Can you imagine a required course in basic accounting...full of controversy and impassioned arguments among the students?

The words "accounting" and "exciting" are rarely found in the same sentence.

It was Professor Gordon Shillinglaw's special talent to make academic rigor and testy arguments the norm in his "Accounting I" course in the "B" School in 1963.

Initially, most of the class members had no expectation other than to check off another required "core" course on our way to an MBA. Few of us were prepared for the atmosphere created by Professor Shillinglaw's approach teaching.

In my own experience - as someone with no particular interest in accounting - the need to be exquisitely well-prepared for each class meeting, in combination with the adreneline rush of presenting and defending one's arguments, seems to have made much of the course material a permanent part of my memory.

That is great teaching. I am indebted to Professor Shillinglaw for that experience.