The art of accounting: Binghamton grad shares ’real world’ experience to help students succeed
Richard Berr ’91, MS ’93 returned to Binghamton University to show School of Management students how accounting works outside the classroom
A few years after Richard Berr ’91, MS ’93, graduated from the School of Management, he bumped into a familiar face during a stop at a restaurant in downtown Binghamton. It happened to be one of his favorite SOM professors: Elliot Kamlet.
In between discussing Berr’s work as a senior accountant at PepsiCo in New York City and reminiscing about life at Binghamton University, Berr joked, “Maybe I’ll come back and teach!”
Berr’s professional goals in the accounting field took him in a different direction — he’s spent much of his career working in finance and risk for the Ontario Teachers’ Pension Plan and is currently a director of total fund risk — but education has always been in his blood. It’s what ultimately motivated him to return periodically to Binghamton over the past two decades as a guest lecturer for SOM accounting students.
“I’ve always loved teaching because I come from a family of educators, but I fell in love with accounting and finance,” Berr says. “I figured it would be a great idea to come back, as someone who went through the program and has gained so much experience since then, and lecture on topics that show SOM students how what they’re learning is applied in the real world.”
Around 2003, after Berr had moved to Toronto, he called Kamlet and asked whether he could guest lecture in some of his classes.
Berr was drawn to the idea of being able to choose a unique subject or topic connected to current events. After meeting with a few other SOM professors, he felt he could put his own extensive experience working in derivatives through his roles at PepsiCo and the Ontario Teachers’ Pension Plan to good use for students at Binghamton.
When it came to derivatives, for example, he was able to point out aspects of that work most students wouldn’t get to learn about in a one-term course. Stepping in for one of Kamlet’s classes dealing with ethics, Berr expanded the conversation to include how students might deal with ethical situations that would arise in their future jobs.
“Another thing nobody really talks about with finance and investments is how an investment can blow up if you don’t fully understand how it works. I felt the students should know something about the different risks associated with this,” Berr says. “So, I put together a lecture, some of it based on real things that happen and some based on hypotheticals, to hopefully allow them to take what they’ve learned and apply it.”
Taking accounting beyond the textbook
One challenge Berr has seen during his guest teaching in recent years is that students often seem to put much more pressure on themselves than necessary, even more than when he was in their shoes.
To help guide them, Berr tells students they shouldn’t be worried about having to know everything before going into their first jobs — but they need to have the background and recognize the value of the skill sets they can build upon in the classroom.
A lot of the rules for accounting come right out of the textbook, Berr says. The rest comes from experience, whether your career centers on accounting or branches out into other areas.
“The checklist on how exactly to audit cash — what was in the textbook — is exactly how it was the first week I was at Deloitte in my first auditing job,” Berr says. “What helped me move along in my career was my strong foundation of skills.”
Berr looks forward to his weeks teaching SOM students each semester. Every return trip to Binghamton is another opportunity to share his experience. He typically ends his classes by asking the students, “Hey, do you have any questions about what it’s like in the real world?”
Hearing some of the clever questions from those students is part of what Berr finds so energizing about returning to campus.
“When I get the chance to help students get out of the textbook world and share insights about where their degrees could take them,” Berr says, “it’s rewarding to know I might have had a role in showing them something about a career they never considered before.”