Retiring Faculty Provided Years of Teaching Excellence

The College of Business will say farewell to nine faculty at the end of this academic year due to changes in the State Teachers Retirement System’s structure.  This is the second article in a series spotlighting faculty who are retiring from BGSU.

This month, we highlight Dr. Nancy Boudreau, associate professor, and Mr. Tom Smith, instructor, both in the applied statistics and operations research department (ASOR) and Mr. Phil Schurrer, lecturer, accounting and management information systems department (AMIS).

Dr. Nancy Boudreau

Dr. Nancy Boudreau is a long-time member of the College of Business Department of Applied Statistics and Operations Research.  She joined as an assistant professor in 1980 and later was promoted to associate professor. Her primary expertise is in statistical consulting and categorical data analysis. Dr. Boudreau is the director of the Center for Business Analytics which provides analytical services to external companies and organizations as well as within the BGSU community.

She is most proud of receiving the Unit Recognition Award given by the BGSU Faculty Senate as director of the Statistical Consulting Center (now called the Center for Business Analytics).

Dr. Boudreau states, “I have loved working at BGSU over the past 35 years.  I have told many people that I could not have chosen a better job for me.  I have had the pleasure of working in a great department and college and will miss all of my fellow colleagues and students.  I also truly enjoyed the 9 years that I served as a volunteer coach for the women’s track and cross country teams here at BGSU.”

Mr. Tom Smith

Tom Smith’s primary interest and expertise is Process Improvement, especially Six Sigma and Lean. He brought 20 years of business and industrial experience to the classroom.  He worked as a Master Black Belt and advanced senior statistician at Cooper Tire promoting quality tire manufacturing.  In these roles he worked as a consultant and trainer in manufacturing, corporate, and engineering functions.

Smith became an instructor in the University’s ASOR department in 1982 after graduating with his master's from the BGSU Department of Mathematics and Statistics.  He left the University in 1986 for the private sector and rejoined the College of Business faculty in 2006 where he has continued to teach statistics and operations research courses at both the undergraduate and MBA levels.

Looking back, Smith has a rather unique perspective of university students, after the 20 year hiatus from the teaching profession.  Today's student is better prepared for the workforce today, as students are exposed to greater technology, workshops, and internships than students of the 1980s.  The vast majority of students did not have the internships available back then, as most company business models have evolved over the years.   Certainly, the student resume has a greater opportunity to look impressive after their university years at BGSU.  In some small way, Smith hopes to have made a difference in the lives of at least a few of his students.  After all, that's why he returned to his alma mater.

Phil Schurrer

Phil Schurrer has over forty years of tax and accounting experience within the academic, financial, manufacturing and public accounting communities. He is a CPA with an MBA in finance, and has been a faculty member teaching accounting and taxation in the AMIS department since 2004 and was recently promoted to lecturer.

Prior to teaching at BGSU, he was an adjunct professor at Pima County Community College in Tucson, Arizona, and later at the University of Findlay and the University of Toledo. Schurrer spent ten years with Dana Corporation’s Commercial Credit division as the director of education and sales and property tax manager, and began his career with Dana as a federal and state tax accountant in 1987.

In addition to teaching, Schurrer has been a frequent editorial columnist for the University’s BG News newspaper and wrote a blog that focused on the tax and financial aspects of motorsports. He has published numerous tax articles aimed at practitioners dealing with new tax changes. For three years, he also served as the faculty advisor for Beta Alpha Psi, the national student honorary accounting society.

He states that his time with BGSU has been the most rewarding of his career. He enjoys the give-and-take with both faculty and students. He has always attempted to enliven his classes in novel ways, such as showing clips from old movies to demonstrate accounting principles.  Whenever possible, he assigns written essays from his students in an effort to improve their communication skills.