Accounting Scholar Pays It Forward

Life’s unexpected and often rewarding turns are manifested in Rebecca Hann’s path to becoming a professor. Growing up in Hong Kong, she wanted to be a teacher. “I admired my good teachers — they loved what they did and they had a way to change the way you think about things,” she says. That impression inspired her in high school. “I tutored students to earn my allowance, but I always enjoyed it. It was gratifying when the student I helped had a light bulb moment." 

Teaching would be no ordinary pursuit. Hann would be the first in her family to go to a university. Her parents – not having a formal education – taught her “to be strong, aim high and work hard,” she says.

Opportunity knocked when China was about to take back Hong Kong from the United Kingdom. Sensing uncertainty about what would become of Hong Kong, Hann’s parents acceded to her wish to study in the United States, provided it be close to Queens, New York, where her aunt lived. 

Fearing a change-of-heart in her parents, Hann submitted an application package within weeks and started at Queens College a few months later. “I was not well informed about the U.S. university system, and to be honest, I wanted a bit more autonomy," she says. "It was all very rushed."

Like many foreign students in the United States at that time, Hann supported herself and looked for a field of study offering good job prospects. Accounting, “the language of business,” seemed a perfect fit, she says. “I was very good at it. I was a natural — if there is something like that in accounting. I set my eyes on joining a prestigious public accounting firm.” 

But being a good student led to her first taste of life as an academic. Economics professors Michael Dohan and David Gabel took Hann under their wings and drew her to research — even more so than accounting. “While I admittedly had little idea about academic research, I wanted to learn more,” she says. “During my junior year at Queens, I received a CUNY fellowship for students who want to pursue a career in academia. I got to take two graduate-level courses in the summer and I loved it. I knew then that’s what I wanted to do.”

That turning point has been fortuitous both personally and for Smith students. Hann’s 2013-2014 Krowe Award for Teaching Excellence recognizes her for "excellence and innovation as a teacher/mentor in the MBA, EMBA, and PhD programs, setting high standards for all students."

An associate professor and KPMG Term Professor in the Department of Accounting and Information Assurance, Hann also has garnered the Distinguished Teaching Award and the Most Effective Core Professor Award. 

Teaching the accounting core course in the MBA program can be challenging, she says. “Accounting often is thought of by students as a necessary evil," she says. This, she adds, gives her a sense of mission. "I can’t make accounting fun, as I tell my students, but I can help them appreciate and master accounting as a means for making good, economic decisions."

She says this makes it satisfying to teach MBA students. "This is why I wanted to become a teacher in the first place," she says.

Hann’s research is focused on financial reporting and disclosure, corporate diversification, and more recently, the role of accounting information in the macroeconomy and the real effects of financial markets. With this backdrop, she serves as the director of Smith’s Accounting Doctoral Program. She has mentored more than a dozen PhD students, who are now faculty at institutions ranging from the Hong Kong University of Science and Technology to the University of Michigan. She won the American Accounting Association’s 2015 Best Dissertation Supervision Award and the 2017 Smith PhD Program Faculty Mentor of the Year Award. 

Guiding the next generation of faculty has been one of the most rewarding aspects of her career, Hann says. She advises students by drawing from her own mentors — from beyond Queens College and through her graduate study at Wharton and subsequently the University of California, Los Angeles, the University of Southern California and Maryland Smith faculty appointments.

“At Wharton professor Stan Baiman showed me to take chances when he took a chance on me. My dissertation advisor, Phil Berger, pushed me to think hard and not settle for anything easy,” she says. “As an assistant professor, my senior colleague Jack Hughes at UCLA taught me that academia is like a competitive sport — you need to be persistent and have stamina. At USC, Mark DeFond led me to discover the art of writing, and K.R. Subramanyam taught me to not give in when you think you’re right." 

Today at Smith, she points to support from her department chair, Martin Loeb, who gives her the opportunity to practice what she has learned from her mentors. "I hope to take what I’ve learned and pay it forward whenever I can,” she says.

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