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I want to thank Matthew Anderson and the other members of the selection committee for this honor. I would like especially to thank Julie Smith David of Arizona State who did all the hard work in submitting my nomination.
I teach undergraduate and graduate accounting information systems, and I do computer science research in the field of semantic modeling of accounting phenomena. Quite simply, I am an accounting systems professor, and I am certainly very proud to win this award for work in that increasingly important area of accounting.
There are a number of people who helped me get here that I would like to thank:
First my two daughters, Meghan and Molly, who always give me the impression that everything that their father does is wonderful -- and on the other side of mygeneration – my parents who always conveyed that same message. And then, my wife Jane who has to live with a computer workaholic and listen every day to my ups and downs as I pursue my somewhat unrealistic research and teaching goals.
I would also like to thank my MSU colleagues Severin Grabski and Ed Outslay who, like my wife, try to keep my spirits buoyed in my everyday pursuit of those same things.
My doctoral students are simply the best. Chronologically, they are Howard Armitage, Paul Steinbart, Graham Gal, Eric Denna, Steve Rockwell, Guido Geerts, Cheryl Dunn, Julie Smith David, and Greg Gerard. They have all become lifelong friends as well as research colleagues.
Since this is partially a teaching award, I want to mention three influential professors. First at the University of Massachusetts, Ron Mannino whose managerial accounting class showed me so very much about teaching and relating to accounting students. Second, also at UMASS, the computer scientist David Stemple – my wonderful, wonderful database professor -- who taught me that I could be both highly technical and lyrical at the same timeas I strove for elegance and symmetry in my research work. And finally at BostonCollege, my ultra-demanding metaphysics teacher, the Jesuit priest Father Murphy who taught me the basics of mathematical logic and ontology, things that still drive my research ideas today forty years after I walked out of his classroom.
I would like to thank some other AAA people. Steve Zeff who is my editorial mentor and Tracey Sutherland who was my co-pilot on the five year run of the infamous REA boot camps at MSU. Tracey was always the good cop who facilitated learning there while I was the drill sergeant, bad cop who demanded almost more effort than people could give me. The students at those boot camps -- many of whom are in the audience -- were also great. You were a receptive and hard-working group – even though I didn’t always tell you that at the time – and you taught me a lot about what works and doesn't work in accounting systems instruction.
And finally, I would like to thank that group of people who are responsible for most of the high levels of energy and enthusiasm I feel on a day-to-day basis in my work: THE ACCOUNTING SYSTEMS STUDENTS AT MICHIGAN STATE UNIVERSITY. Every year in August, I get a new crop of these kids and then over the duration of a year and 3 courses, I try to make them born-again computer scientists, while they, on the other hand, constantly remind me that they elected to become accounting majors because accounting was their first love, not computers. By April and May (after many long hours in both the classroom and the lab)they have been transformed into the kind of technically-adept accountants that the CPA firms love so much and that I – justifiably -- can be so proud of. Meanwhile, I have become just a little bit better at explaining my message. I love this give-and-take that we go through every academic year, and eventually, I hope that those kids push me so far in understanding just how to explain semantic specification and ontological reasoning to the traditional accounting mind that I will be able to convince all of you in this room of the markedimportance ofwhat we accounting systems professors do in our teaching and research.
Thanks again to the entire AAA for this wonderful honor.