be refined to
better fit the electronic ballot environment. However, I believe that we have
taken a step in the right direction toward using technology to enhance member
access to and participation in T&C activities.
Thank you for giving me the opportunity to serve as your Chair.
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