John L. King, Associate Professor Emeritus of Accounting
While many professors I encountered specific to my chemistry major were inspiring, accounting
and economics professor John King provided my first meaningful view into the world of
business and commerce. His course was my first real exposure to the language and structure
of measuring economic progress. It was Professor King’s real-life anecdotes, examples
and illustrations that gave context and color to something that was essential to understanding
how all the moving pieces of business related to each other. His careful discussion of
the interrelationships took the concept of enterprise from an amorphous thing to something
that could (presumably) be understood.
Rather than pursuing a technical graduate degree, with Professor King’s encouragement,
I went on to get my Tuck School M.B.A. (supposedly, I was the first Dickinsonian ever
to do so) and participate in the development of some really successful technology-based
products. I never became an accountant and, even today, I glaze over when discussions
turn to accounting detail and minutia.
Although my current work as an advocate for the technology industry has been well served
by my chemistry major, it never would have occurred to me in my early days at Dickinson
that almost three decades later I would have led a successful effort to change U.S. accounting
policy, talked about the importance of technology investment on almost every television
and radio network, and been quoted regularly in every major newspaper in the world. All
of this sprang from linking my four semesters of King accounting to my technology foundation.
John Steele Taylor Sr. ’76
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