Faithfully Accounted For

Professor of Accounting Dr. Roger Stichter’s “Intermediate Accounting” course is known as one of the most rigorous courses in the Grace College academic catalog. If your child or roommate is taking the course, you’ll likely know about it. The workload is heavy. The content is dense. It might just cause an accounting student to question why they chose the major in the first place: the perfect opportunity to remind students why they’re here. Stichter does so by walking his class through 1 Thessalonians, where Paul explains to the church in Thessalonica what he was trying to accomplish while living among them.

Stichter reminds students that they’re not studying accounting to make a lot of money but rather to go out into the world and make Christ known. 

Growing Up and Working Hard

Stichter came from humble beginnings. A self-proclaimed “farm boy,” he grew up in Bremen, Indiana, and was raised by a conservative Mennonite family. His family taught him at an early age the value of hard work. They attended a small church mainly composed of factory workers and farmers. For the Stichter family, and most families Stichter knew growing up, giving your best was not a request; it was an expectation. 

This mindset drove Stichter to succeed in high school. A four-sport athlete and an academic achiever, he set his sights on higher education despite neither of his parents having attended college. 

Stichter enrolled at Goshen College in 1978 as a business administration major. He found out quickly he wasn’t the smartest kid in school. Unlike in high school, his natural ability paired with his work ethic didn’t land him at the top of his class. 

By the time he was a senior, Stichter realized he had to specialize. He began taking all the upper-level accounting classes he could and worked hard, but it took everything he had to scrape by with low As. Then he took intermediate accounting, arguably the most challenging accounting class. 

“My first grade on a test was a low C, and I was shocked,” said Stichter. “But the next class period, after we got our tests back, a third of the class never returned. So I assumed they did a lot worse. I decided I was going to work at this thing. For the first time in my life, I learned how to study. I changed my habits, got an A in the class, and was the top student on the final exam.”

“What I Was Created For”

After graduating from college with a general business degree, Stichter acquired a fair amount of accounting knowledge, but he didn’t have the degree. He didn’t know how to navigate the interview process, and he was looking for jobs outside of hiring season. 

After being turned down at his first interview, his intermediate accounting professor, Dave Stauffer, reached out to him. Stauffer was the managing partner of a smaller CPA firm called Stauffer & Company, where he took his first job in public accounting.

“I didn’t know anything about what it would be like or what I was doing,” said Stichter. “The partner comes in, drops a huge stack of papers on my desk, and says, ‘Here’s your first job. We’re doing a compilation. Do it.’”

After more explanation from another colleague, Stichter finished the project and submitted it to the partner for review. At the end of the month, the partner came to Stichter’s cubicle and asked if he had recorded all of his hours on the job. It turned out he had completed the job faster than the guy who had been there for the last five years.

“At that point, I realized this is what I was created to do,” said Stichter. “For some reason, God made my brain to process this information faster than other people.”

Stichter continued to excel in public accounting, doing everything from audits to taxes. But his busy season was long, and he had a wife and child at home. He transitioned to a job at Miller’s Merry Manor, where he found great success. He was promoted several times and given the once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to become an owner of a new corporation called Caremet at 29 years old. 

After praying about it, Stichter became convinced it was not what God had for him and declined the offer. He was promoted to become the company’s controller, supervising four divisions with responsibility for more than 100 employees, handling all accounting, IT, collections, and internal audit functions. 

In 1990, Stichter flipped through Goshen’s alumni magazine. He found a blurb from the president exhorting Christian business professionals to teach students what it means to be a Christian in the business world. 

“I sat there thinking, ‘This is me,’” said Stichter. “‘I know this is what I’m supposed to do.’” 

Faithful Suffering

After completing his master’s at IU South Bend, Stichter started teaching at Grace in January of 1995. 

It took him a few years to settle before his daughter, Rebecca, arrived in March of 1997. Rebecca was born with a three-chambered heart and VATER syndrome, a rare congenital disorder. She spent 21 of her 26 months of life at Riley Children’s Hospital, and Stichter and his wife spent much of that time at the Ronald McDonald House. 

During these trying years, Stichter says Grace was the perfect place to be. Vice President of Academic Affairs Dr. Dave Plaster (BA 71, MDiv 74, ThM 84) gave Stichter ultimate flexibility. As long as his classes were taken care of, he was not required to be on campus, no questions asked. 

“If I had kept my corporate job, and if I had become an owner of Caremet, I would have either lost my job, my family or both,” said Stichter. “Our social worker said 85% of the dads of a child with a heart issue at Riley leave the family.”

Stichter looks back and sees the intricacies of God’s divine timing.

Building a Program

As Stichter got back into a regular teaching routine, he got to work building the program and strengthening its reputation. When he arrived, there were 13 students majoring in accounting. 

“One of the keys to our program is you don’t have to be the smartest, and you don’t have to be the best, but you do have to work hard,” said Stichter. 

