University of Arkansas at Little Rock

Ten inaugural members of Advancing Management Education (AME), a giving circle for the College of Business, awarded its first grants totaling $5,000 and held its first celebration Oct 29. at Vieux Carre restaurant in Little Rock.

Four $500 scholarships for the Field Study in Mexico will be awarded for the spring 2010 trip. Faculty teaching international business courses will choose the winners based on financial need and potential success in the international business profession.

Two marketing department scholarships at $1,000 each will be awarded in March for use during the 2011 academic year. The department’s faculty will choose the winners based on scholastic achievement and potential success in the marketing profession.

Assistance for the College of Business Green Jobs Fair was also approved by AME, allocating $1,000 for the event that took place on campus in October.

Charter members of the giving circle include: Ethel Cook, Cynthia Daily, Brenda Fulkerson, Lyn Haralson, Susan Parke, Janet Roderick, Susan Rogers, Elizabeth Small, Cynthia Taylor, and Jane Wayland. AME members meet four times a year and hear speakers recognized for business knowledge and philanthropy. Once a year, members review and vote on College of Business grant opportunities and award them at an annual celebration.

The Executive Level for UALR alumni and friends of the College of Business is $1,000. The Leadership Level for recent graduates (five years) and university affiliates is $500. For more information on joining AME, contact Will Elliott at 501.569.3208 or jwelliott@ualr.edu.

Walter “Walt” Pavlo Jr., former MCI WorldCom executive who was imprisoned for white-collar crime, addresses more than 100 College of Business students, faculty, and alumni, as well as business leaders at the first Dean’s Forum Oct. 26 at the Arkansas Arts Center.The business ethics forum was in partnership with the Little Rock Regional Chamber of Commerce and Arkansas Business Publishing Group. Additional event sponsors were PDC Companies, Arkansas Capital Corporation Group, and Thoma Thoma.

Pavlo was a senior manager at MCI Telecommunications where he was responsible for the billing and collection of nearly $1 billion in monthly revenue for MCI’s carrier finance division. He, a member of his staff, and a business associate outside of MCI began to perpetrate a fraud involving a few MCI customers. Pavlo consorts with a rogue MCI customer in a scheme to siphon $6 million of company cash to the Cayman Islands. In January 2001, Pavlo pled guilty to wire fraud and money laundering, agreed to cooperate with the federal investigation, and was sentenced to two years in federal prison.

Pavlo has addressed more than 100 of the country’s leading business schools, has been invited to speak at many Fortune 500 firms, and is a frequent speaker at Wal-Mart’s training facility in Arkansas.

Dr. Judyth Swingen, accounting professor at UALR, chaired the American Institute of Certified Public Accountants’ (AICPA) Tax Reform Task Force, which submitted federal tax reform recommendations in a report to President Obama’s tax reform panel this week.

AICPA is the national professional association of certified public accountants and has a long history of assisting lawmakers with tax policy matters and advocating sound tax policy. The AICPA Tax Division acknowledged the work done on the report, “Tax Reform Alternatives for the 21st Century,” by its five-member Tax Reform Task Force led by Dr. Swingen and the AICPA Tax Legislation and Policy Committee, of which Swingen is a member.

“I was fortunate to have the opportunity to work with some very experienced tax professionals on this project,” said Swingen. “My task force included the former national taxpayer advocate and the former head of the AICPA’s Tax Division.”

In March, Obama called for the formation of a task force to review the current income tax system and suggest ways to simplify it and improve compliance and to reform the corporate tax. With the continued focus on the need and desire to improve the current tax system by the administration and congressional leaders, the AICPA produced the report to serve as a resource to those engaged in the current tax reform debate. The committee’s objectives were to provide policymakers with a clear understanding of the issues and alternatives involved in federal tax reform and to foster informed discussion by providing unbiased information and analysis.

“Tax Reform Alternatives for the 21st Century” outlines efforts to improve the current system without changing its fundamental character. These include wide-ranging simplification efforts, increasing fairness, reducing revenue lost from tax evasion (known as the tax gap), and broadening the tax base. These proposals address economic growth by improving economic efficiency through greater neutrality, creating incentives for capital formation, accelerating depreciation, eliminating double taxation of corporate profits, simplifying and increasing tax-preferred savings options, and reforming counterproductive characteristics of the tax system as applied to domestic corporations and international businesses.

The report describes the nature of the issues leading to a tax reform debate, suggests a balanced approach for analyzing tax reform proposals, and summarizes key issues to be addressed whether taxing income or consumption or both.

“We are very pleased with Judyth’s efforts in leading this task force in this difficult but crucial work,” said Dr. Robert R. Oliva, chair of the Department of Accounting in UALR’s College of Business.

Tax reform will by necessity be influenced by issues currently facing the country including:

• The baby boom generation is starting to retire, placing additional burdens on strained entitlement programs including those where the costs of providing for health care continue to increase.
• The 2001 and 2003 tax cuts will expire in 2010, generating additional government revenues without corresponding examination of appropriate and fair tax burdens.
• The reach of the alternative minimum tax will grow exponentially, subjecting millions of taxpayers to unintended, higher levels of taxation, requiring more and more costly adjustments to limit its effect to the intended taxpayer group.
• Revenue needs will increase substantially to address historic levels of debt and annual deficits as a result of defense spending, the recent economic challenges, and financing new policy initiatives such as health care reform.

Congress faces some tough choices in the coming months. The annual budget deficit is now at a record level. Health care reform will be expensive. Medicare and Social Security payments this year will exceed the taxes collected for these programs. The AICPA Tax Reform study did not advocate a particular solution for the government’s fiscal problem. Instead, it identified several possible alternatives and discussed the pros and cons of each.

The College of Business honored two at its Alumni of the Year awards ceremony Friday, Oct. 16, at The Peabody Little Rock.

Bill Roehrenbeck was recognized as the Distinguished Alumnus of the Year. He graduated from UALR with a Bachelor of Business Administration degree in 1992. Roehrenbeck is president and CEO of Arvest Mortgage and Central Mortgage Company. He has served 37 years in Arkansas’ mortgage banking industry. Roehrenbeck is a member of the Little Rock Chamber’s Fifty for the Future and the UALR Foundation Fund Board.

Anthony Black was awarded with the Young Alumnus of the Year. He graduated from UALR’s Executive MBA program in 2008. A public sector attorney, Black serves as general counsel for the Arkansas Department of Information Systems. His civic activities include the Arkansas Bar Association Law School Committee and the UALR Alumni Association Board of Directors.

Sponsors of the event include U.S. Bank, Dillard’s, and Arvest Bank.

Previous winners for Distinguished Business Alum are Carl Hunter, 1998; Robert Birch, 1999; Jerry Maulden, 2000; Frank Whitbeck, 2001; John Schlereth, 2002; and Elizabeth Small, 2002. Drew Higginbothom received the Young Business Alum award in 2008.

The College of Business Society Alumni Advisory Board will host a networking event from 5:30 to 7 p.m. Thursday, October 1, at Diamond Bear Brewery.

All UALR College of Business alumni are invited to the event that will include a private tour of the brewery, located at 323 Cross Street in Little Rock. Cost is $5 per person.

RSVP by Wednesday, September 30 to Patrice Sims at cobdean@ualr.edu or 501.569.3048.