The Sue Marcum Day of Service
Celebrating Professor Marcum’s Impact on the Kogod Community
By Maya Kosover
The Sue Marcum Day of Service kicked off this fall to celebrate the life of the former American
University accounting professor who was killed two years ago.
The November event was organized with The Campus Kitchens Project of Washington D.C. at St.
Luke’s Mission Center.
Marcum was found slain on Oct. 25, 2010 in her home in the Glen Echo area. Montgomery County
has issued a warrant for Jorge Landeros, currently living in Mexico, charging him with first-degree
murder.
A memorial service for Marcum took place in 2011, bringing together almost 800 members of the
AU community.
This year, however, there was a change in direction when it came to planning some way to
commemorate the popular professor.
“Last year, the event that we had was draped in a lot of sorrow,” said Professor Emily Lindsay,
director of the Master of Science in Accounting program. “This year, we’re rejoicing in the spirit that
she had in helping the community.”
The Kogod Accounting Club members decided to hold a day of service not only in memory of their
beloved professor, but as a way to celebrate her impact on others. Volunteers gathered at the AU
Campus Kitchen to prepare meals for a residency for low-income seniors in Northwest D.C.
Remembering a Kogod Legend
Both Kogod faculty and students emphasized how Marcum readily made herself available to her
students.
Lines snaked down the hallway from her often-open door. Students asked for homework help,
sought her advice on professional paths, or asked for ideas on how to become involved in the Kogod
community, said Einar Barr, president of the Kogod Accounting Club.
“You could ask any student that graduated from Kogod why they studied accounting, 90 percent of
them would say because of Professor Marcum,” said Emily Stovicek, who graduated in 2010.
Marcum was known for her connection with the students, Barr said. There also are numerous
stories of her doing things for her students that made the classroom feel close.
“If somebody’s phone used to ring in class, they had to bring breakfast for everyone the following
class,” Barr said. “Or she hated pens, so she would buy the whole class mechanical pencils.”
Not only did Marcum reach out to her students, but she also was an engaged faculty member.
“When I first came to AU to teach, Professor Marcum took me under her wing,” Lindsay said. “I
really appreciated her willingness to lend a hand to a new person.”
Among her many accomplishments at Kogod, Marcum was instrumental in the growth of the
accounting program and the migration of students from the undergraduate program into the
master’s program, said Jesse Boeding, assistant dean for undergraduate programs in the Kogod
School of Business.
“Sue was an amazing person with an amazing spirit,” Boeding said.
A Day of Service through AU Campus Kitchen
Once they decided that the next event should involve some sort of service work, members of the
Kogod Accounting Club started to contact local volunteer organizations, including AU’s Center for
Community Engagement and Service.
“The president of the club reached out to me looking for a way to engage her students,” said Donald
Curtis, coordinator of community engagement and service operations at AU. “We already had the
AU Campus Kitchens Project events every third Saturday of the month, so it only made sense to
connect the two.”
CKP Washington D.C. is part of a nationwide
organization, The Campus Kitchens Project, that
works on recovering food from nearby food
pantries, grocery stores and, in this case, university
kitchens. The food that would otherwise not be
used is prepared and served to hungry people in
the community.
“I was in shock by how many people were so
excited and so into it. Originally, I said, ‘Alright,
we’re going to have about 15 in each shift,’ and then all of a sudden, it grew to 30 in each shift. So
we had over 60 RSVPs,” Barr said.
Since only 10 volunteers were allowed in the kitchen at any given time, shift leaders David Hackney
and the Rev. Kate Murphy assigned different tasks to the rest of the volunteers. While some mopped
and cleaned the church floors, others tended to the community garden.
Universities are perfect partners for the purposes of the program because they provide the food,
facilities and students who are eager to volunteer, said Hackney.
“We inherited this kitchen from the Metropolitan Methodist Church, and we didn’t know how to use
it,” he said. “A bunch of us volunteers just stumbled in here, started making some food. But then we
learned about the Campus Kitchen Program. It gave us some structure, gave us some process and
procedure, and allowed us to do this in a really safe way.”
In January 2012, AU was the first D.C. University to partner up with the Campus Kitchens Project.
“AU is definitely the foundation of our program. Most of our volunteers come from American,”
Hackney said. “We’re looking to expand to other groups to utilize this kitchen.”
With the facilities and food available the group’s goal is to use the kitchen several days out of the
week and provide nearly 1,000 meals a month, Hackney said.
The program hopes to work on some of the administrative and logistic factors, such as deepening
its community outreach, engaging more volunteers, providing more transportation, finding
communities that need food, and partnering up with other universities or volunteer organizations.
About Kogod Accounting Club
Marcum was one of the original founders of the Kogod Accounting Club.
“Sue started the club as a way of energizing the students, engaging them in the profession and also
helping them really have fun working together as part of a community,” Lindsay said.
The club now has more than 500 members, including students, faculty and an involved alumni
presence, Barr said. The numbers have steadily grown since the club eliminated its membership
fees.
Some of the events the club offers include:
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Recruiting events with accounting firms in the D.C. area
Interview tips and tricks
Learning how to network
The club’s most recent event, More Than the Numbers, was offered to freshmen and sophomores to
help them get to know what accounting is all about.
“The accounting profession has certain stereotypes associated with it — ‘You’re a nerd and you like
numbers!’ ”Barr said. “Accounting is not just bookkeeping. It has so much more to it. We try to bring
that side in our events.”
Most of the events are student-run, including the Sue Marcum Day of Service, because the board is
extremely engaged, said Lindsay.
“The students are very excited about making an annual service day and a day of remembrance,”
Lindsay said. “They’ll think about what we might want to do… Something in our local community,
something tied to service, an outreach to people at AU neighborhoods, and perhaps something
involved with student learning. We’ll see what unfolds with next year.”