Howard Busbee, the ‘Alum's Alum’

You could call Howard Busbee BBA ‘65, JD '67, MLT ‘68 a "Renaissance alum." 

Among the many roles he has played at the College, Howard serves as Vice Chair of the William and Mary Real Estate Foundation. He has also chaired the William and Mary Foundation and is past president of the W&M Alumni Association.

On the academic side, Howard has served as Assistant Dean for the Master of Accounting and Undergraduate programs at the Mason School of Business, and continues to teach today in both those programs. His courses in Federal Taxation and Estate and Financial Planning are perennially popular.

All of this follows a career in which he rose to Tax Partner at PricewaterhouseCoopers, gave his time and expertise to a wide range of other worthy causes, and built a life filled with family and friends.

Recently, we sat down with Howard to discuss how he has managed to achieve these accomplishments and what he sees as the biggest challenges for the College going forward.

Your resume shows both great career success and extraordinary commitment to service. What are things you consider when looking at opportunities to serve an organization? And what would you tell others to consider?

First, I want to join organizations I can identify with and that I feel strongly about, and I think that's important for everyone considering such service. For example, I think healthcare is a critical issue and that every community needs access to affordable healthcare, so I am currently serving as a Trustee on the Williamsburg Community Health Foundation Board.  I also have long been a believer in access to excellent public education and so have supported William & Mary.

Second, I aspire to be a leader within whatever group I join and I encourage others to do the same. I think it's absolutely fine to be an active person without being a leader when doing service work, but if you are involved you should be willing and ready to become a leader when asked, and you should prepare for that. Soon enough it likely will be your turn to lead and that will be your best service to that organization.

Third, it's important you don't over-commit and I try hard not to do that. You've got to balance family, friends, work and service.

You have played many roles at The College and the Mason School of Business - student, teacher, advisor and steward. What do you see are primary challenges for the College right now?

We are engaged in a battle for financial viability, as President Reveley has emphasized recently. This is unfortunate because besides being difficult in itself, it is also a huge distraction from important goals like making William and Mary more accessible to those qualified students who could not otherwise afford to enroll.

Financially, we have to now operate as though we are a private institution. The days of being a state institution are over. We may be state assisted or "state located" but we will no longer be state supported. The State will always be our biggest donor, probably, and we will always be grateful for that, but it cannot support us anywhere near the prior levels.

So we have to ask our alumni and friends for financial support; we have to constantly evaluate our tuition and fee structure; and we have to explore new revenue sources and be more entrepreneurial. It's good that we have recently committed to this effort and now have talented people on board who are actively looking for these opportunities.

Everything has to be on the table - the increased alumni support, the higher tuition, the entrepreneurial efforts. Moreover, we have to continue to be good stewards of what money we do take in. Specifically, we have to ensure that we sustain the excellence in students, faculty and staff, and that more assistance goes to continuing to increase the diversity of our student population.

One of your roles was to direct the Master of Accounting program for the Mason School of Business from 2001 to 2005 , when the program was only a few years old. What are the challenges the MAcc program in particular faces now?

Our relatively small size, as a program, is still a challenge. We have been around for 10 years now but we're small - even though the program is still growing -- and so the number of alumni we have is still quite small. Our alumni are our best spokespersons: while we are growing, we need to have the alumni help us promote the program.  Further, we want to attain a size, to complement our high quality, that will attract even more employers to campus.

We have to spread the word that this program provides the most meaningful education people can get for their required 150 hours. If the Board of Accountancy is going to require 150 credit hours, then it is important for students to make those 150 hours meaningful. Our challenge is getting out the message of how well we do that and how unique we are.

For example, the trip we take every year (the Veris CPATrek) is unique and provides quite an amazing opportunity - to meet the "live face" of people in regulation and accounting.

And we talk to our students about what "the business world" will be like for them, and that's an unusual amount of ground to cover. For example, in my Estate and Financial Planning course, I bring students face to face with issues being discussed today, issues shaping the current financial landscape, and prepare them for making a meaningful contribution. I try to bring their own concerns into the discussions - examples from their parents' situations or concerns they have about a current business experience, for instance -- and focus on what is happening in Congress and at the FASB now.

You still work with a lot of undergraduates - as a teacher and an advisor. What advice do you give them about building a successful life?

I try to convey the following. Don't make any final decisions in your first few months on campus: you're young and have time. You should take advantage of W&M's great liberal arts program and environment.  The GERs (General Education Requirements) are designed to let you explore lots of subjects, so make the most of the opportunity. You need to follow your own interests.

As far as choosing a career, I tell them the decision should be theirs - not what someone else tells them. And, you know, it's okay to make a mistake. People are going to change jobs on average four to six times after graduating from college. A career is a long-range project and there's plenty of time to take some risks.  Still, your goal should be to "do the right thing" at each stage of your journey.

The College, The Mason School of Business, and The Mason Accounting Programs want to take this opportunity to say Thank You to Howard, and to our many other devoted alums, for all the wonderful work you do in supporting our programs!