Wells wins Ernst & Young Inclusive Excellence Award

Bill Wells, a senior lecturer in accounting at the University of Washington Foster School of Business, has won the 2010 Ernst & Young Inclusive Excellence Award. The award, given by the international accounting firm, recognizes extraordinary efforts to create a more diverse learning environment that helps students succeed in today’s global workforce.

Wells joined the Foster School of Business faculty in 1989, right after earning his master’s degree in professional accounting in Foster’s MPAcc Program.

He is known as a tough but highly accessible instructor (a certificate in his office proclaims him the “Pied Piper of Accounting”). He leads the Foster School’s prospective accounting students through a rigorous Introduction to Accounting and Financial Reporting, as well as Accounting for Problem Solving, a course geared toward students in the UW Educational Opportunity Program.

In 2006, Wells received the UW Distinguished Teaching Award, honoring the university’s top five educators.

From 2000 to 2005, he served as faculty director of the Foster School’s Delta Chapter of Beta Alpha Psi, the national accounting student organization. Under his guidance, the Foster chapter earned five-consecutive Superior Chapter distinctions and grew from 30 to more than 200 members. In 2005, it was named “most improved” in the nation.

From 2005 to 2008, Wells served as Northwest regional director of Beta Alpha Psi. He was elected to the board of directors of the Washington Society of CPAs in 2008.

Before becoming an educator, Wells served a distinguished 20-year career in the military, including stints as an intelligence officer, analyst and controller in the US Army and a financial analyst for NATO.

Wells is one of five business school faculty members nationwide to win the Ernst & Young Inclusive Excellence Award in this, its second year of existence.