Student for a Lifetime

Judy Laux ’77 is the kind of person who wants to get way more than the gist of it. At CC, she routinely spent 14 hours a day studying. “I would cage myself up in a room. I just wanted to know everything,” she says.

Today, she continues her trek down the road of knowledge by teaching economics at CC. “I guess becoming a professor was the easiest way to be a student my whole life,” she says.

One of her teaching specialties is financial accounting, a subject she fell in love with during a class taught by Professor Bill Barton. She calls it the hardest course she ever took in her life, including grad school, so it figures that she made a career out of it.

And while some might find the accounting field a tad dry, Laux is visibly excited about it. Her eyes light up even brighter when the conversation turns to the accounting world’s new bad boys: Enron and WorldCom. Their demise is bad news for shareholders, but it makes her job more interesting. “There’s always something to talk about,” she says.

She has a simple word of advice for investors looking to cushion their holdings from another Enron situation: diversify. “Don’t put all your eggs in one basket,” she says.

Following all the criminal mischief is fun, but in the end, Laux says, the best part of the job is working with students: “When they get excited, I get excited. I enjoy being in an academic setting. That’s why I ended up back here!”