The Ripple Effect of Mentorship
Sarah Bonner (‘80) and Tracie Majors (‘04, MSA ‘04) have forged a lifelong bond built on mentorship, friendship and the art of paying it forward. And while serendipity seemingly brought them together, their shared Wake Forest connection makes their meeting feel more like fate than fluke.
Their paths first crossed in 2013, when Majors was interviewing for an assistant professor position at the University of Southern California. Although their time as students at Wake Forest was separated by more than two decades, they quickly discovered commonalities that built the foundation for what would become a lifelong personal and professional relationship.
“They [recruiting] ended up going in a different direction that year, but that was where it started for us,” said Bonner, who was already working at USC and had breakfast with Tracie as part of the interview. “We connected right away talking about Wake Forest. Tracie ended up joining the faculty at University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign; after three years, the timing was right for her to join us at USC.”
That outcome proved to be an important one, as the two went on to publish research in top-tier research journals such as the Journal of Accounting Research and The Accounting Review together over the better part of the next decade.
“We had actually started a research project before she [Majors] got there based on our first meeting. So we had been talking back and forth a little bit, but when she came to work with us, I found two offices next to each other so we could be close to each other and continue our work. That proved to be one of the best decisions I ever made. We taught on the same days and the best part of those days was having work and personal time with Tracie before teaching.”
In addition to their accomplishments in publications, the pair has also received three grants from the Center for Audit Quality as part of their joint effort to drive meaningful research that has real impact for practitioners.
Though their groundbreaking research has proven to have major implications in the audit community and beyond, the ability to make a real impact on a personal level remains the most important part of their work.
“Our research has important implications for the audit profession. And that contributes to society because auditors are the key protector of investors. Where we most deeply feel our impact, however, is through teaching and our interactions with students, whether they are undergraduate, Masters, or PhD students,” said Majors.
The deliberate effort to invest in and connect with their students, the pair explains, can be directly traced back to their time at Wake Forest and the stewardship of two professors who mentored Bonner – Tom Taylor in accounting and John Baxley in mathematics.
“I was lucky to be at Wake at a time when I had two faculty members as advisors. I had each of them for several classes as well, but the time they spent with me as advisors changed my life,” said Bonner. “They showed me what it meant to be passionate about teaching so as to engage students but, more importantly, how to respect students as people, to nurture and guide them at a time in their lives when they are still forming their identities.”
Majors then shared that, “I actually had Taylor for two classes, and he was an amazing teacher. I remember how he taught me variances and made them make sense. He was such a patient, thorough, detailed, kind, and compassionate teacher. He took an interest in all of us students. He always welcomed me into his office to sit and patiently explain concepts to me. He was a great teacher, but I think what will always stand out to me most is his kindness and compassion.”
Bonner echoed that both Taylor and Baxley were exceedingly kind and compassionate with students. She smiled when sharing, “I often tell them that, had they had the research demands that professors have today, they would’ve been very upset with me for the time of theirs that I took.”
This trip back to Wake Forest gave Bonner an opportunity to reconnect with her beloved mentors. Majors was eager to reconnect with Taylor, and forged an immediate bond with Baxley, being inspired by the stories Bonner and Baxley shared during their meeting.
Bonner, who recently retired from the accounting department at USC, was able to reflect on the lasting effect of mentorship and being a positive catalyst in a person’s life. “The value of mentorship, it’s priceless,” she explained. “To take special interest in each individual, and especially [for Baxley] to take special interest in women, because there were very few women in math at that time.”
Bonner, who has been a personal mentor to Majors since they met and an inspiration to countless others, says she carried the influence of her Wake Forest professors to her own classroom. “They were the original stones that started the ripples in the pond.”
“It was always important for me to nurture students, but particularly female students. So I started a group that was called M-Power for female PhD students in the business school. We would have meetings and talk about women’s issues in academia.”
Bonding over shared experiences and providing a support system for challenges both timeless and new are at the heart of being a mentor, and that is exactly how Majors describes Bonner in reflecting on their mentor-mentee relationship.
“Sarah works incredibly hard, and we work side by side. From a research perspective, she’s an absolute legend and for good reason – I feel like by osmosis, I’ve gotten to learn the way she works, her work habits and tools, how she approaches questions, how she approaches data analysis, and how she approaches exploring all the what ifs and the nuances that come with conducting great research. Importantly, she’s also an outstanding teacher who is loved by so many students; she generously shared her teaching materials with me and was always available for my day-to-day questions about teaching.”
And now, just as Bonner carried lessons from her mentors to her relationship with Majors, the ripples continue to grow and spread for the next generation of mentees.
“I find that I naturally pass on what I’ve learned from Sarah,” said Majors. “I’m starting now to become a mentor for some of our PhD students and have passed on Sarah’s research tools; I’ve also found myself providing them advice on the same teaching questions that Sarah advised me on. And when I speak at academic conference sessions for PhD students, I find myself saying, ‘here’s the Sarah Bonner way of doing this.’ Altogether I’m passing all that on, in some ways more formally, and in other ways just organically.”
Majors then reflected that, “All of those practices that I’ve learned from her, I’m super eager to keep carrying forward. In this way, Tom and John’s legacy, that then allowed for her legacy, is going to keep going on and on through future generations.”
Revisiting the grounds where this journey started for both Bonner and Majors, while a time for reflection and appreciation for the past (and the purchase of matching WFU sweatshirts), also provided an opportunity to contemplate the future of academia and how today’s faculty can navigate the challenging landscape.
“I think it’s imperative to remember your true value as a professor,” said Bonner. Bonner went on to say, “It’s not in your publications, it’s not in your teaching evaluations. That’s difficult to remember sometimes, because student ratings are just one metric, and can’t capture the entirety of your teaching contributions. Further, publishing research is really hard; you get rejected a lot. These facets of the job create a lot of pressure, but your worth is not fully bound up in them.” She concluded by saying, with Majors enthusiastically nodding in agreement, “Your worth as a professor is how you exhibit passion for what you do and how you treat students,” lessons she attributes to Taylor and Baxley – the originators of the rippling effects.
