Graham is URI’s first Vangermeersch Professor

KINGSTON – Allan W. Graham of Newport, an associate professor of accounting in the University of Rhode Island’s College of Business Administration, has been named the university’s first Richard Vangermeersch Endowed Professor, URI announced today.
The chair was established by friends and colleagues of Vangermeersch, who served the university for 34 years before retiring in 2004 as a professor of accounting. They established a fund that now stands at $326,000, interest from which will support the professorship.
Graham – though not so flamboyant as Vangermeersch, who often performed dance routines in his classes – is well-known for his love of teaching and his high energy level, URI said. “Allan is genuinely interested in the College and its students and in making the University better,” Mark Higgins, dean of the College of Business Administration, said in a statement today.
Such endowed academic chairs are often used to attract talent from other institutions, Higgins noted. This time, he said, “we decided to fill the professorship internally because we had a quality individual in Allan.
“It’s important to reward people who have done a good job,” Higgins added. “Professorships help us retain excellent faculty.”
Graham said that “being selected to the Vangermeersch professorship is absolutely the proudest moment of my life. It sets you apart from your peers at other institutions.”
Vangermeersch “is a great role model, as are a number of other senior faculty in this department,” he said, adding: “What I find particularly impressive about Richard was his ability to maintain an active research agenda while doing a major amount of teaching.”
Graham came to URI in 2000 after earning his doctorate in accounting from Virginia Polytechnic Institute & State University. As a graduate student at Virginia Tech, he recalled, he taught two class sections per semester. “When you get to the Ph.D. level, they try to disabuse you of teaching and try to get you focused on research, so the hierarchy of priorities is: research; the courses that you take for your doctorate; and then teaching.”
He previously had studied at the University of North Carolina, where he earned his bachelor’s degree in public policy and his master’s degree in public administration, while also serving as as assistant to the town manager of Tarboro, N.C. and later as town accountant in Carrboro, N.C. In Virginia, he also held positions as budget manager at Virginia Tech and business manager for Virginia Tech Intellectual Properties.
That experience, plus his research in environmental liabilities such as Superfund sites, all enriches Graham’s undergraduate classes on accounting information systems, accounting management and ethics, URI said.
“One of the reasons why I focus on information systems is, that was where many of the accounting issues arose in the big companies,” Graham said. “Ethics in accounting is still such a big topic. The mingling of business consulting and accounting by major firms was at the heart of the problem. We have to remember how we got there.”
Additional information, including other news from the University of Rhode Island, is available at www.uri.edu/news/. To learn more about the Vangermeersch chair or make a donation, call Michaela Mooney, at 874-4716, in the Office of University Advancement.