In the balance sheet of life, Darrell Walden will tell you that a degree in accounting is definitely an asset. The Big Four accounting firms were listed among the top five best places to launch a career in 2008. "The need to count up losses makes accounting a recession-proof career," said Walden. "The numbers don't lie."

"The logic required in accounting makes a student a better business person. Accounting is required coursework for all business students, and those who fear it the most often discover they fare better than they thought. Many accounting majors will study abroad. Accounting is a very lucrative career and it has advantages, including flexibility and telecommuting."

Accounting is in Darrell Walden's blood. He learned business from his father who owned several businesses. His uncle was one of the first African American CPAs in Ohio, and his mother was the chief accountant at Virginia Union University. His first accounting professor was the first woman African American CPA in Virginia. Walden, a Richmond native, worked for two Fortune 500 companies and was in private practice before joining the Robins School. He was recently named Chair of the Accounting Department, where he currently teaches cost and managerial accounting.

Give Walden a balance sheet and he can tell you a story. He found an innovative way to link the history and records of the Freedmen's Bureau and Freedman's Bank to African American genealogical research, a product of which is the highly acclaimed presentation "Whispers from the Dust: The Freedmen Records and African American Family History."

The Freedmen Bureau and Freedman's Bank, which was created by Congress one month before President Lincoln's assassination, provided the first opportunity for freed slaves to record themselves as citizens. The records, over 1,100 linear feet of them, had been in the National Archives more than 140 years by the time Walden co-founded the Virginia Freedmen Project in 2005. The project's mission is to encourage and strengthen families, particularly those within the African American community, to discover their genealogy and family history. The Virginia Freedmen Project was the catalyst to digitize and index the Bureau records through Family Search and the National Archives. The Virginia Bureau records, the first of 12 southern states, were completed in June 2008 with over 192,000 images indexed.

Lest you think a career in accounting is as interesting as a hill of beans, think twice. "Accounting is the language of business," continued Walden. "The accounting major allows the student to understand all aspects of business and the consequences of business decisions, and as such, become better accountants, managers, and entrepreneurs. It's no longer about counting beans. It is a very versatile major."

Dr. Walden earned his Ph.D. in Business with honors from Virginia Commonwealth University (VCU) where he majored in Accounting, and minored in Finance and Information Systems. He was among only 24 Blacks out of 1206 Ph.D.s in Business earned in 1994 (Blacks earned only 2% of these degrees in the 1990s). Prior to his tenure at the Robins School, he taught at three other universities including VCU and the prestigious Marriott School of Management at Brigham Young University-Provo UT.

Fae Bell. For eleven years, she worked at Central Fidelity Bank in the marketing department, but a twist of fate brought her to the Robins School. As banks are apt to do, Central Fidelity merged with another (Wachovia). With the merger complete, some of Fae's colleagues quickly found their way to the University of Richmond, and Fae wasn't far behind.

Her first position was working in the Finance Department here at the Robins School. One position led to another, as Fae began coordinating the then "Capital One MBA Program." When that program was complete, her job morphed into the "Residencies and External Relations Coordinator" position. However, in 2004, Fae was offered the unique opportunity to take on the role of "International Business Programs and Residencies Coordinator," a role created out of her then current position but enhanced by the addition of job duties related to international business education. In no time, Fae was wrapped up in the world of international residencies, study abroad, student exchange, and visiting international scholars, all the while still successfully coordinating the MBA Opening Residencies (a large undertaking in and of itself).

Five years into this exciting role, Fae is happy to be immersed in its varied functions. With opportunities to work and interact with so many people, she finds that the job stays interesting. "I've interacted with so many different people, from undergraduate and graduate students (U.S. and abroad), to faculty and staff (here and abroad) to numerous departments on-campus and vendors off-campus. I make a lot of friends working here," says Fae. Not only that, but learning about all the different cultures is also an exciting perk of the job.

When asked what she was most proud of in terms of her work here at the Robins School, Fae says, "Successfully completing eight MBA Opening Residencies and nine MBA International Residencies." Fae coordinated international residencies in Mexico City and Monterrey, Mexico; Prague, Czech Republic; Sao Paulo and Rio de Janeiro, Brazil; and Rouen and Paris, France. On the other hand, one of her biggest challenges recently is planning the first MBA International Residency this summer in Beijing, China.

Going forward, Fae hopes to see the undergraduate study abroad and incoming exchange programs continue to grow. "In 2008, The Robins School received 72 foreign exchange students majoring in business and sent 116 of our students abroad," says Fae. Through the efforts of the International Business Programs here at the Robins School, these numbers should increase, following in the University's commitment to international education.

