Solomon Recognized for Excellence in Teaching

Ira Solomon, who heads the Department of Accountancy and is the R.C. Evans Endowed Chair of Accountancy at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, received the AICPA’s 2009 Distinguished Achievement in Accounting Education Award.

The award is given each year to a full-time college accounting educator for distinguished excellence in teaching and national prominence in the accounting profession. The award extends profession-wide recognition to the recipient and promotes role models in academia.

Ernie Almonte, chair of the AICPA, presented the award at the spring meeting of the Institute’s governing Council in Washington.

Solomon contributed to the development of the accountancy program at the University of Illinois at Urbana–Champaign and elsewhere via his leadership in Project Discover, which requires students to apply accounting principles to real-world problems through discovery learning, role-playing, case studies and other activities.

The 16 cases Solomon developed for the program with KPMG and other colleagues have been downloaded more than 300,000 times and have been widely used by professors nationwide. The cases are available at tinyurl.com/cpwzy7.

Solomon has published more than 75 articles in academic and professional journals and has presented nearly 100 papers at seminars and conferences around the world. He has also authored or coauthored 25 books, monographs, reports and pamphlets. He has been a visiting distinguished scholar at the University of New South Wales in Australia, Nanyang Technological University in Singapore, and the Chinese University of Hong Kong.

He is a member of the AICPA’s governing Council and is a past recipient of the American Accounting Association’s Innovations in Auditing and Assurance Education and Outstanding Auditing Educator awards, as well as the St. Louis Accountancy Committee of the University of Illinois’ Excellence in Teaching Award.