Fifth Year Maintenance Report - AACSB - The University of Texas at ...

7. Other Material: Address any additional issues or areas not included in an earlier section of thereport. In addition, identify any innovative and/or exemplary practices, innovations,activities, programs, etc. that should be brought to the attention of the team and AACSB.Provide a brief overview of progress relative to the stated mission.Additional IssuesThe following is a number of issues that did not get explicitly discussed in the report that should benoted.1. Maturity and Leadership of the FacultyIn 2007, at the conclusion of the last AACSB Peer Review Team (PRT) visit, the Department ofAccounting had 16 tenured and tenure-track faculty. The faculty consisted of four full professors, eightassociate professors, and four assistant professors. Of the four full professors, one was on full timeassignment to the Provost’s Office, one was the Department Chair, one was a former Department Chairand one held an endowed chair. The senior faculty was heavily oriented toward administration ratherthan research.Five years later one of those four full professors, Dr. Russell Briner who was a formerDepartment Chair, passed away and the other three remain in their respective administrative positions.However, there are now four additional persons on the faculty who have been promoted to fullprofessor and one who is under review for promotion at the time this report is completed. Thisdramatic increase in the number of active researchers at the top academic level in the department hasgreatly strengthened the senior leadership in the department.2. Faculty AvailabilityOn the other hand, there are currently only 15 tenured and tenure-track faculty in theDepartment of Accounting. This number is virtually unchanged over the last decade. This is despite thegrowth of the undergraduate programs, the doubling of the master’s degree program and theimplementation of the PhD program. One of our former faculty members is on phased retirement,which has him teaching a half load for three years. At the end of that time we are supposed to be ableto hire a replacement contingent on funding.To address this shortage of faculty we have proposed the following. First, we have beenauthorized a 10% increase in funding to facilitate the hiring of the Ramsdell Chair in Accounting. Ifsuccessful this will yield an additional senior faculty member to assist with the PhD program. We areaggressively pursuing a senior Professor of Practice (a new position established by the university) whowill be academically qualified and who can teach graduate as well as undergraduate courses. We haveproposed to the Dean that we be given a new faculty line to support the addition of a junior facultymember with an interest in renewable energy and sustainability accounting research. The university hascreated a thematic that is in this area and we believe we can recruit a person who can make substantialcontributions in this area.46