CHAMPAIGN, Ill. - Ira Solomon, the head of the nationally ranked department of accountancy at the University of Illinois, has earned the top award for educational excellence from the nation's largest accounting organization.
Solomon will receive the Distinguished Achievement in Accounting Education award from the American Institute of Certified Public Accountants during the spring meeting of the governing council for the 350,000-member association, which began Sunday in Washington, D.C.
Since 1985, the award has been presented annually to a college educator, honoring excellence in teaching and national prominence in the accounting profession. The award provides professional recognition and also promotes role models in academia.
Solomon's contributions to accountancy education include Project Discovery, a U. of I. program he helped create that requires students to apply accounting principles to real-world problems through role-playing, case studies and other activities.
The 16 cases developed for the program by Solomon; KPMG, a global auditing, tax and advisory firm; and other colleagues have been downloaded more than 300,000 times and widely used by accountancy professors nationwide.
Solomon is also a prolific author who has written books, articles for academic and professional journals and papers that have been presented at conferences around the world.
He holds the R.C. Evans Endowed Chair in Business at the U. of I., and has led the accountancy department since 2002. The department is ranked No. 2 in the latest U.S. News & World Report rankings.
Solomon, who joined the U. of I. faculty in 1983, earned his bachelor's, master's and doctoral degrees from the University of Texas at Austin. He has been a visiting distinguished scholar at the University of New South Wales in Australia, Nanyang Technical University in Singapore and the Chinese University of Hong Kong.
A Bronx native who grew up on Long Island, Solomon is a member of the governing council of the AICPA, a national professional association for CPAs that sets auditing and professional standards for the industry. He is also a past member of the Illinois CPA Society's board of directors.
Solomon has earned numerous teaching honors, including the outstanding auditing educator award and innovations in auditing and assurance education award from the American Accounting Association.