Professor Orpurt “Prof O” earned his MBA and Ph.D. at The University of Chicago Booth School of Business.  His B.S. in Accountancy is from Indiana University Bloomington. His dissertation garnered the 2004 American Accounting Association International Section dissertation of the year award. While teaching is his primary focus and enjoyment, he continues his research, which recently has focused on the Statement of Cash Flows with top-tier publications (The Accounting Review, Accounting Horizons), and presentations to the International Accounting Standards Board.

Although the Booth School of Business is known for its research emphasis, Prof O channeled his interests towards teaching, and was awarded PhD level teaching awards on three continents. He taught the statistics review course to incoming MBA students, and started the Pre-MBA course for Executive MBA’s. Throughout his PhD time at Booth, he maintained a thriving tutoring business with the MBA students. Tutoring and leading numerous study sessions with MBA students gave Prof O a distinct advantage most professors never acquire: A continuing dialog with students leading to a keen understanding of how students learn analytic business skills such as financial accounting, statistics, and economics. Those teaching related efforts led to an opportunity to be the first academic hired by UNext.com in 1998. UNext.com was a $200+ million startup attempting to build an extremely high end online MBA program. The courses won awards but unfortunately the business didn’t survive the dot.com bubble burst in the early 2000’s. UNext.com worked with the Booth School, and business schools at Columbia University, Stanford University as well as Carnegie-Mellon University and London School of Economics. Prof O helped build finance courses, accounting courses and a course with Stanford Professor Jerry Porras, co-author of Built to Last. Prof O was employee #1 at UNext.com’s Cardean University.  While the business didn’t develop, Prof O learned from instructional designers, continuing to build his teaching and instruction skills. Since his UNext.com days, Prof O has taught (full or part-time) at Boston University, Singapore Management University, INSEAD, Northwestern Kellogg School of Management, with visiting professorships at The University of Chicago and Purdue University, and most recently, Arizona State University. At ASU Prof O teaches undergraduate and masters  accounting courses both online and on campus. He also served as Associate Director for the School of Accountancy. He has won teaching awards at Arizona State University.

Prof O cites several advantageous experiences for his keen focus on teaching with intuition and an analytics mindset. 

First, he worked for years before earning a PhD and simply has substantive perspectives on what textbook knowledge you need and how to intuitively present it.

Second, he tutored for years and thousands of hours while a PhD student, leading hundreds of informal interactive review sessions totaling several thousand MBA students. Unlike teaching, which is primarily a one way communication from instructor to student, tutoring and review sessions are highly interactive, enabling Prof O to consider and address thousands of questions, and build numerous intuitive explanations for students. Student feedback was key.  

Third, he was educated at the University of Chicago Booth School of Business for both his MBA and PhD. Home to serious academic researchers, everything has to be technically correct. Prof O reports that he’s read so many articles, books, listened to numerous youtube videos that lack rigor (technical correctness) that perhaps he’s always chagrined to a degree. He strives for technical perfection, always. 

In the last several years, Prof O has discovered an interest in metacognition research. Metacognition is the science of awareness or analysis of one’s learning, or thinking, processes. The research in this area has advanced exponentially in the last twenty or so years and now offers multiple opportunities to improve how educational topics and activities are designed for you, the learner, so that you can learn faster and better. At the same time, metacognition research directly offers guidance for you to improve your own learning. Prof O, initially admittedly mildly skeptical, recognized that metacognition research can improve his own learning and he fully employs metacognition best practices. His (inexpensive!) metacognition course will help you immediately.  

Before his academic career, he was a portfolio manager (Franklin Templeton), a litigation consultant where he helped lead expert testimony efforts on behalf of JPMorgan Chase & Co. regarding their Enron class action lawsuit defense and a CPA auditor with what is now KPMG. These experiences help Prof O bring the real world to his courses, and he enjoys current business topics, news, developments and related academic research. Don’t hesitate to contact Prof O if you have an accounting, finance, statistics or economics topic of interest you’d like to learn more about. 

As a result of his keen interest in learning, and wealth of knowledge and experience, Prof O designs and builds courses that should help you attain knowledge, and, more importantly, apply and use it for your own benefit.

Personal 

Prof O still practices his jump shot, enjoys swinging a golf club at one of the many beautiful courses around Phoenix area, and is somewhat of a workout/swimming/bicycle rat. He and his wife enjoy travel, (29 countries and counting), and were married in Costa Rica, a country they return to every few years. Around the home, they spoil their three adopted Whippets as a daily ritual.