Dr. Constantine “Connie” Konstans, who found his niche in accounting and education after earning a degree in music and serving in the military, died May 20 — the day before his 78th birthday.
Dr. Constantine “Connie” Konstans began teaching at UT Dallas in 1993.
A longtime professor in the Naveen Jindal School of Management, Konstans recently was honored with a UT Dallas endowed professorship in his name, as well as a Lifetime Achievement Award from D CEO magazine. Early this year he was named a 2013 Fellow of the Open Compliance and Ethics Group, a nonprofit to help organizations achieve principled performance in areas such as governance and assurance.
Those accolades and others highlighted more than 50 years of academic and other achievements. Through the decades, he developed a wide range of professional credentials. He had audit experience with “The Big Four” accounting firms, Deloitte & Touche, Ernst &Young, KPMG Peat Marwick and PricewaterhouseCoopers. His consulting clients included an advertising firm, an aerobics center, banks, government agencies, an oil-and-gas company, food services, major retailers and several electronics firms. He served on several corporate boards.
“Connie Konstans was a brilliant professor who recognized the need early on to prepare students and executives for changing corporate governance and compliance regulations and expectations. His courses and conferences influenced students and executives worldwide.”
Dr. Hobson Wildenthal,
provost and executive vice president at UT Dallas
He also long lent his expertise — as a certified public and certified management accountant, a certified internal auditor and a certified fraud examiner — to professional causes. A past president and ongoing director of the local chapter of Financial Executives International, he had earned FEI’s Lifetime Achievement Award a few years ago, both for his contributions to the group and for creating the JSOM-based Institute for Excellence in Corporate Governance.
“Connie Konstans was a brilliant professor who recognized the need early on to prepare students and executives for changing corporate governance and compliance regulations and expectations,” said Dr. Hobson Wildenthal, provost and executive vice president at UT Dallas. “His courses and conferences influenced students and executives worldwide.”
Jindal School Dean and Caruth Chair of Management Dr. Hasan Pirkul said he was deeply saddened by the loss of Dr. Konstans.
“For the past decade, Dr. Konstans taught students and executives alike the importance of sweeping changes in financial regulations and the corporate responsibilities they entailed by designing courses, organizing conferences and founding the Institute for Excellence in Corporate Governance,” Pirkul said. “He was a wonderful friend and colleague who will be greatly missed.”
Konstans earned a Bachelor of Music, with honors, from Indiana University in 1957.
His subsequent stint in the Army propelled him toward accounting. Assigned to a nuclear-capable surface-to-air missile battery in Milwaukee, he told D CEO, “I noticed that the most influential person on the base … was the comptroller.” That prompted him to take accounting courses, he said, and he realized that he had found his calling.
Konstans earned a master's in accounting from Ohio State University and a PhD in business administration from Michigan State University. He began teaching accounting full time at the University of Cincinnati and subsequently taught full time at Georgia State and Southern Methodist universities, as well as at the University of Memphis, before coming to UT Dallas in 1993.
As director of the accounting programs, he re-engineered the curriculum to reflect a then-new industry focus on information technology.
Former senior vice president at Citigroup Richard Bowen said that Konstans helped launch his teaching career at UT Dallas.
Services
Visitation services will be held for Dr. Constantine Konstans at 7:30 p.m. Thursday, May 23, at The Holy Trinity Greek Orthodox Church, at 13555 Hillcrest Road in Dallas. A funeral service will be held at the church at 10 a.m. on Friday, May 24.
Bowen said Konstans’ IECG Corporate Governance Conference in 2007 helped him determine how to sound the alarm about problem mortgages, an issue Bowen later discussed before a congressional commission and on the 60 Minutes news program.
“Connie was a great guy. He was very influential in a lot of areas that many would never have known about,” Bowen said.
Survivors include his wife, Ekaterina Konstans; two sons, Stephen Konstans and Gregory Konstans; a stepdaughter, Anastasia Konstans; a brother, Clifford Konstans; and a sister, Mary Benson.