Vernon K. Zimmerman was dean of the College of Commerce and Business Administration from 1971 to 1985. He earned three degrees in accountancy from Illinois, a BS in 1949, a MS in 1952, and a PhD in 1954. He joined the faculty in 1956 after working for the U.S. Army Audit Agency and Price Waterhouse.

Vernon Zimmerman was a leading force in the establishment of the Center for International Education and Research in Accounting (CIERA) in 1962. Long before the phrase “global marketplace” was coined, CIERA was at the forefront of international accountancy education. Zimmerman served as the director of CIERA from 1964 to 1996. Although he retired from the faculty in 1992, he continued as CIERA’s director for four more years, developing the center’s programs and services and working as editor of the International Journal of Accounting. He died in 1996.  Zimmerman was acknowledged as a leader in business education. He received a Guggenheim Fellowship, was a Fulbright Scholar in Vienna, and worked on business education projects in Tunisia for the Agency for International Development and in Bangladesh for the World Bank. Active in local affairs in Champaign-Urbana, he also served the AACSB as a member of the board and as president from 1979-80.

Vernon K. Zimmerman Center for International Education and Research in Accounting

The Zimmerman Center was originally established in 1962 as the Center for International Education and Research in Accounting (CIERA), leading the nation in the study and teaching of international topics as they relate to the field of accounting.

The Zimmerman Center serves the academic and professional communities through leadership in international accountancy, business research, and educational support. The Center coordinates an annual conference and, in the late 1990s, began cosponsoring the conferences with prominent international accounting research and practice groups. The department recently announced the establishment of the KPMG/UIUC Business Measurement Research Program, funded by KPMG, that will research methods for measuring business value drivers.  The International Journal of Accounting, coordinated and published by the Zimmerman Center, advances scholarly and professional understanding of accounting theory and practice from an international perspective. Published by Elsevier Science Inc. and edited by A. Rashad Abdel-khalik, the Journal encourages a broad view of the origins and development of accounting with an emphasis on its functions in an increasingly interdependent global economy and invites manuscripts that help explain current international accounting practice.
 

A. Rashad Abdel-khalik
(Director
Vernon K. Zimmerman Center)

Nancy Cantor (Chancellor)
Arthur Wyatt (Adjunct Professor, UIUC alum)

Philip Fu (former visiting scholar)
Avijit Ghosh (Dean)
James Chan (Professor UIC and UIUC alum)

L-R: Professor A. Rashad Abdel-khalik, Mrs. Litwiller (Zimmerman's niece) , Mrs. Alexander (Zimmerman's niece), Mrs. Joyce Zimmerman, Chancellor Nancy Cantor, Dean Avijit Ghosh