And Stichter promises his students he will work equally hard for them: He’ll return their homework the next day and hold review sessions before tests. He will go above and beyond the job description to give his best to students.

“I expect a lot,” said Stichter. “There’s a lot of homework. It’s going to take time. And the goal is to help you learn how to learn better. This will help you throughout your life, whether you’re in marketing, management, or accounting.” 

Stichter’s approach to teaching was attractive to students. By 2001, the 13 majors had nearly tripled.

At the time, Stichter was offered a job as CFO at White’s Residential & Family Services, now named Josiah White’s. Every year, Grace would call Stichter and ask him to come back. But he loved his job at White’s and felt the Lord had more work for him there. 

A few years in, the C-suite leaders at White’s read “Good to Great” by Jim Collins. In the book, Collins asserts businesses should operate where three concentric circles intersect: what you’re passionate about, what you could be best in the world at, and what makes you money. In the middle of those circles is your sweet spot.

“For some reason, God said, ‘Apply that to your own life,’” said Stichter. “So I did. Every time I applied it to my life, I realized my passion was teaching, and the thing I could be the best in the world at was teaching. The problem was the finances.”

With six kids and a commitment to his wife staying at home, he would need a pay raise. When Grace asked him to come back the third year, his answer had changed.

“I said, ‘Look, I’ll mow the lawns in the summer. I’ll do whatever you want. But I do want to come back,’” said Stichter. “‘I believe God wants me back at Grace.’” 

When Stichter returned to Grace in 2004, the number of accounting majors had dropped back to 13. Stichter began to grow the program again, identifying students on campus who were gifted at dealing with numbers. 

“Part of my passion is ensuring young people don’t miss it if this is how God’s made them,” said Stichter. “Because I almost did miss it.”

Within 10 years, the program had 40 to 50 majors, and in 2010, Grace’s graduates made program history: They scored 10th in the nation on the CPA exam pass rate among nearly 800 schools. 

“They were an unusually gifted group of students academically, and many of them have gone on to high-level careers,” said Stichter. “When we had our senior banquet at the Boathouse, I gave a little farewell speech, and I cried.”

The top-10 CPA pass rate report put the program on the map. People started taking notice, and Stichter started tracking the graduates’ pass rates year to year.

Devotionals from Accounting Classes

Stichter’s pre-class devotionals can be traced back to the ‘90s. What started as simple prayers before class became something more meaningful. Stichter was convicted to create devotionals to share from his life. 

“My goal in education has always been for students to see me as a believer first and a teacher or an accountant next,” said Stichter. 

In 2005, Stichter decided he wanted to be more intentional with his devotions, so he spent the summer reading through the entire New Testament and trying to identify topics that would impact students. As a result, he developed several series of devotionals, some derived from books of Scripture, such as 1 Thessalonians, and others on topics like what God thinks about money or how Christians should handle hardship and suffering.

In 2010, the graduating class that scored 10th in the nation on the CPA exam encouraged Stichter to make his devotionals into books. He blew it off at first, but after completing his doctorate, he started writing down his devotionals and has published two books: “Devotionals from Accounting Classes” and “The Principle of Maximums.”

To this day, Stichter’s graduates come to him when they lose a job or a sense of identity, and he reminds them of the right order of things: Before they are a professional or an accountant, they are a child of God. 

Roger Stichter Endowed Chair of Accounting

After four years as dean of the School of Business while working on a doctorate, teaching three-quarters time, and overseeing significantly more advisees than when he began, Stichter was burned out. At just the right time, Jeff Wiesinger (BS 91) gave a lead gift to raise funds for the Dr. Roger Stichter Endowed Chair of Accounting. The $1.5 million raised allowed the school to fully fund an additional accounting professor’s salary outside its annual budget – a reflection of just how much of an impact Stichter had on his hundreds of alumni. 

In 2023, Danielle (Deal BS 18, MBA 23) Duff joined her former professor as a colleague. 

“Danielle has made my life so much easier,” said Stichter. “Right from the beginning, she understood the program and what we emphasize.” 

As Stichter hands off the baton of leadership after 28 faithful years of service to the institution, he hopes the core pillars of the program remain: students work hard, obediently walk with God, seek Him in prayer, and take their skills and witness into the world. 

“That’s the goal,” said Stichter. “It’s all about giving students a skill set to take into a part of the world that needs a witness for Christ.” 

Fast Facts: 

• Stichter has ridden his bike coast to coast and around the perimeters of Indiana and Michigan. 
• He is a board member for the Indiana CPA Society.
• He sends Christmas cards every year to all 350+ of his graduates. 
• Since 1997, the accounting program has grown more than sixfold.
• Grace has graduated numerous high-grade winners from the Indiana Certified Public Accountant Society, scoring among the top 10 highest cumulative scores in the state.
• In 2010, the graduating class’s first-time CPA pass rates were in the top 10 among all schools nationwide. 
• In 2020, Grace’s CPA pass rates ranked in the top 7% nationwide for “first-time, small programs.”