Remembering our colleague and friend

Professor Jessen Hobson, a talented teacher and scholar, a committed colleague, and a devoted husband and father, passed away suddenly in January after suffering a medical emergency. He was 49 years old.

When he joined the Department of Accountancy in 2009, Jessen brought a deep curiosity and enthusiasm for fostering innovation in research and teaching. He was a colleague who had an endless supply of new ideas for impacting the accounting profession through cutting-edge research, for engaging Gies learners through groundbreaking curricular initiatives, and for advancing the research of his colleagues through laboratory support. Jessen had a tireless work ethic and a collaborative spirit that encouraged discovery.

Throughout his 13 years as a valued faculty member, Jessen embraced the College’s spirit of innovation and advanced it. In 2020, he was named the director of the University of Illinois-Deloitte Foundation Center for Business Analytics, which develops innovative, in-demand courses in the analytics field and makes them widely accessible. He often lauded the work of Gies colleagues, who he said did so much to advance the Center’s tradition of revolutionary data analytics education. Jessen was instrumental in these efforts as well, not only in his work with the Center but through his commitment to integrating data analytics across the accounting curriculum and his leadership in establishing two new interdisciplinary undergraduate degrees with a data science focus – Accountancy + Data Science and Finance + Data Science.

At Gies, we were privileged to be the beneficiaries of Jessen’s generous commitment to his students and colleagues. His work enriched our community and our profession, and his kind spirit made our College a better place.

In addition, Jessen was a co-director of the Gies Behavioral Research Lab, a unique experimental lab that provides research study implementation support for faculty across the College. Jessen took pride in this collaborative and community-building effort, which was years in the making, for its ability to benefit the profession by supporting the innovative research of the accounting faculty and to create opportunities for students, alumni, online learners, and community members to participate in top accounting research studies.

While leading these groundbreaking College and departmental initiatives, Jessen was still able to distinguish himself as a scholar and teacher. His award-winning research was published in the world’s top accounting journals and made an impact on the profession. In addition, he was widely recognized for his exemplary teaching. The American Accounting Association named Jessen a winner of the 2021 Innovation in Accounting Education Award and the 2020 Outstanding Dissertation Chair Award. In 2020, he also earned the Provost’s Campus Distinguished Promotion Award for extraordinary contributions in teaching, service, and impact of research. He was on the University’s List of Teachers Ranked as Excellent by Their Students since 2012.

At Gies, we were privileged to be the beneficiaries of Jessen’s generous commitment to his students and colleagues. His work enriched our community and our profession, and his kind spirit made our College a better place.