Teacher Recognized for 19-Year Winning Streak with Huntsman IMA Chapter

By Steve Eaton

Frank Shuman has been on a roll. In fact, he has been part of a winning streak is as old as some of his students.

While he has been the Huntsman IMA advisor, the chapter has won the “Gold Level Award of Excellence” 19 years in a row, the longest winning streak in the nation. To achieve the Gold Level Award, student chapters must document community service they have done and meet other high standards set by the organization.

Frank Shuman with Huntsman student, Michael Bills

Each year the organization recognizes just four chapters as being outstanding. The Huntsman IMA students have won that designation five times. In another national IMA competition last year the Huntsman chapter took first place in three out of three “best practices” categories.


This year those at the IMA are giving Shuman one of their highest honors, a sort of advisor-of-the-year award for the entire organization. Shuman was recently notified that he will be getting the Ursel K. Albers IMA Campus Advocate of the Year Award.

Shuman said he was pleased with the recognition but quick to credit the students for his award.

“I am honored but I feel like I am just the coach of a winning team,” he said. “For me, the most rewarding thing has been to see these students growing and developing as leaders.”

While Shuman, who is a principal lecturer at the Huntsman School, has been honored, in part, for the chapter’s success, many of the students he has worked with say he has helped them with their own personal victories too.

Michael Bills, president of the Huntsman IMA chapter, wrote a letter of recommendation, explaining why he felt that Shuman deserved the advocate of the year award. He wrote that when he had just returned from a two-year mission he had to miss his first week of school, including Shuman’s class in managerial accounting. He was trying to remember what he had learned in his last accounting class before he left on his mission and struggling to keep up in the class. It was frustrating enough that he was considering changing his major. He went to Shuman for assistance.

“Frank was very helpful and encouraging, and was more than willing to spend extra time with me to help cover the material that I missed or didn’t understand,” he wrote. “Also, because I started school late the book store was sold out of the managerial accounting textbook, so Frank let me borrow his copy until I was able to purchase one.”

This is not the first time Shuman has been recognized for his work with students. He was also named the School of Accountancy Teacher of the Year in 1994 and 2007, and the Jon M. Huntsman Advisor of the Year in 1995 and 2013.