Wells, a senior lecturer in accounting, says his undergraduate education was so uninspiring that he wanted to stay as far away from accounting as he could. And he certainly made a valiant effort. After graduating from the University of California, Berkeley with a bachelor's degree in business administration, the Bay-area native worked first as an intelligence officer in the U.S. Army and eventually as a financial analyst for NATO ('76-80) at the Supreme Allied Command Operations headquarters in Mons, Belgium.

En route through his career in the military, he earned a master's degree in business administration from Syracuse University. Following a three-year stint in France he returned to civilian life and completed his studies at the UW, where he received a master's degree in professional accounting in 1989.

It was only after spending 20 years as a financial analyst and controller for the United States Army that he decided he wanted to teach the way he would like to have been taught when he was a student.

The discipline and hard work ethic he acquired in the army seems to have infiltrated his self-prescribed hard but fair teaching tactics. Accounting 215, an introductory course and prerequisite needed to get into the Business School, is considered by students as a "weeding out" course.

"It's not intentional that we want to eliminate students from the program," he says, "but the only way they're going to grasp this stuff is through hard work."

Michael Anderson, an '05 graduate of business who now works as a tax accountant at Ernst & Young in New York City, said Wells was his toughest and most inspiring instructor.

"He gave us no mercy as he barraged us with extra work and cajoled us into giving up our comfortable back row seats in favor of the front row," says Anderson. "After a couple of weeks in his class, I realized that he was a man that truly cared about all of his students, not just me. I respected the way he told me the truth and never sugar-coated anything. He encouraged as well as counseled and when I needed to shape up, he was one of the few who told me I needed to."

But Wells isn't a strict disciplinarian all of the time.

In fact, he's known around Balmer Hall as the "pied piper of accounting" because of the seemingly endless lines of students who follow him from to or from his class and office (a certificate bearing this moniker is mounted in his office). He maintains an obvious open-door policy, and it's not unusual to see students stopping by to just say hello or get more instruction.

"His office seems to serve as a mini-classroom whenever he is not teaching a regular class," said his colleague, Jane Kennedy, a professor of accounting. "Bill's teaching approach, mentoring style, and service commitments contribute in a unique and demonstrable way to the quality of our programs while yielding rich benefits to his students."

Wells also teaches accounting 480, geared toward seniors who want to understand governmental and nonprofit accounting. Since its inception in 1991, he's been the only instructor for accounting 199, an adjunct class to Accounting 215 that has been tailored toward Educational Opportunity Program (EOP) students. Administrators say he's been instrumental in reaching out to minority students and increasing their presence in the program.

In his limited spare time, he has been the faculty advisor of Beta Alpha Psi, the national accounting organization, since 1999, and recently assumed expanded duties as the chapter's Northwestern regional director, which requires him to visit other business schools on the West Coast.

Over the years, he's been awarded a number of teaching awards within the Business School, all of which are determined by the students, which he says makes him feel good, knowing that he's doing right by his most important customers: his students.