Professor Emeritus John McEnroe
“I didn’t know I was going to major in accounting,” reflects Professor Emeritus John McEnroe, on the start of his career journey that began when he was a freshman in college. “I didn’t even know what accounting consisted of, to be honest. I just knew that I enjoyed the course Principles of Accounting.”
Those principles served as the foundation for McEnroe to become one of the most accomplished professors in the School of Accountancy & MIS, with a career spanning nearly 40 years as an award-winning teacher and researcher of financial accounting and auditing. McEnroe, who held the title of Deloitte Distinguished Professor before retiring in the spring of 2021, leaves a lasting legacy of service that had a profound impact on the School of Accountancy & MIS, its students and the accounting profession through his educational and research impact. As a professor, he’s taught thousands of students the intermediate financial accounting courses that are an integral part of the CPA examination.
A prolific researcher over the course of his career, McEnroe received DePaul’s Spirit of Inquiry Award in 2011, an honor that recognizes faculty for substantial and innovative scholarly pursuits that result in important contributions to their field. With more than 80 articles published across various journals, one in particular stands out as perhaps the most significant—a study titled “Auditors’ and Investors’ Perceptions of the ‘Expectation Gap,’” published with co-author Stanley Martens in Accounting Horizons in 2001.
“We had no idea it was going to be widely read,” says McEnroe of the study, which examined the gap between what investors believe an audited financial statement should convey and what auditors think their responsibility should be when attesting to its fairness. “But it just so happened that this article involved the attitudes and perceptions of both investors and auditors when, to my knowledge, we were the only ones who had sampled these two populations in the same study. Other researchers at the time had only sampled either auditors or investors.”
The study made such a lasting impact that McEnroe completed an updated version, “Auditors’, Investors’, and CFOs’ Perceptions of the Expectation Gap: An Extended Exploration,” in 2021, this time with School of Accountancy & MIS Associate Professors Mary Mindak and Wendy Heltzer as co-authors.
While being an active researcher, McEnroe remained dedicated to student success through his teaching and mentoring. In recognition of his teaching excellence, he was named the Illinois CPA Society Outstanding Educator in 2001, in addition to receiving two Ledger & Quill Teaching Excellence awards. He also made his mark as a Deloitte Distinguished Professor. In January 2021, alumni who work at Deloitte held a virtual celebration that honored him for his contributions to DePaul and the accounting profession, and for his leadership of the school’s Strobel Honors Program, in which he taught intermediate financial accounting.
“As the Strobel director I enjoyed being able to facilitate my students’ interactions with the ‘real world’ of auditing and industry,” he says.
McEnroe also supported DePaul’s student athletes as the faculty athletic representative to the Big East Conference and the National Collegiate Athletic Association, a role he held for 20 years. Part of this important university role involves keeping all DePaul faculty informed of student athletes’ academic progress. In June 2021, DePaul announced that McEnroe would receive the Via Sapientiae award, the highest honor the university can bestow on a member of its community.
“Through all his accomplishments, John has been a vital contributor to the caliber of education at the School of Accountancy & MIS, and a steadfast advocate and mentor to students both inside and outside the classroom,” says Ray Whittington, director of the School of Accountancy & MIS. “We’re enormously grateful for not only his work but also for his collegiality all these years.”
“Debits equals credits—it’s the language of business, and that’s where it all started for me,” says McEnroe. “I’ve always said that anyone who goes to college, regardless of major, should take Principles of Accounting. It’s a very valuable resource of knowledge to have no matter what path you take.”
By Nadia Alfadel Coloma