Family Legacy
New gift for accounting and auditing programs thanks to two generations of McCombs alumni
The C. Aubrey Smith Foundation has donated $1.35 million in endowment funds to support students and faculty members within Texas McCombs’ top-ranked accounting department. The gift will significantly enhance both the C. Aubrey Smith Accounting Education Excellence Fund and the C. Aubrey Smith Center for Auditing Education and Research.
C. Aubrey Smith Sr., BBA 1921, MBA 1926, Ph.D. Columbia University 1933, served on Texas McCombs’ Department of Accounting faculty for 48 years — from 1924 until he retired in 1972. His son, C. Aubrey Smith Jr., BBA ’52, a retired Austin real estate investor and investment adviser, has continued to give generously to the department long after his father’s passing in 1994.
Steven Kachelmeier, chair of McCombs’ Department of Accounting, said the elder Smith was a world-renowned scholar instrumental in establishing the academic discipline of auditing and in establishing the Master of Professional Accounting degree at UT in 1948. “Through his scholarship and giving, Smith senior helped shape an entire discipline, and we are immensely grateful to C. Aubrey Smith Jr. for his dedication to his father’s legacy.”
In U.S. News & World Report’s rankings of business specialties, the undergraduate and graduate programs at Texas McCombs’ Department of Accounting have held at №1 for 18 and 17 consecutive years, respectively.
“Professor Smith was a pillar of this department and a major contributor to the reputation we have now as the top accounting program in the country,” Kachelmeier said. “When C. Aubrey Smith Jr. handed me the check, he said, ‘Just keep accounting №1.’”
The donation brings the C. Aubrey Smith Center for Auditing Education and Research endowment to approximately $2 million and the C. Aubrey Smith Accounting Education Excellence Fund to approximately $1 million. “These generous donations will greatly enhance our efforts to address both the challenges and the opportunities of accounting and auditing today,” Kachelmeier said.
Kachelmeier also noted that McCombs is embracing auditing’s most immediate challenge — the rapid development of artificial intelligence and other technologies — as a chance to elevate the profession: “These technologies can free auditors to handle the judgment-oriented, human elements of an audit.”
The center’s director, Jaime Schmidt, agrees. “At its core, auditing is about adding trust to information,” she said. “We’re in a world right now where trust is in jeopardy, and there’s a greater need than ever for people who can bring integrity to the data that technology gives us.”
In fact, as demand for accountants and auditors grows, another challenge is attracting students to the field, Schmidt said. “Students choosing a major may not see accounting as an exciting career, but one of our goals is to show prospective students how an accounting degree makes them versatile in the language of business.”
The endowment funds will support student recruitment, along with faculty research, conferences and events, and scholarships. “Thanks to Mr. Smith and his family, we now have a center with a total endowment sufficient to enable the department to make McCombs the unquestioned worldwide leader in auditing education and scholarship,” Kachelmeier said.
