Ellen Sweatt may be retiring, but not before a proper salute from some of the countless accounting students she has impacted during 28 years as a Georgia Perimeter College associate professor.

“I’m just so lucky that I had a chance to meet her before she retired,” said Yvonne Ifang Wang, a GPC graduate and current Georgia State accounting student. “It’s been a blessing to know her because she’s very caring.”

Wang and 24 more of Sweatt’s former and current students attended Student Scholarship Night coordinated annually by Sweatt and sponsored by the North Perimeter Chapter of CPAs.

“This is one of the highlights of my life,” Sweatt said of the event, during which the North Perimeter Chapter and the Educational Foundation of the Georgia Society of CPAs awarded nearly $18,000 to 11 current and former GPC students.

Georgia Perimeter graduate, past scholarship recipient and current Deloitte auditor Pratiwi Yap showed up to share her appreciation for Sweatt’s influence on her success.

Yap migrated to the United States—alone—after the 2006 Tsunami in Indonesia left her family devastated. She had learned English only months before arriving and, with the assistance of an uncle in Atlanta, moved into a tiny apartment with no furniture and only a thin mat on which to sleep.

Not long after, she enrolled at Georgia Perimeter, where she studied accounting and took classes from Ellen Sweatt.

“It takes only one lecture to know how lively she is—so full of enthusiasm for teaching and passionate about accounting,” Yap wrote in a letter that also praised Sweatt for helping her apply for scholarships and develop business acumen. “She is totally available to students even to the point of giving out her home phone.”

In fact, Sweatt and her husband developed such a strong bond with Yap that they helped her pay for college. 

Since 1987, under Sweatt’s leadership, the North Perimeter Chapter of the Georgia Society of CPAs has raised $364,000 for accounting scholarships, faculty development and classroom technology on Dunwoody Campus where she taught for nearly three decades.

In 1997, she became the first and only recipient from a two-year college to be named Educator of the Year by the Educational Foundation of CPAs.

But Sweatt’s support of students comes with an expectation.

“Anything that I’ve done to make life better for you, do it for five more people,” she always tells them.

When Georgia Perimeter alumnus Michael Maiorano enrolled as an accounting student at GPC, it was after a miserable attempt at college elsewhere.

“When I first signed up for her class, the first thing she said was ‘My name is Ms. Sweatt, like perspiration, and you will do a lot of that in this class,’” Maiorano recalls.  “And I thought, aah, this is going to be horrible.”

Instead Sweatt became a stalwart supporter of Maiorano, right up until he landed a coveted position at one of Atlanta’s largest accounting firms. He is now the youngest principal at that firm.

“She was a defining change in my life, and I don’t think I’d be here without her,” Maiorano told those attending the scholarship banquet, where Interim GPC President Rob Watts also spoke.

Sweatt’s official retirement date is later this month, with her parting message for past and current students remaining the same.

“I hope that all the seeds I’ve spread with you get shared multiple times.”