Professors Win 1st Place Writing Award

The “IMA Educational Case Journal” awarded Herbert Snyder, James Clifton and William (Bud) F. Bowlin $2,000 for the first prize case. The “IMA Educational Case Journal” is an online journal that provides research for accountants and business finance professionals.

Snyder, a former fraud investigator for New York State, has been running the fraud program at NDSU for nine years. He and Clifton decided they wanted to work on this case because “there are not a lot of case investigations about this kind of stuff,” Snyder said.

The case creates an imaginary office setting, a crime and an imaginary financial world for every suspect. The case looks at this situation in order to “teach people how to investigate [fraud] crime,” Snyder said. The project began with a video, and from there it evolved “a bit more organically,” he said.

The project was put together during the course of about two years. The situation was put together in depth. The professors also directed a video that featured members of the NDSU drama department.

“Some of our actors are accounting students. I’m amazed at how good they really are,” Snyder said.

The video was the foundation of the project. Snyder believes the “novelty of having a video with really good actors in it” was one of the reasons their case was so successful, he said.

Once the video was complete, Snyder and Clifton finished the documentation, and Bowlin helped write the case.

“We have good collaborative relationships,” Snyder said. “We work together all the time on all kinds of projects.”

Snyder said it is very important to have imagination in a fraud investigation, and his case displays that importance.

“Who would have thought accounting could be so interesting?” he mused.

Bowlin also won $500 for his third place case “Performance Measurement at Great Persons, Inc: An Application of the Balanced Scorecard.” All three instructors donated their prize money to the accounting department scholarship fund.

Snyder is a professor of accounting and director of the master of accountancy program. Clifton is an assistant professor of accounting practice. Bowlin is a professor of accounting and is head of the accounting, finance and information systems department.