AAA Members Named 1999-2000 Pew Scholars

Two AAA members -Anita S. Hollander and Anthony H. Catanach Jr.-were named 1999-2000 Pew Scholars by the Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching.

The purpose of the Pew Scholars National Fellowship Program is to create a community of scholars from various disciplines whose work will advance the profession of teaching and deepen the learning of students.

Hollander and Catanach will join 27 other Pew Scholars in June at the Carnegie Foundation headquarters in Menlo Park, Calif., for a 12-day session addressing the issues and challenges in the teaching of their fields. During the 1999-2000 academic year, each scholar undertakes a project designed to contribute to the body of knowledge and practice in his or her field. The Pew Scholars will get together again for 12 days in June 2000 to share the results of their projects.

Hollander is Chapman Professor of Business at the University of Tulsa and is director of the School of Accounting and Management Information Systems. She played an integral role in the college's recent redesign of its degrees in accounting and information systems.

She developed the Electronic Commerce cross discipline course at the TU.

"Students from marketing, management, accounting, finance, computer science, computer information studies and management information systems are accepted into the course," Hollander said. "Students research weekly topics using a variety of resources. In class techniques include class discussion and debate, invited speakers from the professions, formal and informal student presentations and technology-based demonstrations and tutorials, which student groups often prepare and lead."

Hollander uses online communications infrastructure extensively, minimizing lectures.

She was named TU Mortar Board Professor of the Year for 1997-1998 and won the Dean's Innovation in Teaching Award in 1998. She is the co-author of two books, Accounting, Information Technology and Business Solutions, now in its second edition, and Event-Driven Business Solutions: Today's Revolution in Business and Information Technology.

An active member of the AAA, she is past chair of the Membership Services and Subscriptions Committee and has served on the finance and nominating committees. She is past chair of the Information Systems Section and currently serves on the Journal of Information Systems Editorial Board.

Before joining the University of Tulsa, Hollander taught at Florida State University. A graduate of Grand Valley State College, she earned her master's and Ph.D. degrees from the University of Tennessee-Knoxville. Hollander was a financial systems analyst for Bike Athletic Company, a subsidiary of Colgate-Palmolive before pursuing her Ph.D.

Her Pew Project will examine ways to transfer specialized discipline domain knowledge to a variety of information processing environments and contexts.

"We're very good at teaching our students the mechanics of traditional accounting processes," Hollander explained. "I want to teach accounting theory and rules from a business perspective by teaching students to derive (GAAP and other) financial reports from databases, rather than coupling the teaching of accounting logic with debits, credits, journals and ledgers."

Catanach is an assistant professor of accountancy at Villanova University. Before joining Villanova last year, he taught at the University of Virginia in Charlottesville for four years. In 1997 he and David Croll and Robert Grinaker received the American Accounting Association Award for Innovation in Accounting Education for the creative approach they developed for teaching intermediate financial accounting at the University of Virginia. During the two-semester course, students learn about accounting issues by handling "real world" problems as they arise in the first seven years of a fictitious company's life. Students conduct analytical reviews, solicit information, prepare correcting entries and draft seven complete sets of financial statements for the company.

The business activity model, Catanach said, focuses on developing analytical and conceptual thinking skills within an accounting context.

The goal of the model is to give students the competencies they will need in their work as accountants and consultants in the 21st Century.

"This new curriculum seeks to achieve this goal by: (1) motivating students for their chosen profession, (2) promoting technical competency, (3) developing life-long research skills, (4) advancing critical thinking, and (5) fostering communication skill development," he said.

The University of Virginia is currently using the business model and six other universities plan to start using it in the fall.

"To date this new approach has been evaluated principally using feedback received from student course evaluations and presentations at scholarly meetings, " Catanach said. He plans to develop, test and implement an evaluation strategy for the model as his Pew Scholars project.

Catanach has written over 20 research, educational and practitioner publications and has received several research awards from the AAA. He is on the editorial boards of the Journal of International Accounting, Auditing and Taxation and Advances in Accounting Education: Teaching and Curriculum Innovations. He has received several teaching awards from the University of Virginia and Arizona State University.

He served on the planning committee of the Ph.D. Project which encourages minority business professionals to earn doctoral degrees and pursue academic careers. He also serves on the National Education Committee of the Institute of Management Accountants and has led the development of Villanova University's new Master of Science Degree in Information Management and Technology.

He has also served as a manager for KPMG, president and CEO of several financial services firms and a Marine Corps officer. He earned his bachelor's and master's degrees from the University of New Mexico and his Ph.D. from Arizona State University.

The Pew Scholars National Fellowship Program is the first of three components of the Carnegie Teaching Academy, a five-year, $6 million project of the Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching. The project is a partnership with the Pew Charitable Trusts and a collaboration with the American Association of Higher Education.

The AAA is matching the $6,000 Pew stipend for Professors Hollander and Catanach.

Both Catanach and Hollander said they were grateful to the AAA and their schools for their support and encouragement for their Pew Scholar activities.