Chancellors Club honors tax professor, liver researcher for faculty awards

LAWRENCE — Whether revving up University of Kansas students’ interest in tax accounting or researching methods to repair damaged livers, the 2011 Chancellors Club researcher and professor are making a positive impact at KU.

KU professors Allen Ford and Hartmut Jaeschke have been respectively named winners of the 2011 Chancellors Club career teaching and research awards. They will be honored Sept. 30 at the annual Chancellors Club celebration.

Allen Ford is the Larry D. Horner/KPMG Distinguished Teaching Professor of Professional Accounting in the School of Business. Ford earned his bachelor’s degree at Centenary College and his MBA and doctoral degrees at the University of Arkansas. He has been a professor of accounting at KU since 1976 and a distinguished professor since 1993.

Keith Chauvin, KU professor of economics, praised Ford for his commitment to his work. From 1984 through 2005, Ford was the only tax professor in the School of Business.

“In addition, he has voluntarily taught one or even two additional courses per year, for many years, usually without compensation,” Chauvin said. “He did so in order to ensure that large undergraduate and smaller graduate classes of accounting students had access to the tax courses they needed to be successful in their careers.”

O. Maurice Joy, KU’s Emeritus Joyce C. Hall Distinguished Professor of Business, also nominated Ford. He said that while the KU School of Business has many excellent teachers, Ford is “the cream of the crop.”

“Allen teaches tax accounting courses, which are not for the fainthearted,” said Joy. “Despite that, he is a perennial winner of many of the school’s internal teaching awards. He is that rare bird in academics who blows the top off the charts in both popularity and rigor.”

Hartmut Jaeschke is a professor and researcher in KU Medical Center’s Department of Pharmacology, Toxicology and Therapeutics. Having taught at KU since 2006, he is an internationally known scientist who researches the mechanisms of inflammatory liver injury and damage resulting from various pharmaceuticals, including one of the most commonly used drugs in America — acetaminophen.

Jaeschke grew up in Germany, where he earned a master’s degree in biochemistry and a Ph.D. in toxicology at the University of Tübingen.

Alex Lentsch, vice chair for research at the University of Cincinnati College of Medicine, was among those nominating Jaeschke.

“Dr. Jaeschke’s early work has become the foundation of our understanding of acute inflammatory liver injury, and his current research continues at the leading edge in his field,” Lentsch said. “He has demonstrated scientific excellence and leadership, and he positively represents the University of Kansas on national and international stages.”

George Corcoran, chair of pharmaceutical sciences at Wayne State University, praised Jaeschke not only for his research, teaching and publishing, but also for the more than $7 million in National Institutes of Health grant funding he has obtained.

“It is my very strong belief that Dr. Jaeschke will continue on his meteoric professional trajectory, expanding the impact of his leadership beyond its current level of leading thinker and opinion leader, to becoming a broader spokesperson for basic research in the health sciences,” said Corcoran.

Each professor will receive a $9,000 award. The awards are provided through KU Endowment, the official fundraising and fund-management foundation for KU. Founded in 1891, KU Endowment was the first foundation of its kind at a U.S. public university.