UHCL Mourns The Loss Of A Charter Member
DANIEL DURBIN
THE SIGNAL
The University of Houston-Clear Lake currently offers 600 majors, averages 8,000 students a semester, and has awarded more than 53,000 degrees.
In 1974, during its very first semester, there were a total of 1,069 students enrolled and 60 charter faculty professors.
Among those original 60 was Donald Kyle, professor of accounting, who continued to teach at UHCL until last semester.
Kyle died Sept. 4. He leaves a legacy only a few UHCL faculty members have achieved.
When UHCL opened its doors in 1974, the entire campus was comprised of a solitary building – the Arbor Building – surrounded by a vast wooded landscape, which is still abundant to this day on the 524-acre nature and wildlife preserve.
The original objective of the university’s establishment was to offer graduate degrees to NASA employees located in Clear Lake – then known as the Manned Spacecraft Center. Kyle and the other 59 charter members were critical in turning this idea into a reality.
After earning his MBA in Business Administration and Ph.D. in Accounting from the University of Arkansas, Kyle and a handful of others helped start the accounting program at UHCL from scratch. In the past 39 years, Kyle played a key role in recommending who was hired in the accounting program. Today there are 13 full-time accounting faculty members.
Kyle was a member of the American Accounting Institution, the American Institute of CPAs, and the Institute of Management Accountants. He had also been a sponsor of the Annual Accounting Recruiters Reception since it began 24 years ago.
He was a former UHCL nominee for the Minnie Stevens Piper Professor Award, an organization that annually awards 10 college professors in the state of Texas for superior teaching. Additionally, Kyle won an Institute of Management Accountants Academic Mentor Award.
“He also instilled in the students the professional attitude of giving back to the community through activities such as sponsoring UHCL blood drives and going in groups to prepare dinners for families of children stricken with cancer staying at Ronald McDonald House,” said Joan Bruno, assessment coordinator for the School of Business and fellow colleague of Kyle’s since 1975.
Former student and UHCL alumnus, Fahad Siddiqui, remembers Kyle in the classroom.
“He made Cost Accounting fun, and he told great stories relating to the real world, which ultimately led to my decision to be an accountant,” said Siddiqui, who is now an accounting manager for WinPark.
One glance at his highly rated page on RateMyProfessors.com will further illustrate his former students’ opinion of him. Not only did Kyle receive an extremely respectable overall quality rating of 4.6 out of 5, but his page has now become a site of remembrance since his death.
“He was my absolute favorite accounting professor and actually led a course that [he] taught better than any textbook could,” was one of the comments left on the student-reviewed website.
William Staples, president of UHCL, worked with Kyle since 1979. Staples estimated that in his 39-year tenure, Kyle has taught roughly 10,000 students.
“When you have someone that is so committed to their program and so committed to their students, it’s really the kind of faculty member you hope to have,” Staples said. “The joy I had interacting with Don was just to see someone who enjoyed so much what he was doing. He had a passion about teaching accounting and he wanted it to be interesting and, yet, informative for his students.”
Being part of the first faculty staff to start a university is an achievement in itself. Kyle’s exceptional precedence has helped the accounting program become the second-largest program at UHCL, following closely behind psychology by an estimated 20 students.
“The legacy of Dr. Donald Lewis Kyle will benefit the students of the UHCL accounting program, the accounting program [itself], and the reputation of UHCL well into the future,” Bruno said.
The Donald L. Kyle Scholarship has been created to commemorate Kyle’s level of commitment. The scholarship will be available to future eligible accounting students. Those interested in donating to the scholarship may do so online at http://prtl.uhcl.edu/portal/page/portal/OD/kylescholarship. Donations may also be mailed by check to UHCL, 2700 Bay Area Blvd., Box 318, Houston, TX 77058 or by calling the UHCL Office of University Advancement at 281-283-2021.
