Bud Baker, Professor (retired) Department of Management and International Business, Raj Soin College of Business

Kathy Morris interviewed Bud Baker on December 8, 2022 about his time as a professor in the Department of Management and International Business in the Raj Soin College of Business at Wright State University. Baker discusses his early life, education and his work at Wright State University

Why Audit Teams Need the Confidence to Speak Up

A climate of psychological safety is an important prerequisite for effective interpersonal relationships among audit team members and for audit teams to properly meet their fiduciary responsibilities. Audit processes can be more effective and the quality of audits can be improved if auditors understand the concept of psychological safety and its application for audit teams. The failure to create a climate of psychological safety among audit team members can have harmful effects on audit quality, but fortunately CPA firms can take steps to enhance psychological safety and enable more effective audit processes and audit work

A Strategy for Teaching Critical Thinking: The Sellmore Case

The importance of teaching and applying critical thinking skills is apparently matched by its difficulty in doing so. Sara Rimer, writing for the January 18, 2011, edition of The Hechinger Report, discussed a study by Richard Arum that followed several thousand undergraduates from when they entered college in fall 2005 to when they graduated in spring 2009. Arum’s research, published in his book Academically Adrift: Limited Learning on College Campuses, found that large numbers of students did not learn critical thinking, complex reasoning, and written communication skills. Arum used testing data and student surveys from 24 colleges and universities ranging from the highly selective to the least selective. The study found that after the first two years of college, 45% of students made no significant improvement in their critical thinking, reasoning, or writing skills. After four years, 36% showed no significant gains in what Arum called the “higher order” thinking skills. The good news is that students majoring in the liberal arts showed significantly greater gains over time than other students in critical thinking, reasoning, and writing skills. The bad news is that students majoring in business, education, social work, and communication showed the least number of gains in learning. Paul Hurd, in the article “The State of Critical Thinking Today,” written for The Critical Thinking Community website (www.criticalthinking.org), examined the current state of critical thinking in higher education. Citing numerous studies, Hurd pointed out that while the overwhelming majority of faculty understand the importance of developing critical thinking skills in their students and believe it is the primary objective of their instructional methodology, a majority of faculty lacks a substantive concept of critical thinking. He says that, given this lack of understanding, it is difficult to make the case that critical thinking is the norm in the design of most instructional methodologies. For Hurd, an understanding of critical thinking at the level he is proposing requires that we “teach content through thinking, not content, and then thinking.” While the development of critical thinking skills is important for any discipline, it must be a vital component in how we prepare students for entry into the accounting profession. For example, management accountants are often called on to identify problems, gather relevant information in assessing those problems, and explore and interpret information in developing alternative strategies for solving these problems. In this capacity, the management accountant is expected to formulate questions, highlight and identify relevant assumptions, and challenge those assumptions, all with a view toward developing and articulating alternative strategies aimed at resolving these problems. Management accountants are also called on to construct and defend arguments by using and evaluating evidence either in favor of or in opposition to proposals that require managerial decisions. All of the above tasks are important components that must be developed through an understanding and application of critical thinking skills

Pay and Rank of Female Engineers in Government Service: A Crack in the Glass Ceiling

In 1991, the United States government began efforts to address the "glass ceiling" and its effects on thefederal workforce. This article explores the nature of the glass ceiling, particularly progress made since1991 on the pay status and hierarchical placement of the almost 200,000 engineers in United States federalcivilian employment. When a glass ceiling exists, men occupy a disproportionately high percentage of thehigher ranks in a career field, while women tend to be overrepresented in its lower ranks. Similarly, onaverage men earn higher pay than women in the same organizational rank. These were exactly theconditions of the federal engineering field in 1991, the year of the passage of the Civil Rights Act of 1991that addressed the glass ceiling, among other topics. In 1991, as a result of the existence of the glass ceiling,women engineers earned only about 81% of the salaries and wages of their male counterparts. Through anexploration of federal employment databases, this article suggests that the condition of women engineers ingovernment service has improved in the years since 1991""more female engineers are on the governmentrolls, they make up a much larger proportion of senior engineering management, and their compensation ismuch closer to parity with men""but they are not yet equal with males on any of these dimensions

Teaching Under a Glass Ceiling: A Study of Gender Equity in Federal Education Career Fields

Consider this picture: You are on the ground floor of a building, one of thosemodern palaces where balconied floors surround a central atrium reaching all theway to the roof. As you gaze upward, you can see fifteen floors of the building, allcontaining the expected level of activity: people are walking, alone and in groups,glass elevators are gliding up and down, a few people lean on the balcony railings,admiring the beauty of the architecture

Topliff

Lime was mined here and sent to the smelters. Courtesy of Blaine Burger. Smelters needed limestone for their operations. Topliff, in Tooele County, was built near a lime deposit there. A rail spur led to the quarry, and ASARCO ran a quarry operation there. After a majority of the smelters had shut down, quarry operations ceased and Topliff died. Ev Berger worked at Topliff probably in the late 1920s or early 1930s. Snapshots of Topliff were taken by Ev's cousin Bud Baker, who also worked at Topliff. The photos were given to Blaine Burger by Bud's wife, Eloise Baker

Your Town Radio & Television Program: Guests Neal Hotelling, Ken Johnson, "Bud" Baker [video]

Host: John SandersGuests: Neal Hotelling, Pebble Beach Co.; CAPT Ken Johnson, NPS alumnus 1973; CAPT "Bud" Barker, NPS alumnus, 194