A Message from the Chair

Dear alumni and friends:

As we reflect on another successful year for our programs, we have many people to be thankful for. Our dedicated and generous alumni and friends, our insightful Accounting Advisory Council, our hard-working students and our talented faculty are truly the pillars of our success. 

This year, we have set new records for student career success (100% of our MS accounting students with employment eligibility accepted job offers before graduation) and philanthropy (two scholarship funds, the KPMG Accounting Excellence Fellowship and the Accounting Advisory Council Fellowships, were launched this spring to support our students). We were also successful in new faculty hiring. These are important accomplishments worth celebrating. With new leadership at our school, we are optimistic for the future of our programs.

This summer and fall, our faculty and students have taken advantage of much-improved travel conditions to attend in-person professional and academic conferences and meetings in the U.S. and abroad. After the disruptions brought by the COVID-19 pandemic almost three years ago, our faculty and students are finally able to participate in these important events, which are vital for their professional networking and career advancement. By attending, our faculty can learn from their peers, obtain cutting-edge knowledge about the most important trends in accounting (including new accounting standards) and integrate this knowledge into their classroom teaching to benefit our students. Accounting students from UB’s Zeta Theta chapter of the Beta Alpha Psi (BAP) international honors organization also benefit tremendously from attending BAP’s regional and national meetings. We thank you for providing the financial resources that we rely on for supporting our faculty and students to participate in these events. 

This spring, we also successfully brought back the Sufrin seminar series as an in-person event, after more than two years on pause due to COVID. This year’s event featured Jeffrey Hales, chair of the Sustainability Accounting Standards Board. In his lecture, Hales covered current events and future directions for global disclosure standards for corporations’ environmental, social and governance (ESG) practices and impact. This was a timely event as the accounting profession and other business professions worldwide have increasingly recognized the importance of ESG initiatives for accounting and business practices.    

We would like to take this opportunity to thank you for your continuing support. Your generous financial contributions have enabled us to improve the quality of our programs by supporting our students and faculty. We look forward to working with you and sharing more good news next year. We wish you and your family a wonderful holiday season and a prosperous new year in 2023! 

Feng Gu
Professor and Chair
Accounting and Law Department
University at Buffalo School of Management