Accounting Professor Sherry K. Mills was named as one of 46 state winners of the 2002 Professor of the Year awards granted by the Council for Advancement and Support of Education (CASE) and the Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching. This award recognizes her dedication to teaching, commitment to students and creative approach to higher education.

Key to Professor Mills' teaching style at New Mexico State University (NSMU) is her belief that accounting is the language of business. "Numbers are not just numbers," she says. "They represent the underlying economic activities and decisions made by business owners and managers." Her strengths include:

• Finding innovative ways to show students how interesting accounting can be. She was co-creator of the “ET² Project” that involves multi-media presentations, individual and group work, management accounting cohesion cases and hands-on activities.

• Designing courses to show students how accounting relates to other disciplines. She helped to create a six-hour junior-level business course taught by three professors from different business disciplines. In this course, students learn about marketing, operations management, and management accounting through lectures and labs designed to prepare teams of students to complete an integrated business plan project.
• Being a good liaison between students and campus recruiters. Manson P. Dillaway, NMSU department head and professor of accounting, describes Professor Mills as "a conscientious advisor, a supporter of student activities, and a good ambassador to campus recruiters and other potential employers."

The Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching was founded in 1905 by Andrew Carnegie "to do and perform all things necessary to encourage, uphold and dignify the profession of teaching." CASE is an association of education institutions, serving more than 3,200 universities, colleges, schools, and related organizations in 45 countries.

-Rosemary Schlank