Rate My Professor Frank Buckless

Frank Buckless is the Stephen P. Zelnak Jr. Dean and Professor of Accounting in North Carolina State University’s Poole College of Management, a key institution in the Business & Economics field. He earned his Ph.D. in Accounting from Michigan State University in 1989, following professional experience as an auditor at Arthur Andersen & Company. Since joining the NC State faculty in the Department of Accounting in 1989, Buckless has held progressive leadership roles. He served as Department Head for 18 years, during which the undergraduate and graduate accounting programs expanded significantly, earned initial AACSB accounting accreditation, and advanced research in risk management and technology commercialization. Appointed Associate Dean for Faculty and Academic Affairs in June 2018 and Matthew and Ruth Keen Faculty Fellow, he advanced to Interim Dean before his permanent appointment as Dean effective July 1, 2019.

Buckless specializes in accounting education, auditing, and sustainability, with expertise in financial statement auditing, research methodology, and faculty issues. His scholarly work has been published in premier outlets like The Accounting Review and Issues in Accounting Education, where he acted as associate editor. He has served on the editorial boards of Accounting Education: A Journal of Theory, Practice and Research, The Accounting Educators’ Journal, and Journal of Accounting Education. He has also authored numerous educational books on audit education. Among his most cited works are “Contrast coding: A refinement of ANOVA in behavioral analysis” (The Accounting Review, 1990, with S.P. Ravenscroft), “Incentives in student team learning: An experiment in cooperative group learning” (Issues in Accounting Education, 1995), “Accounting education literature review (1991–1997)” (Journal of Accounting Education, 1998, Parts I and II), and “Using virtual worlds to simulate real-world audit procedures” (Issues in Accounting Education, 2014, with K. Krawczyk and D.S. Showalter). For the latter, he received the American Accounting Association’s Innovation in Accounting Education Award in 2016 alongside colleagues. Additional honors include the College of Management Board of Governors’ Award for Excellence in Teaching (1998), Hewlett Fellow through NC State’s Inquiry Based Education Grant, and the Outstanding Auditing Dissertation Award from the American Accounting Section (1990). As Dean, he has driven enrollment growth, record applications, enhanced national rankings, new graduate programs, interdisciplinary initiatives, a thought leadership platform, and industry partnerships preparing graduates for impactful careers.