It’s quite likely you’ll run into Marshall A. Croom ’86 while you’re an accounting student at Appalachian. Croom is chief risk officer for Lowe’s Companies Inc. – and he returns to campus frequently to support Walker College of Business students.

He has been a longtime recruiter of accounting students and presenter to classes and Beta Alpha Psi meetings. He mentors students through the college’s Executive Mentoring Program. He also has served on the Accounting Advisory Board and Walker College of Business Advisory Council, and was the 2007 Harlan E. Boyles CEO lecturer.

As a young man, he chose Appalachian because he knew it had a strong accounting program and “for me it was a good opportunity to learn, to grow, and to pursue an accounting career to be successful as a student and hopefully successful as a person in life,” he said.

Croom joined Lowe’s in 1997 after an 11-year career with Ernst & Young in Winston-Salem.

His own positive experience as an accounting major led him to stay involved with today’s students. “The students I’ve gotten to know over the years and just getting to know and interact with them and to feel like you’re having an impact and making a difference in someone’s life, I mean that’s what it’s all about,” he said.

The Marshall A. Croom Student Services Center bears his name.