Faculty Impact - Dr. Bill Miller
Posted: March 25th, 2024
Dr. William (Bill) Miller, UW-Eau Claire professor of accounting.
UW MBA Consortium teaching: Miller teaches MBA 763 - Business & Ethics
Personal and professional experience help Miller connect with students
Dr. Bill Miller, UW-Eau Claire and UW MBA Consortium professor of accounting, says he didn’t choose accounting as a career path, it chose him.
“I started out as an engineering major and when I took physics, I realized that I had chosen wrong,” Miller says. “I took an accounting class on a whim, and it just resonated with me. It did not hurt that I had a brother who was a CPA, perhaps it’s in our family’s DNA.”
Now in his 16th year of teaching, Miller brings a wealth of professional experience to his classes. He started in public accounting and then worked in corporate accounting and consulting. He brings 39 years of these experiences, both past and present, into his classroom.
Miller is a certified public accountant (CPA) and a chartered global management accountant (CGMA) who still maintains a consulting practice focusing on mergers and acquisitions and troubled business turnarounds.
“I have held many different titles over the years, controller, CFO, VP of finance, COO, CEO and partner. It is a bit scary to say that as it means I am currently in my 40th year of working in the accounting profession,” Miller says.
A central theme of his research has been behavioral ethics which looks at ways to teach ethics that can positively influence a person's decision-making. Behavioral ethics focuses on maximizing the likelihood that a person will speak up and say something when they see something.
He has published 24 peer-reviewed journal articles, 13 ethics cases, two textbooks, and three book chapters. In addition, he has made 31 conference presentations and earned five awards for outstanding scholarship. In 2018, Miller was hired to write ethics cases for the best-selling accounting ethics textbook “Ethical Obligations and Decision Making in Accounting.”
“Our text has been adopted by over 130 universities and owns 47% of the market. I am really proud of this work,” he says.
Miller also works to stay up to date on the latest topics changing the industry, now working generative AI into his accounting ethics curriculum. Miller says this new tool soon will become a part of every business. These tools are being adopted at an unprecedented rate, with each of the Big
Four public accounting firms spending at least $1 billion on it.
“Our students need to know how to use it properly, and ethically,” Miller says. “It is a great fit for this class. It’s also an easy way to promote and maximize critical thinking.”
However, Miller believes that connecting with students includes more than just past work.
“It is important to share not only your professional background and experiences with students, but personal ones as well,” he says. “What drives us, what we do out of the classroom as it provides our students with things that they can relate to.”
“I am much more than an accounting professor or accountant. I am a husband, and dad, and I love the outdoors – hiking, biking, cross-country and back-country skiing, or snowboarding. I share stories about all these experiences with my students as it enriches the content that I cover in class.”
His students are the most rewarding aspect of teaching in the UW MBA Consortium program.
“Each and every one of them brings their unique and varied professional and personal lived experiences into the classroom,” Miller says. “The rich experiences they share make the classes very enjoyable. I always learn new things from our students every time I teach a course.”
In 2023, Miller’s commitment to his classes and students was honored when he received the UW-Eau Claire Excellence in Teaching Award. He says he was thrilled with the award and still is quite surprised by it.
“It really was/is greatly satisfying and totally unexpected,” Miller says. “This award comes from my former students. I am not sure anything could be more satisfying than to learn how highly they regard you.”
Miller says he loves teaching and interacting with students and one of the most enjoyable aspects of his job is keeping in contact with former students.
“When they post news like they passed the CPA exam, or got a promotion, or changed jobs, I applaud and congratulate them,” he says. “A perk that all professors have, is the positive impact we have on our students’ lives.” |
