R. Chad Dreier, chairman, president, and chief executive officer of The Ryland Group, one of the nation's largest homebuilders and a leading mortgage-finance company, pledged the multi-million dollar gift to help strengthen the training of accountants and their positive influence in American business.

Loyola is one of the few schools in the country to endow a chair placing ethical decision-making at the forefront of accounting education.

"We are at a crossroads in the accounting profession from an ethical standpoint," said Dreier, who also serves as chair of Loyola Marymount's Board of Trustees. "You can hardly pick up a newspaper today without reading about another business scandal. The sheer number of accounting abuses tells us that something more is needed. Without an ethical foundation, organizations collapse."

One of the chair's objectives will be to teach an approach for handling ethical questions and to dispel an attitude among business students that the bottom line is the only relevant consideration. Other goals include strengthening student understanding of ethical issues they may confront and to provide students with the basic tools for addressing and resolving these issues so they enter the business world better prepared to confront such challenges.

"Business schools are the pipeline to the future of business, integrity is the first requirement of success, and a thorough understanding of ethics is part of the foundation of a well-rounded education," said Dreier. "We need to teach our students a sense of moral obligation."

What do you think of the idea of a chairperson that oversees ethics education?

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