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OSU’s School of Accounting will honor four as 2015 Distinguished Alumni on April 23

Tuesday, February 17, 2015

Seen from left to right: Tom Coburn, Martha Eining, John Meinders, and Dan Gilliam.
This year’s inductees into the School of Accounting Hall of Fame are:
  • Tom Coburn, 1970 OSU School of Accounting graduate who was a longtime U.S. Congressman, serving in the House of Representatives from 1995 to 2001 and the U.S. Senate from Jan. 3, 2005 to Jan. 3, 2015.
  • Martha Eining, who is the Director of the School of Accounting at the University of Utah. She received a doctoral degree from Oklahoma State in accounting in 1987.
  • Dan Gilliam, 1979 OSU School of Accounting graduate who is the internal audit manager for Phillips 66 in Houston. 
  • John Meinders, 1987 OSU graduate who earned bachelor’s degrees in accounting and computer science. He is audit partner and head of the energy practice office for Grant Thornton in Tulsa.
Robert Cornell, the head of the School of Accounting in the Spears School of Business, is proud to recognize the four graduates at this year’s banquet.
 
“We are delighted to honor these four outstanding School of Accounting graduates at this year’s Wilton T. Anderson Hall of Fame and Awards Banquet. Each of these individuals represents the highest levels of professional excellence exemplified by Oklahoma State University graduates. We are proud of their achievements and appreciate their ongoing support of the School of Accounting,” Cornell said.
 
Tom Coburn retired earlier this year after serving the state of Oklahoma for nearly 16 years. A longtime Muskogee doctor, Coburn entered politics in the late 1990s. He represented Oklahoma’s 2nd Congressional District in the U.S. House from 1995 to 2001. Near the end of 2001, after completing his third congressional term, he was chosen to be chair of the President’s Advisory Council on HIV/AIDs.
 
Coburn kept his word to serve no more than six years in the House and returned to his medical practice in Muskogee. But he returned to politics in 2004 when one of Oklahoma’s Senate seats opened up. He served his first six-year term and was easily re-elected in 2010. A three-time cancer survivor, he announced in January 2014 that he would not serve out his full Senate term, intending to step down because of health issues.
 
While at OSU, he served as president of Business Student Council and was one of the Top 10 Seniors in the College of Business Administration. Coburn and his wife, Carolyn, a graduate of OSU and former Miss Oklahoma, were married in 1968.
 
Martha Eining is David Eccles Professor and Director of the School of Accounting at the University of Utah. She teaches in the area of fraud and auditing at the undergraduate, graduate and Ph.D. level.
 
She has received teaching and/or service awards from the American Accounting Association, the Utah Association of CPAs, and the David Eccles School of Business, including the National Accounting Educator of the Year award presented by the American Women Society of CPAs in 2012.
 
Eining’s professional experience includes small business consulting, auditing, and serving as a systems administrator. She served as Grant Thornton LLP’s first National Professor of Residence. She has also served as a consultant to the Audit Research Group for KPMG Peat Marwick, assisting in the development of support tools for the determination of management fraud.
 
Dan Gilliam was hired by Conoco in 1979 after earning his bachelor’s degree in accounting from OSU. He has held management positions in most of the accounting groups with both ConocoPhillips and Phillips 66 over the past 36 years, including internal auditor, several staff analysts positions, accounting director, refinery finance manager, assistant controller, manager of corporate accounting and manager of corporate affairs.
 
Those positions have taken him and his family all over the United States, including several stops in his hometown of Ponca City, Oklahoma; Wilmington, Delaware; Houston; Lake Charles, Louisiana; twice in Bartlesville, Oklahoma; before returning to Houston in 2013.
 
A loyal and true OSU Cowboy, Gilliam is past chairman of the OSU Alumni Association and the Spears School of Business Associates. He also served on the School of Accounting Advisory Board. In addition, he has been on the executive committees of the State Chamber of Commerce, the Oklahoma Heritage Association, and Leadership Oklahoma.
 
John Meinders began his professional accounting career with Arthur Andersen in Tulsa. He spent the first 12 years of his professional life with Arthur Andersen, including a three-month stint in Romania in 1992.
 
He joined the oil and gas company Lariat Petroleum in early 1999. Two years later, Meinders accepted an offer to become U.S. controller with Vintage Petroleum, another Tulsa energy firm. After Vintage was acquired, he was approached by partners at Grant Thornton to return to public accounting. He has been an audit partner and head of the Tulsa energy practice office, continuing to work primarily with energy companies, since joining the firm in September 2006.
 
Meinders was active in the Alpha Tau Omega fraternity and many other campus activities, including OSU’s Blue Key, a student honor and service society.
 
The Distinguished Alumni Award was established in 1979 to recognize OSU School of Accounting graduates who have achieved exceptional success in the profession of accounting, bringing recognition to Oklahoma State University and the School of Accounting. It is dedicated to Wilton T. Anderson, the founding father of the OSU School of Accounting. It is the highest honor the School of Accounting can bestow on an alumnus.
 
For more informaton or to purchase tickets to the Wilton T. Anderson Hall of Fame and Awards Banquet, visit the website: http://spears.okstate.edu/accounting/alumni/distinguished/banquet/.
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