When not busy at work, Fae is keeping up with her four children, one dog and her rabbit. She notes that one of her favorite pastimes is working in the yard and planting flowers. Unfortunately, however, she doesn't currently have a yard. She claims to be "looking for a yard."

Given all that Fae is currently working on and coordinating, it's not surprising that she stays a busy woman. Her skills and successes are well known, and we are all thankful to have her in our midst.

Fae Bell. International superstar. Queen of the exchange world. Residency guru. Bunny owner.

KimMarie McGoldrick, an economics professor at the University of Richmond's Robins School of Business, is part of a research team that has received a $497,953 grant from the National Science Foundation to develop innovations in teaching college economics.

McGoldrick's team will develop an economics pedagogic portal-a Web-based resource for instructing undergraduate economics students.

Awarded to North Carolina A&T State University, the grant will be administered by McGoldrick; Scott P. Simkins, director of academy for teaching and learning at North Carolina A&T; Cathryn A. Manduca, director of the science education resource center at Carleton College; and Mark H. Maier, economics chair at Glendale Community College.

"The portal will make it easier for economists to find teaching innovations within and beyond their discipline, and provide them with the tools to begin integrating and assessing these innovations in their classrooms," McGoldrick said.

McGoldrick has published more than 25 articles and numerous book chapters, and edited two books. She earned her bachelor's degree from the State University of New York at Oswego and her master's and doctorate degrees from the State University of New York at Binghamton.

Featured in Richmond Now;
written by Joan Tupponce.

The spending habits of women are at the heart of many jokes, but sometimes the spending habits of individuals are no laughing matter.

Nancy Ridgway, associate professor of marketing in the Robins School of Business, has been studying consumers who shop too much as well as those who buy too much, for more than 20 years. Her first article on the subject was published in 1986 in the Journal of Consumer Research.

Her latest article for the journal, co-authored by Monika Kukar-Kinney, assistant professor of marketing, and Kent B. Monroe of the University of Illinois and the Robins School, focuses on her team's research regarding compulsive buying. Some of the findings detailed in the December 2008 article also appeared in BusinessWeek and The Wall Street Journal.

Ridgway was intrigued by the subject because of her own interest in shopping and buying. "I enjoy buying clothing and accessories," she says.

She believes that shopping as a hobby can, in some cases, transition into compulsive buying. "There are many people who shop but don't buy," she explains. "I think that is a really important distinction. Compulsive buyers buy too much. There is a big difference between the two."

In the current research, Ridgway looked at a compulsive buying scale that was created 20 years ago. Four of the seven items on the scale dealt with the financial consequences of excessive buying. Ridgway and her team wanted to take a different approach in creating their scale so they decided to include shoppers who could afford their shopping habit as well as shoppers who couldn't by taking out financially based items.

"Other scales include consequences-like credit card debt-in the scale itself, rather than measuring the behavior as we did and then relating [the behavior] to the consequences and the possible causes," she explains. "In our three samples, we found 15.5 percent, 8.9 percent and 16 percent were compulsive buyers. This is a much higher percentage than has been found in the past."

Ridgway believes the increased percentage was a result of taking the debt items out of the scale. That helped the team identify those who can and those who cannot afford their shopping habit.

Determining how to measure compulsive buying tendencies was one of the team's biggest challenges, according to Kukar-Kinney. The team wanted its measure to be applicable to a general population of consumers. "Further, we wanted to be able to identify compulsive buyers by their underlying behavioral tendencies, rather than consequences of this behavior," she explained.

The team's research theorizes that compulsive buying is a part of two disorders-obsessive-compulsive spectrum disorder and impulse control disorder, where a person can't control the urge to buy. "We think that compulsive buying is a disorder," Ridgway says. "But over-shopping is not considered a disorder. There are a lot of people who are mall rats."

Culturally, women are considered to be more ardent spenders than men. However, men can be equally guilty when it comes to compulsive buying. "My theory is that men collect things," Ridgway says. "Women are more prone to buy clothing."

While working on their research on compulsive buying, Ridgway and her team became interested in people who spend excessive amounts on their pets. Their article "Does excessive buying for self relate to spending on pets?" was published in the Journal of Business Research in 2007.

"We had the idea that if compulsive buyers were buying for themselves, then they were also buying for their pets," Ridgway says. "We found out that was the case."

The team discovered that compulsive buyers spend almost double the amount on their pets that non-compulsive buyers spend during an average month. They also found that pet owners spent more on dogs than cats.

Ridgway, who owns two Jack Russell terriers-her 12-year-old Jack Russell, Sadie, passed away during the course of the study- knows how attached owners are to their pets. "You'll see people spending on all different kinds of things for their pets, such as multiple leashes, carriers and outfits," she says. "They seem to like to dress up their pets. They buy special collars for every holiday."

