Dean Swieringa comments on Professor Bierman
Dean Robert J. Swieringa
Issue date: 5/3/00 Section: Johnsonite of the Year
[Editor's note: Dean Swieringa provided Cornell Business with the following quotes for for our Johnsonite of the Year article on Professor Bierman. We selected the first two for our front-page feature]
“Hal Bierman’s work ethic is legendary. Several friends and former colleagues of Hal were my colleagues when I was on the faculty at the Stanford Business School. They had the distinct impression that Hal never stopped working, even for phone calls. They believed that he continued to write while he talked with them on the phone. I confirmed that this impression was correct shortly after I came to Cornell.”
“While an academic fellow at the FASB, Hal routinely joined members of the FASB for lunch at a cafeteria in the office complex. On one of those occasions, a former student who had not seen Hal for many years walked up and said ‘Professor Bierman, how nice to see you here.’ Hal greeted the former student by name. Others at the table never forgot this episode”
“Hal Bierman is a wonderful faculty member who reflects and has helped nurture in others the values that make our faculty very special. In my role as dean, I highly value his counsel and his friendship.”
“Hal Bierman is consistently one of the very first individuals to arrive at Sage Hall in the morning. He consistently arrives on campus before 7:00 am.”
“My colleagues at Stanford were well aware that the environment at the Johnson School was highly interactive and that Hal and Tom Dyckman occupied corner offices on the same floor of Malott Hall. However, an issue of The Accounting Review included a lengthy comment by Tom about an earlier article by Hal and the comment was accompanied by Hal’s lengthy reply. Why didn’t Hal and Tom just walk down the hall and talk to each other?”
“I once encountered Hal at O’Hare airport as we coincidentally waited for the same flights through Pittsburgh to Ithaca. Hal was working on a manuscript. He worked on it continuously while we were at the gates at O’Hare and Pittsburgh and during the flights until the wheels touched the ground in Ithaca. He provided me with a 50-page draft of a chapter in a book we were working on together about two days later.”
“While I was at the FASB, Hal joined the FASB staff as an academic fellow to write a monograph about accounting for hedging instruments. Some FASB staff members were concerned that he might not finish the monograph in the expected time frame. But, he produced a complete draft in less than three months and used the remaining time to write a series of articles about hedging, proportionate consolidation, and perceived quality differences between price/earnings ratios for companies subject to different international accounting standards.”
“Hal Bierman’s work ethic is legendary. Several friends and former colleagues of Hal were my colleagues when I was on the faculty at the Stanford Business School. They had the distinct impression that Hal never stopped working, even for phone calls. They believed that he continued to write while he talked with them on the phone. I confirmed that this impression was correct shortly after I came to Cornell.”
“While an academic fellow at the FASB, Hal routinely joined members of the FASB for lunch at a cafeteria in the office complex. On one of those occasions, a former student who had not seen Hal for many years walked up and said ‘Professor Bierman, how nice to see you here.’ Hal greeted the former student by name. Others at the table never forgot this episode”
“Hal Bierman is a wonderful faculty member who reflects and has helped nurture in others the values that make our faculty very special. In my role as dean, I highly value his counsel and his friendship.”
“Hal Bierman is consistently one of the very first individuals to arrive at Sage Hall in the morning. He consistently arrives on campus before 7:00 am.”
“My colleagues at Stanford were well aware that the environment at the Johnson School was highly interactive and that Hal and Tom Dyckman occupied corner offices on the same floor of Malott Hall. However, an issue of The Accounting Review included a lengthy comment by Tom about an earlier article by Hal and the comment was accompanied by Hal’s lengthy reply. Why didn’t Hal and Tom just walk down the hall and talk to each other?”
“I once encountered Hal at O’Hare airport as we coincidentally waited for the same flights through Pittsburgh to Ithaca. Hal was working on a manuscript. He worked on it continuously while we were at the gates at O’Hare and Pittsburgh and during the flights until the wheels touched the ground in Ithaca. He provided me with a 50-page draft of a chapter in a book we were working on together about two days later.”
“While I was at the FASB, Hal joined the FASB staff as an academic fellow to write a monograph about accounting for hedging instruments. Some FASB staff members were concerned that he might not finish the monograph in the expected time frame. But, he produced a complete draft in less than three months and used the remaining time to write a series of articles about hedging, proportionate consolidation, and perceived quality differences between price/earnings ratios for companies subject to different international accounting standards.”