ROCK HILL, SOUTH CAROLINA – Accounting Professor Adriana Cordis was recently selected as the William H. Grier Professor for Winthrop University’s College of Business Administration. The Grier Professorship is awarded every four years to an excellent classroom teacher who is highly imaginative, dependable and in command of his or her discipline.
Established in 1993, the designation honors the memory of Grier, a long-time member and chair of the Winthrop Board of Trustees, and the first male recipient of an honorary degree from the College of Business Administration.
Cordis joined the Winthrop faculty in 2013 as an assistant professor of accounting, was promoted to associate professor in 2018 and to professor in 2022. She was recently selected to serve as chair of the Department of Accounting, Finance and Economics. Prior to joining Winthrop, she taught at University of South Carolina Upstate and Clemson University, and was a transfer pricing consultant for Ernst & Young.
Known as an innovative educator
At Winthrop, Cordis teaches graduate and undergraduate courses in accounting analytics, cost accounting and managerial accounting. She is an innovative educator who led the efforts to revamp the accounting curriculum by introducing and teaching the first Winthrop courses in accounting data analytics. As part of these efforts, she initiated an academic alliance with technology firm UiPath, a pioneer in Robotic Process Automation (RPA) software. Students who complete the graduate analytics course obtain a Diploma of Completion of “Step into RPA” from UiPath.
Cordis engages in numerous professional development activities every year and constantly seeks to hone her teaching skills. She received the Jane LaRoche Award for Excellence in Graduate Instruction in 2020 and was nominated for the Kinard Award in 2022.
“Professor Cordis is an outstanding colleague and is very deserving of the Grier Professorship. She is an engaged professor as well as an impactful researcher and leader, which sets her apart,” said P.N. Saksena, dean of the College of Business Administration.
A prolific researcher, Cordis has many high-quality publications that are widely cited by her peers. Her articles appear in a range of academic journals, including the Journal of Accounting Education, Journal of Public Economics, Journal of Business Finance and Accounting, Accounting & Finance, Accounting Forum, and Public Finance Review. Her research has been featured in the Harvard Business Review, The Duke Law FinReg Blog, The Wall Street Journal and other media outlets.
She received the 2014 and 2018 Springs Industries Research Excellence Award, and the Peter Brownell Manuscript Award for the best paper published in Accounting & Finance in 2017.
Cordis stands out for her leadership roles in service to the College of Business Administration and to Winthrop. In addition to her ongoing role as department chair, she has served on more than 25 committees, chaired several university and college-level committees, led faculty searches, and spearheaded significant new program and curriculum development initiatives. She promotes accounting certifications and student scholarships, organizes alumni and career events, networks with industry professionals, and performs extensive refereeing work for accounting conferences and journals.
For more information, please contact Judy Longshaw, news and media services manager, at 803/323-2236 or e-mail longshawj@winthrop.edu.
