By Alexa Ganzeveld

Dr. Kristopher Blanchard joined the Wartburg College faculty this fall as an assistant professor of accounting.

WHY WARTBURG: My wife and I wanted to stay in northeast Iowa and saw this as a way to do that long term. This is a good place to live, and we can be close to family.

TEACHING EXPERIENCE: This is my 19th year as a full-time faculty member. I’ve worked for North Central University in Minneapolis and Crown College outside of Minneapolis. I also served as the dean of faculty at Globe University for several years, and then for the last nine years I was at Upper Iowa University.

WHY ACCOUNTING: I squeezed my bachelor’s degree into 10 years. While doing that I worked for several Fortune 500 companies, and I started my own business as well. What I learned through that process is that accounting is the language of business. I had started as a management major and when I went back to finish my degree, I became an accounting major because I felt that would help me be a better manager. After I finished my undergraduate degree, I worked for another Fortune 500 company as a manager and felt like going on and getting my MBA. During my MBA, I had the opportunity to start teaching and I fell in love with it.

APPLYING WORK EXPERIENCE IN CLASSES: I want to help students see the connections. I try to help them understand what managers think about. I also take what’s happening in the real world and apply it to the topics we’re covering in class. On top of that, I want to get them out of the classroom and into the real world, to access the best learning lab.

WORKING WITH STUDENTS: Throughout my career, I’ve worked with organizations to do projects. At North Central University I helped start a recording studio with a music business student. We developed a recording studio so students can learn how to produce, how to run a recording studio, run a label, everything else, and that became part of the curriculum. Whatever I can do to tie students to the real world, I do that.

WHAT CLASSES ARE YOU TEACHING: I’m teaching Principles of Accounting and Intermediate Accounting this semester. In the spring, I’m teaching Business Finance and Governmental and Nonprofit Accounting, which is my true passion. I am a social entrepreneur and I have entrepreneurial spirit. I do believe we can use business to change the world. Working with college students to find ways that we can use business to change the world, that’s my passion. We work with a lot of nonprofits for the projects in that class.

TELL US ABOUT YOUR COKE COLLECTION: I started with the twisty top green bottle that I got back in 1988. I just started collecting different Coke memorabilia which everybody thinks that means bottles, which I have a lot of bottles, but I like finding weird things related to Coca-Cola. Over the years, international students have brought me Coke bottles from other countries. My parents have been overseas a lot, I’ve been overseas, so picking up different things from different countries has been cool. It’s also a great conversation piece, for instance, for students when they stop by to talk a little bit about it.

WHAT YOU’RE EXCITED FOR AT WARTBURG: Working at Wartburg has given me an opportunity to be closer to the community and really start being more involved, other than being here on Sunday morning. I’m excited about getting to know the students, I’m excited about learning about Wartburg, not just Wartburg history but getting to learn about the culture and finding out how we can do more of the service-learning and experiential learning in the business program.