Ralph Byington, dean of the E. Craig Wall Sr. College of Business Administration at Coastal Carolina University, has been elected to the Board of Governors of Beta Gamma Sigma (BGS), the international honor society that serves business programs accredited by the Association to Advance Collegiate Schools of Business (AACSB).

"On behalf of Coastal Carolina University and the E. Craig Wall Sr. College of Business Administration, we are extremely honored that Dr. Ralph Byington was elected to the board of governors of Beta Gamma Sigma," says David DeCenzo, president of CCU. "His dedication as dean of his college and as a mentor to CCU's BGS chapter has not gone unnoticed by his peers at various AACSB-accredited schools; he will be a tremendous asset to the board."

Founded in the spring of 1907 at the University of Wisconsin, BGS is a highly selective business honor society whose mission is to encourage and honor academic achievement in the study of business, to foster personal and professional excellence, to advance the values of BFS and to serve its lifelong members. Being a member of BGS is considered to be the highest recognition a business student can receive in an AACSB-accredited business program.

Byington, who was appointed dean of the Wall College in July 2010, previously served as the dean of the School of Business Administration at the University of South Carolina-Aiken and associate dean and director of the School of Accountancy at Georgia Southern University. He has served as a faculty member at Louisiana Tech University and Texas Tech University and taught as a graduate student at the University of Arkansas.

Byington serves on the Initial Accreditation Committee of the AACSB, and has received such honors as the New Faculty Excellence Award from Texas Tech, the College of Business Administration Professor of the Year at Louisiana Tech, as well as three separate outstanding faculty and professorial awards at Georgia Southern. He also served as the director and internal auditor at the University of Southern Mississippi (USM); was an investigator for the PEER Committee for the state of Mississippi; and was chief fiscal officer for the Mississippi Governor's Office for Federal Programs. Byington is also a member of numerous professional organizations and was president of the Southeast chapter of the American Accounting Association and president of the Southeast chapter of the Georgia Society of CPAs.