Jones School’s Zeff receives Lifetime Service Award

Award presented to Zeff at the annual AAA meeting in San Diego Aug. 9

The American Accounting Association (AAA) announced June 12 that Stephen Zeff, the Keith Anderson Professor of Accounting at Rice’s Jones Graduate School of Business, is the recipient of its 2017 Lifetime Service Award. The award was presented to Zeff in the form of a unique glass art piece at the annual AAA meeting in San Diego Aug. 9.

AAA is a worldwide organization devoted to excellence in accounting education, research and practice. The Lifetime Service Award recognizes contributions to accounting education over a sustained period of time through service to the association and to the education efforts of the American Institute of Certified Public Accountants (AICPA), Institute of Management Accountants, other accounting professional organizations, public accounting firms, corporations and nonprofit organizations.

Zeff, who joined the Rice faculty in 1978, was editor of the AAA’s The Accounting Review (1978-83) and is a past president of the organization (1985-86). As the association’s Distinguished International Visiting Lecturer in Latin America in 1977, he gave all of his lectures in Spanish. In 1988, the AAA presented him its Outstanding Accounting Educator Award. In 2009, he received the inaugural Anthony G. Hopwood Award for Academic Leadership from the European Accounting Association, and in 2011, the International Federation of Accountants honored him with its inaugural IFAC International Gold Service Award. In 2002, he was inducted into the Accounting Hall of Fame.

Zeff is author or editor of 31 books and has written more than 100 articles. He serves on the editorial board of 15 research journals edited in 10 countries. He was book review editor of The International Journal of Accounting from 1997 to 2003 and was book review editor of The Accounting Review from 2006 to 2015. He has been a visiting professor at the University of California at Berkeley, University of Chicago, Harvard Business School, Northwestern University and The University of Texas at Austin, and at universities in Mexico, Australia, New Zealand and the Netherlands. He served on the advisory council to the Financial Accounting Standards Board, and he was a public member of the planning committee of the AICPA’s Auditing Standards Board. From 1981 to 2009, he was a member of the executive committee/board of the European Accounting Association. Since 1991, he has been a member of the academic panel of the U.K.’s Accounting Standards Board/Financial Reporting Council, and from 1991 to 2002 he served as international research adviser to the Institute of Chartered Accountants of Scotland. He has lectured in more than 55 countries.