Sawyers Named Faculty Athletics Rep

Chancellor Randy Woodson appointed accounting professor Roby B. Sawyers to serve as NC State’s new faculty athletics representative, effective July 1. He will chair the Council on Athletics, which assists the chancellor in the exercise of “institutional responsibility and control of intercollegiate athletics” as required by the university, the Atlantic Coast Conference and the National Collegiate Athletics Association.

Sawyers, an expert in tax accounting, is a member of the American Institute of Certified Public Accountants, where he serves on the Pre-certification Education Executive Committee and the Tax Division’s Tax Legislation and Policy Committee.

He previously served on the organization’s Tax Executive Committee, chaired the Trust, Estate and Gift Tax Committee, chaired the task force on estate tax reform, and served on the task force on federal wealth transfer taxes that wrote the Report on Reform of Federal Wealth Transfer Taxes published by the American Bar Association in 2004.

In 2008 he testified before the United States Senate Committee on Finance at a hearing on estate tax reform.

Sawyers also has been involved in North Carolina tax policy issues, serving in 2006 and 2007 as chief of staff to the State and Local Fiscal Modernization Study Commission established by the governor and General Assembly.

He earned a Ph.D. with an emphasis in taxation from Arizona State University, a master’s of accounting from the University of South Florida and an undergraduate degree in business administration from UNC–Chapel Hill.