Most view accounting as a complex form of math — numbers on a page — but School of Business and Economics Assistant Professor Ruixue Du presents it another way: “It’s more like grammar than math. It’s a language,” she says. “It’s how you communicate. The rules for accounting change every year. What I hope my students remember is how to apply the language of accounting to those changing rules.”
Du is conscious of what students take from her class, and how it impacts their lives when they leave UW-Stevens Point. As an undergraduate attending Nankai University in China, Du was inspired by a visiting Virginia Tech business professor. “He became a great mentor to me. He’s why I decided to come to this country and why I chose to attend Virginia Tech.” The professor has since passed, but Du notes his former doctorate students — many of whom are now university department heads or deans — function like a big family. “It’s what I hope to build and grow with my students.”
After earning her doctorate from Virginia Tech in 2013 Du went looking for an opening at a cold-weather school
— something similar to the northern region of China where she grew up. “When I first got here, everyone kept apologizing for the weather,” she laughs. “And last winter, of course, was the worst winter here ever. But it didn’t bother me; I love winter and the cold weather.”
Still new to the area, Du plans to take up skiing again and learn how to ice fish. “I just think it’s cool that people sit on the ice and wait for the fish to come by.”
Ruixue Du, Ph.D.
Assistant Professor, Accounting at UW-Stevens Point
Ph.D., Hospitality and Tourism Management, Virginia Tech
M.S., Accounting and Information System, Virginia Tech
B.S., Finance, Nankai University
715-346-4950 | rdu@uwsp.edu
Read more in the University of Wisconsin-Stevens Point School of Business viewbook. It’s not just business, it’s personal.