Pamela A. Smith

Pamela A. Smith, Ph.D., CPA KPMG Professor of Accountancy, Board of Trustees Professor, Presidential Teaching Professor, Department of Accountancy, Northern Illinois University. Pam Smith joined Northern Illinois University in January 1994 and is the KPMG Professor of Accountancy, NIU Board of Trustees Professor, and NIU Presidential Teaching Professor. She earned her undergraduate degree in accountancy from Ferris State University, her M.B.A. from the University of Texas at Dall, and her Ph.D. from the University of North Texas. Her teaching and research interests focus on accounting and reporting related business combinations, valuation, consolidation, derivatives and hedging, and business ethics. Pam teaches advanced financial accounting at both the undergraduate and graduate levels and has taught financial accounting in the Executive M.B.A. program. In addition, she delivers professional training on various technical issues. From 1996 to 2000, Pam traveled abroad several times to teach at the Helsinki School of Economics and Business Administration. In 1997-1998, she completed a teaching appointment in the MBA program at the University of Texas at Austin. Pam has received more than a dozen teaching awards. In 2013, she was named NIU’s Presidential Teaching Professor, and in 2010, she received the NIU Board of Trustees Professorship, the highest recognition at NIU. The BOT Professorship is awarded to faculty with international prominence in research as well as excellence in all facets of teaching. In 2009, Pam received the American Accounting Association Innovation in Accounting Education Award, and in 2008, she received the Illinois CPA Society’s Outstanding Educator Award. Outside of the classroom, Pam is passionate about the integration of ethics into the curriculum. She is one of the authors of the NIU College of Business Building Ethical Leaders Handbook and one of the developers of the college’s BELIEF initiative (Building Ethical Leaders using an Integrated Ethics Framework). Both the handbook and the BELIEF Initiative have been integrated across the college’s curriculum. This initiative is praised by both academic and professional communities, as well as by national experts in the compliance field. Pam also served as faculty advisor to accountancy students who created an honor pledge and code of conduct for accountancy majors, both of which were developed and written by accountancy students with her guidance. Pam maintains a practical perspective on teaching and research by drawing from her years in public accounting and training as an audit manager at Touche Ross (now Deloitte). She has published more than 30 articles in academic and practitioner journals and stays current on issues by utilizing sabbaticals. Pam spent her 2014 and 2007 sabbaticals with business valuation specialists and companies to study business valuation practices and implementation of ASC 805. Her fall 2000 sabbatical was spent at companies studying the implementation of ASC 815 on derivatives and hedging. The expertise gained during her sabbatical led her to be retained as an expert witness in the Enron trial. Active in the community, Pam and her husband Jon are licensed handles of their certified therapy dog, Lindy. Lindy provides emotional therapy to residents in nursing homes and children with special needs. Since 2003, she has served on the Executive Board of the DeKalb County Quilters’ Guild, which provides service to the community. Pam and her husband are avid dancers, cutting the rug to everything from ballroom to polka, line dances to salsa, and swing to two-step.