An NIU accounting professor received a $10,000 award from a local accounting firm for the outstanding work and service he has given NIU for the past eight years.

Professor Kurt Reding was awarded the Coopers & Lybrand Outstanding Educator Award for 1991-1992. The award was based on his past record at NIU and a proposal he submitted for a summer project which will take affect this coming summer.

Reding said he will use the prize money to conduct the research for his summer project.

During his summer project, Reding will research the ins and outs of the auditing curriculum taught at NIU.

He said he will examine if there are any new ways of teaching the material and if there are problems with the current way it is being taught.

He said if there are some changes that should be made, he will write a report and submit it at the end of the summer.

Reding said he was not surprised with receiving the award because he knew he was being considered.

“It certainly is a big honor,” he said. “I work in a department full of master teachers, and it is an honor to work with them.

The award is given annually to an NIU educator by the Rockford branch of Coopers & Lybrand. Reding received the award at a dinner on Dec. 2.

Professor Reding has been at NIU for eight years. He first was involved at NIU as a graduate student where he received his masters degree in accounting.

Later, he came back to NIU as a teacher’s assistant, after which he worked for Arthur Young & Company, an accounting firm in Milwaukee.

Reding worked as an instructor at NIU, and eventually left to earn his doctorate in accounting from the University of Tennessee.