Dear Friends of the Accounting Department, I hope this newsletter finds you well and your life returning to normal, after enduring 14 months of a global pandemic. As I reflect on my first year as Chair of the Accounting Department at IU Bloomington, I am incredibly grateful for all my colleagues that have made this year a surprising, resounding success for our students, our accounting programs, and the department as a whole. Everyone has contributed to that success in multiple ways. This year more than most, the department has been pushed to learn new technologies, adopt new pedagogies, develop new curriculum, update existing courses, hire new faculty, and establish new—and enhance existing—relationships with firms and alumni, all while staying on the forefront of accounting research and regulation. This letter will highlight some of the department’s activities since the start of the fall 2020 semester. But I encourage you to read the complete stories in the pages that follow.

 Our feature article in this newsletter is—of course—an article about teaching and learning during a global pandemic. Please check it out! It features several graduate accounting students and many accounting faculty, talking about their experiences in the classroom, from the challenges of teaching entirely in Zoom to the challenges of teaching in-person with masks and social distancing. The article captures how much our faculty and graduate teaching assistants care about Kelley students and their learning outcomes.

Other articles focus on exciting changes to the accounting curriculum and the Accounting Advisory Group. First, I am excited to announce that we were able to develop and obtain approval for four new Accounting Workshops that will introduce undergraduate accounting students to the wide array of careers that are available to accounting majors. These courses will involve weekly interactions with accounting professionals and provide students the opportunity to discover which accounting career path is best for them. Second, we are restructuring the Accounting Advisory Group (AAG) to increase member engagement with accounting programs and students. If you have been—or would like to be—a member of the AAG, I encourage you to read that article in this newsletter.

Like most organizations, the department’s ability to fulfill its responsibilities and achieve stated objectives depends entirely on our people: our faculty, staff, and graduate assistants. In recent months we have experienced a lot of changes! Four faculty with nearly 100 years of combined teaching experience at the Kelley School retired in May 2021. Fortunately, we were able to hire four full-time and three visiting faculty to try to fill the very large shoes of the retiring faculty. Additionally, four of our continuing faculty were promoted to higher ranks (woo-hoo!). And many, many of our accounting faculty received teaching, research, and service awards for their exemplary performance during the past academic year.

I sincerely hope you take the time to read all of this exciting news from the accounting department at the Kelley School of Business. As I write this letter, we are focused on our return to campus in August for 100 percent, in-person instruction. I doubt any of us will take face-to-face interactions for granted, ever again. Whether you are an alum, a recruiter, or simply a friend of the accounting department, I hope to see you on campus during the upcoming year. In the meantime, may you enjoy a healthy and fun-filled summer with friends and family!