A singular honor
Duchac named to Fulbright Distinguished Chair
Of all the many prestigious fellowships, grants and other awards for overseas research, teaching and study by American university faculty members, few, if any, are as coveted as the Fulbright Scholar Program. Funded by the U.S. State Department, the program annually sends some 800 scholars and professionals to more than 140 countries and brings a similar number of foreign scholars to the U.S., all with the goal of advancing international knowledge, cooperation and understanding.
And of the 20 sub-programs under the Fulbright's overarching umbrella, none is as selective as the Distinguished Chairs Program. Each year, only about 40 scholars are chosen to serve as visiting lecturers or researchers at leading institutions of higher education abroad in this program. Of that number, only two or three are in the field of business and economics. "Awards in the Distinguished Chairs Program [are seen] as among the most prestigious in the Fulbright Scholar Program," its Web site reads. "Candidates should be eminent scholars [with] a significant publication and teaching record."
This fall, Calloway School professor Jon Duchac will become the very first Wake Forest faculty member to serve as a Fulbright Distinguished Chair when he joins the faculty of the famed Vienna School of Economics for a three-and-a-half-month appointment as a lecturer.
He will teach two courses and a doctoral seminar during the school's fall semester, which extends from the first of October to mid-January. On the way, he'll stop in Iceland, where he will lecture on "Accounting for Financial Instruments" and "The Convergence Between U.S. GAAP and International Accounting Standards" at the University of Iceland.
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Duchac, who joined the Calloway faculty in 1993, is the Merrill Lynch Professor of Accounting and director of the Enterprise Risk Management Program.
"The last couple of years, I've focused primarily on international accounting issues and structured financial transactions," says Duchac, the author of numerous journal articles and accounting texts. "The convergence of U.S. and international accounting systems is an important and prominent topic today, and I suspect that my work in those areas contributed to my selection."
The Vienna School of Economics is among the world's most esteemed and venerable economics and business school's in the world. Steeped in the theory of economics and business, it is where the thinkers who developed the basic theories of capitalism worked.
Duchac, whose name (pronounced "doo-KAHTCH") reveals his Czech heritage, looks forward to the extensive travel the Fulbright Commission's office in Vienna is likely to arrange for him. " One of the exciting aspects of this [appointment] is that it's not just about teaching," he says. "The Commission uses its scholars as ambassadors for the Fulbright Program and sends them to various venues throughout the region, not only as consultants but also to generate awareness of and interest in the program among potential visiting scholars."
The affable Duchac hopes to parlay his appointment into something bigger for Wake Forest as well. "I hope to find ways to connect the Fulbright Program to the Flow House [the university's residential study house in Vienna] as well as explore possible partnerships with the Vienna School," he says. "To that end, I'm exploring the potential for conducting an international conference at the Flow House at the end of the semester which pulls together Wake Forest, the Vienna University of Business and Economics and the Austrian-American Fulbright Commission."
"For our faculty, the Fulbright Program affords an alternate venue to our own residential houses for teaching and research overseas," he adds. "As Wake Forest continues to expand its efforts on international education, the Fulbright will be an important program for us. I hope to explore ways to engage more of our faculty members in the application process."
— David Fyten
Office of Creative Services
