Sandra Shelton was studying for her PhD in accountancy at the University of Wisconsin-Madison in the early 1990s when she was given the opportunity to meet all of the other PhD in accountancy candidates of color from across the United States. There were only seven.
“I can remember each of their faces, their names, everything about them because I was just so happy to see them,” recalled Shelton, the KPMG/Neil F. Casson Endowed Professor of Accountancy at DePaul University, in a
2014 College News interview. “I didn’t even know another person of color who had finished their PhD in accounting. I had never seen one. And I was determined that once I finished the PhD program, I was going to make it easier for other people of color to get a PhD in business.”
Shelton kept that promise by becoming a founding member of the PhD Project. Over nearly three decades the nonprofit organization has inspired hundreds of students of color—including several of Shelton’s DePaul colleagues—to attain PhDs. She was a member of DePaul’s Driehaus College of Business faculty for 27 years, distinguishing herself as an award-winning teacher. Shelton died at Evanston Hospital on Oct. 4 following a stroke.
Read the full obituary on the
Driehaus College of Business website.