Ed deHaan wins the 2018 PACCAR Award for Excellence in Teaching

Ed deHaan (PhD 2013), an associate professor of accounting at the University of Washington Foster School of Business, has won the 2018 PACCAR Award for Excellence in Teaching.

The school’s highest teaching honor was established in 1998 by PACCAR Inc, the Fortune 200 global technology company based in Bellevue, Washington. The PACCAR Award’s annual recipient is selected by a panel of Foster MBA students.

In only his second year on the Foster faculty, deHaan has distinguished himself as one of the school’s most dynamic and indelible figures in the classroom.

“Ed manages to have just the right balance between preparedness and spontaneity, seriousness and fun, authority and acknowledgment that we’re all adults,” wrote one Foster MBA student in nominating deHaan. “He runs an organized class that moves at a pace that suits just about everyone. On top of that, he’s a genuinely nice guy who really cares if we all learn.”

Coming home

After working in audit and international consulting at KPMG, deHaan launched his academic career in the Foster School’s accounting doctoral program, earning Foster’s PhD Teaching Award in 2011.

His first faculty position was at the Stanford University Graduate School of Business. In three standout years there, he earned a Shanahan Faculty Fellowship and was a two-time recipient of the MSx Distinguished Teaching Excellence Award for his contributions to Stanford’s high-profile program for experienced global leaders.

DeHaan returned to the Foster School Department of Accounting in 2016, and hit the ground running.

He has authored a fascinating array of research papers investigating market intermediaries—media, analysts, credit rating agencies, regulators—and how they make markets more or less efficient. His studies have examined the effect of the Financial Crisis on corporate credit ratings, the effect of weather on analyst forecasts, and the market impact of financial “robo-journalism.” One paper documented how high turnover among SEC trial lawyers effects the enforcement of regulations. Another investigated how firms repair reputation after a serious restatement.

DeHaan’s work has been published in the top accounting journals and cited frequently in the popular press—including, recently, the Wall Street Journal, Financial Times, USA Today, The Atlantic and NPR. It earned him the 2017 Fowler Award for Special Achievement in Accounting.

But he has conjured equally great success in the classroom.

In addition to the PACCAR Award, this year deHaan also received the Charles Summer Memorial Teaching Award and was named MBA Professor of the Year and TMMBA Faculty of the Quarter.

Teach all, reach all

These accolades came from leading the core financial accounting course in several MBA programs. It is, perhaps, not a course that is most conducive to garnering teaching awards—due to its technical subject matter and to its audience that ranges from seasoned accounting pros to rank amateurs.

“I am a CPA who has taken many accounting classes,” wrote one Foster MBA. “I have never had an accounting class that was as engaging as Ed’s. The fact that he can keep me engaged and on my toes while teaching an introductory course is mind-boggling. Although the pace is quick, my classmates that do not have business backgrounds also can attest that they understand him. The fact that he can accommodate such a wide range of experiences is a testament to his teaching ability.”

“Ed took a challenging-to-teach subject and made it come alive in a number of ways,” wrote another Foster MBA, noting his style of tying course material to real-world issues and the latest research (some of it his own).

Other students described him as “engaging, fair and extremely intelligent,” “rigorous,” “encouraging,” and wielding a disarming sense of humor that’s “in a class of its own.”

One student put it simply: “Professor deHaan rules.”

PACCAR and its founding Pigott family are longtime supporters of the Foster School. In addition to the PACCAR Award and three endowed faculty positions, support from the Pigott family and company was instrumental in building PACCAR Hall, the Foster School’s 135,000-square-foot classroom facility that was completed in 2010.