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Accountancy Professor Tonya Flesher
Named UM s Top Teacher 2003
UNIVERSITY, Miss.
Tonya Flesher, accountancy professor at the University of Mississippi,
is winner of the campuswide 2003 Elsie M. Hood Outstanding Teacher
of the Year Award.
Flesher s recognition
came at Thursday night s 60th Honors Convocation on the Oxford campus.
During her years
at Ole Miss, Dr. Flesher has enjoyed the respect and admiration
of her students, faculty colleagues and other members of the community,
said Chancellor Robert Khayat. She is recognized as one of our finest
teachers, has established a strong reputation for her research and
writing, and has been active in professional and community service.
The university has been enriched by her leadership and service.
Flesher, who has
taught in the UM School of Accountancy since 1979, was selected
from among the university s 549 full_time faculty for the prestigious
award, which includes $5,000. This is my proudest moment as a teacher,
Flesher said. I ve been attending the annual honors convocation
for years, and I remember thinking that this award has to be the
ultimate in anyone s career, but I never really thought I would
receive it. A native of Kokomo, Ind., Flesher said her career goal
has been to help students be all they can be.
It s challenging
but something I love. After all of these years, I sometimes think
I should have figured out how to meet the needs of all of my students.
But they re all different, and I just try to provide many learning
avenues so each one can find the way they learn best. Recognition
for outstanding classroom performance was accorded to Flesher as
the accountancy school's Outstanding Teacher of the Year in 1986,
1998 and 2002.
Dr. Flesher is truly
an outstanding teacher, said Morris Stocks, accountancy dean. In
a discipline where we tend to depend upon tried-and-true teaching
methods, Dr. Flesher presents an innovative and inspiring approach.
She is dedicated to her students, rigorous in her expectations and
committed to teaching excellence.
Flesher became the
first woman to hold a UM deanship when she was appointed to head
the accountancy school in 1987. In 1993, she chose to step down
when she and her husband welcomed their second child.
A 1971 graduate
of Ball State University with a social science degree, Flesher received
a masters in accounting at Appalachian State University in 1975.
Early in her career, she was a tax auditor for the Internal Revenue
Service, then staff accountant for J.A. Grissette & Co., now
Deloitte & Touche. But with her husband already a CPA and accounting
educator, she said she was inspired to teach, because he seemed
to enjoy the classroom so much. Her husband, Dale Flesher, has been
a faculty member since 1977, when the Fleshers relocated to Oxford.
She enrolled in UM s doctoral program and upon completion in 1979,
she too joined the faculty.
In 1995, the Mississippi
Society of CPAs recognized her as Outstanding Accounting Educator,
and she won UM s 1986 Burlington-Northern Faculty Achievement Award
as the campuswide outstanding faculty member.
Adviser to Tau Alpha
Chi student honor society, she co_advises the IRS Volunteer Income
Tax Assistance program, in which accountancy students annually prepare
federal and state tax returns at no cost for low_income taxpayers.
A mentor to minority accountancy students, she recently joined the
American Institute of Certified Public Accountants national Minority
Initiatives Committee, which selects recipients of scholarships
funded through the AICPA Foundation.She was listed among Mississippi
s 50 Leading Business Women in 2002 by the Mississippi Business
Journal. The Fleshers have two children, Flyn, 20, a student
at Rice University, and 9-year-old Felicity, a fourth-grader at
Oxford University School. Her parents are James and Gwen Maloney
of Oxford.
Updated April 8