The team was able to get data for its study by sampling one Internet retailer who agreed to share spending data with the researchers. "We were able to match each person with their spending," Ridgway says.

Kukar-Kinney has found the research both interesting and fun. She enjoys working with Ridgway. "Nancy's expertise is more in the theoretical background for this project, while mine is more in the methodological area, so we were both able to learn a lot from each other as well as from our third co-author, Kent Monroe," she says.

The question as to why people overspend still intrigues Ridgway who will admit she has an unopened shopping bag or two in her own closet. "We found that compulsive buyers experience temporary positive feelings after a buying binge," she says. "It's interesting. I wonder what people do with all these things?"

Note: Dr. Nancy Ridgeway's original paper from the Journal of Consumer Research (in conjunction with Dr. Monika Kukar-Kinney, University of Richmond, and Dr. Kent Monroe, University of Illinois) has led to additional features in many publications, including BusinessWeek, The Wall Street Journal, the Los Angeles Times, divorce360.com, and the Washington Times.

Written by Professor Tom Arnold

The current economic crisis is being displayed in the media with stories regarding bailouts, layoffs, and a lack of investor/consumer confidence. However, most of the questions I receive from students and neighbors are some variant of the following: what does this recession mean where I live and how concerned should I be? In other words, what will this recession look like? Images of the Great Depression are rather sensational, but the current economic situation is still worthy of some concern and it will change how the world operates around us.

The first thing college graduates will notice is that the job search will take longer and more than likely, it will result in one job offer rather than multiple job offers assuming one is pursuing traditional well-defined career paths. However, there are jobs out there that are unique and cannot be defined very easily. These jobs are usually associated with an entrepreneurial venture, a new technology, or in a non-traditional area. For example, I have yet to see a college major in sport statistics, but I certainly know that someone is keeping track of very obscure statistics within a number of sports.

Jobs like this cannot be recruited using a specific degree and probably are not available in large enough quantities within a single firm to warrant sending recruiters to campus for interviews. Consequently, my suggestion to recent college graduates is to think of an area where you have an interest and figure out how you fit in a career in this area. Next, using the Internet and other resources, find the firms in your area of interest and pursue a job there. Even without a recession, this is the way you find a job that will probably hold your interest for a lifetime.

If you already have a job, be prepared for some frustration. You or someone you know will be on the verge of being laid off or delaying retirement. Although you may be thankful to have a job, lay-offs and hiring freezes will increase your responsibilities, your pay scale will not increase appreciably, and the inability of the firm to grow due to the recession accompanied with a lack of people retiring creating better job opportunities will thwart your ability to advance within the firm. Unfortunately, the firm will need to do more with less to make it through the recession, which means, as the employee, you get less while doing more.

When the recession passes (and it will), assess how your firm treated the employees during this recessionary time and determine if you want to stay there. Even in better times, some firms do not seem to be able to leave a recessionary mode in which employees should be grateful to have a job. If this is the case, your contributions to the firm are probably undervalued and it is time to leave for a better situation. This is not to say that you should not work hard at the firm to enhance your own abilities during these challenging times, but I am saying that after a recovery, it is time to recognize some rewards for your efforts.

What about outside of the workplace? How will this recession affect your leisure time and day-to-day non-work related activities?

The higher-end of the retail spectrum will contract and in many cases disappear. The lower-end of the retail spectrum will see increased volume, but do not expect to see more registers or more sales associates available to accommodate the increase in customers. Consequently, you will experience longer lines and less service.

If you do seek higher-end merchandise for better quality, some of these items may become available at discount retailers. Be careful, the manufacturer may be selling a discounted version of what you desire that does not have the quality you seek. More than likely, you will need to deal with a specialty store that has an Internet store front. Depending on the item, this could be frustrating because a picture is not the same as physically inspecting the item. Given the recession, you will probably experience some guilt if you actually purchase the item even with a promotional discount.

Vacation areas will be offering discounted prices to fill the hotels as convention business contracts and the increased building during the past few years creates a greater need for occupancy. This will afford some the ability to have a "once-in-a-lifetime" experience, but many families will be budget constrained, particularly if college tuition is a factor (college tuition generally increases by some amount annually regardless of the economy). These families may not take vacations or will pass on the hotel and stay at a campground. In either case, the hospitality industry will be significantly challenged due to the need to lower prices to encourage business.

Ultimately, the recession will change the world around you. Some traditionally stalwart firms and business ventures of varying size will disappear because there is simply not enough economic growth to sustain them. As mentioned previously, jobs will be more difficult to find and maintain. Further, everybody will be more aware of how they spend money regardless of income level. The good news is: the recession will not last forever. The bad news is: there will be another one in the future.

The latest edition of the Faculty Accomplishment Report (October 1 - December 31, 2008) can be found here.