Dedication to the students

I love the academic cycle in our world.  At least three times a year, there is a feeling of accomplishment, closure, and a look to the future.  That's a difficult feeling to get in most careers, and I think it is what keeps all of us tied to higher education.

What I'm most impressed with though is the dedication we see in our faculty as they prepare for the next wave of students and courses.  Often, academics are painted with a negative brush in that there is the assumption that there's a lot of free time and that we all just dust off last semester's lecture notes as we enter the classroom.  Nothing could be further from the truth.

Just before Christmas we had a fairly large snow event that hit Kansas City in the morning commute, and it continued for much of the day.  The university was closed until 10:00 a.m., and since the semester was finished, most faculty members were done until after the holiday break.  But not our accounting faculty.  Below you will find Tony Tocco, our chair of accounting and finance discipline, Jeff Wright, our wonderful newest faculty addition, and Bruce Moore, a retired accounting partner who teaches tax for us.  Now that's dedication -- working to improve the educational experiences for the upcoming classes on the last, very snowy and stormy day before holiday break!