“Did you learn something right now? I can tell people are learning something here,” professor Ken Milani remarks to his accounting class on a Tuesday afternoon in the Mendoza College of Business. Every seat in Milani’s coveted section of Accountancy II is filled with attentive students. The professor moves about the room, reviewing the weekend homework assignment, calling on students to answer questions and joking about the chances of the Cubs winning another World Series.
Milani scatters sports references throughout his explanations. He connects, for example, the day’s lesson about determining fixed and variable costs to Notre Dame’s football stadium. Fixed costs, he explains, are associated with maintaining the stadium, no matter how many people attend the game. Variable costs, like the number of concessions sold, depend on attendance.
Milani’s career at the University spans 52 years and counting. In the spring of 1972, when Milani joined the accounting faculty, Notre Dame looked a lot different than it does now. Women would be admitted as undergraduates for the first time the following fall, and his early years as a professor coincided with the rise of the computer.
More than half a century later, the 83-year-old Milani has no plans to retire. He jokes that he’s going to die in his classroom, pop up again and say, “I have to tell one more story.”
Read the full story at Notre Dame Magazine