A former accounting professor from the University of Dayton, Ohio, and an Iowa State professor of transportation and logistics have assumed chair positions in two departments of the College of Business.

The department of accounting and finance will now be headed by David Smith, and Michael Crum will be the department executive officer of the newly merged department of logistics, operations and management information systems. Both men assumed their new positions on July 1.

Smith, whose new title will be the department executive officer of the department of accounting and finance, said his duties will include scheduling classes and allocating resources, among others.

Smith was also named to the Union Pacific/Charles B. Handy Professorship of Accounting in ISU’s College of Business.

Aside from his position as an accounting professor at the University of Dayton, Smith taught accounting in the economics department at Claremont McKenna College in Claremont, Calif.

Smith said teaching accounting in the economics department is “a little different.”

Crum has been a faculty member at ISU since 1980. He received a Faculty Citation from the ISU Alumni Association in 1997. Barbara Clark, executive coordinator of the College of Business, said Crum co-received the Research Award from the College of Business earlier this year with Roger Stover from the department of finance.

Clark said Crum’s duties “will be the same as any other DEO.”

Clark said Smith and Crum showed qualities essential for their departments in the interviewing process.

Smith is a Certified Public Accountant (CPA) by the state of Illinois and has worked for the Philadelphia accounting firm Ernst and Ernst (now Ernst and Young) as a staff accountant from 1973 to ’74. He was also an academic fellow in the Kansas City office of Arthur Anderson & Co. in 1982.

Smith said an academic fellow is “an academic who works for a public accounting firm.”

Smith has also written for the Journal of Accounting and Economics, Auditing: A Journal of Practice and Theory, Financial Review and many other publications. Crum was editor of the Journal of Transportation Management from 1992 to 1997.

Clark said the logistics, operations and management information systems merged to form one department effective July 1. She said the merger “will improve efficiency” and was “a natural grouping.”

“Both [Crum and Smith] are highly qualified individuals,” Clark said. “Mike [Crum] has been with us for several years and has exhibited tremendous scholarship and service to the college, department and community.”

Clark said she does not know Smith since he is new to ISU, but she said his appointment after a rigorous interviewing process, “speaks very highly of him.”