There’s one of a kind and then there’s C.J. Skender.

The accounting professor has taught 353 courses and over 35,000 students at Carolina since his first class 42 summers ago.

It’s an impressive achievement but it doesn’t get to the heart of who he is.

Skender is the kind of guy who sends an apology email if he’s running 5 minutes late. He will call you “my friend” and do his best impression of Rodney Dangerfield in “Back to School” or Jack Nicholson in “A Few Good Men.”

He’s self-deprecating, disarmingly funny and always nattily dressed, often sporting Carolina blue suspenders or braces, a bow tie (three times a week without fail), lapel pins and a crisp pocket square. His email signature includes the number of days he has been married to his wife, Mary Anne. More recently, he includes the number of days he has been alive.

Skender always taught the way he would’ve wanted to be taught. He gives out candy bars for correct answers, asks sports trivia questions and plays music that’s related to the material he’s covering or sets a tone for the class.

When you had an 8 a.m. accounting class and Skender was your professor, you didn’t miss it. When it was full, you added yourself to the waitlist.

Skender’s final class of 2023 was the last class of his remarkable career. Retirement means spending more time with his wife, his three adult children (all Carolina alumni) and his eight grandchildren.

After a career in six different decades spread across three major North Carolina universities, collecting dozens of professional honors and helping shape the careers of countless students, Skender has earned it.

“You know, at 300 wins, you’re in Cooperstown if you’re a major league pitcher,” he says.

The truth is that Skender was a hall of famer soon after he began teaching.

The skewed way

The shelves in Skender’s office overflow with accounting textbooks, biographies and sports memorabilia. His high school basketball jersey (No. 44) sits framed, and music posters take up wall space. VHS tapes and DVDs, alphabetized and well-worn from showing clips in class, take up some shelves, too: “Billy Madison,” “The Blues Brothers,” “Bye Bye Birdie,” “Caddyshack.”

Everything comes with a story. There are lists of songs he played in class over the decades, including “Ain’t No Mountain High Enough,
which he also played when he proposed to his wife. Two of his favorite songs are “Carolina in My Mind” (expected) and “Gangsta’s Paradise” (only unexpected if you don’t know him well).

When then-Carolina basketball star Luke Maye (BSBA ’19) walked into Skender’s accounting class at 8 a.m. the morning after his last-second game-winning shot against Kentucky that sent the Tar Heels to the Final Four in 2017, Skender played “First of May” by the Bee Gees, “Maybe Baby” by the Crickets, “Maggie May” by Rod Stewart and “May I” by Bill Deal and the Rhondels.

Skender is a good teacher because of his ability to enliven a classroom and his deep accounting expertise. He is a great teacher because he believes in the potential of every student who enters his classroom.

“I always try to see the best in others and do the best I can,” says Skender. “Everyone has a dream. What matters is that you try to live that dream. If you aim for the stars, perhaps you don’t quite get that high, but you get awfully close. You’re still successful.”

Skender’s approach to teaching and personal engagement was showcased in Adam Grant’s book “Give and Take,” a look at how helping others drives success. Grant describes Skender’s impact in the classroom as impossible to quantify.

“You’re the Michael Jordan of teaching accounting,” Grant wrote in a retirement message to Skender, “so I’m holding out hope that you’ll follow in his footsteps and un-retire at least twice.”

Since 1979, Skender has taught at Carolina, NC State University and Duke University—simultaneously for several years—and received numerous teaching honors from them all. At UNC Kenan-Flagler, he won three Weatherspoon Awards, including one in 2023, for Teaching Excellence in the Undergraduate Business Program and Master of Accounting Program (MAC). He received the university’s James M. Johnston Teaching Excellence Award in 2005.

Students once voted him the best professor in a Daily Tar Heel survey. Poets & Quants included him on its list of the top 40 undergraduate professors and Bloomberg Businessweek named him one of the 10 best undergraduate teachers in America.

He’s a member of the Wells Fargo Hall of Fame, worked as a training consultant for Siemens and IBM, and taught on local cable TV. He co-wrote “Financial Accounting” and accumulated 11 professional certifications for accounting, management, insurance and financial planning.

He’s likely the only accounting professor to ever be featured both in the Journal of Accountancy and on ESPN.

“Not everybody likes accounting, but it was never a goal of mine to change people’s minds about it,” he says. “I wanted them to look forward to coming to class and enjoy the time when they’re there. Hopefully, I made it a little bit easier for them.”