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Accounting scandals at Enron and telecom giant WorldCom, another Andersen client, made people think there was "something wrong at Andersen," he added. "But at the end of the day, it isn't auditors that make companies come down. I know that we did good work."

Jason Woodbury graduated from Baylor in 1994, then got his MBA in 1998, going to work in Andersen's Dallas office in September 1998 as a business consultant. He, too, noted that the people he worked with showed personal and professional integrity and said an "overzealous justice department" felt pressure from the American public to act, using Andersen as an example of what it could do to other companies. "I think that Arthur Andersen was maybe some low-hanging fruit and was an easy one to go after," Woodbury said.

He works at Lucidity Consulting in the strategic finance solutions group. The job is similar to what he was doing at Andersen, and he is working with about 10 of the same people he worked with there, starting a new group "from scratch." Many former Andersen people did just what he did -- moved to another firm within a group, he said. "You build a bond and friendship with co-workers, a sense of camaraderie, if you will. The nature of the work we do requires a lot of teamwork. Rarely do you go out on a project solo. The people you work with are very important, and the level of trust in your coworkers is very important." Also, said Woodbury, teams usually possess diverse skills, and that makes jobs easier to get.

Most Andersen partners in audit and tax who were younger than 50 have wound up in a group deal with one of the other Big Four accounting firms, Deloitte Touche Tohmatsu, Ernst & Young, KPMG or PricewaterhouseCoopers, said Wedemeyer. For younger Andersen employees, the scenario is more mixed. He estimated that about 20 percent changed careers, and some returned to school. But most of them went with other firms.

"The guys in management, and technical specialists, which is a lot of what I did, were sort of in a different category," Wedemeyer said. "We weren't doing a lot of direct client work. We were managing the practice. That's not a very good fit with the other firms."

People with that background are "still looking around" he said. As of late 2002, he was doing the same.

Paul Dunn, who got a master's degree at Baylor in 1981, had worked at Andersen since 1990. When he left the company in July 2002, he was a partner in business consulting.

"It was a great source of pride to be a partner," said Dunn, who lives in Dallas and now performs a similar service at Experio Solutions, a management consultancy owned by Hitachi Corp. He works with the same partners he worked with at Andersen and serves many of the same clients.

"I think the cornerstones that the firm stood for, professionalism, stewardship and client service, are things to be proud of."

While Dunn went to Baylor to obtain his master's because of its academic reputation and strong accountancy program, he found other Baylor qualities, such as a network of relationships, helped sustain him during the downfall of his company. "A lot of times people say that adversity builds character. We found out that it reveals character," said Dunn. "We saw certain character flaws revealed that we had not seen before, revealed sometimes very publicly. That's always disappointing. Being able to rely on friendships and relationships with fellow Baylor graduates and faculty who seemed to understand the issues involved was very comforting."

Dunn, who like Wedemeyer recruited for Andersen, said the company "always sought the top Baylor graduates, and the top Baylor graduates always sought Arthur Andersen." His advice these days to graduates?

"I would advise people to look for a firm that's committed to investing in the individual and to their professional growth, and to exposing them to a variety of professional experiences and a variety of opportunities for advancement in the company," said Dunn. He called continuous learning during one's career a "draw" for Arthur Andersen, which emphasized a strong commitment to professional development.

Chanelle Johnson graduated from Baylor in May 2000 with both a BBA and a master's of taxation. By June 2000 she was employed at Andersen, and worked there just short of two years. When the company crumbled, she moved to KPMG with many of the same people she had worked with at Andersen. A member of the private client services group doing individual taxation and personal financial planning at Andersen, Johnson now performs the same services she did before.

When she first discovered what was happening at Andersen, Johnson said she cried. "How sad it is for those who were corrupted, because they don't know where true happiness comes from," she said. "I also was sad for stakeholders, for ex-employees and shareholders."

Johnson, who said she relied on her faith in God during the crisis, said she has gained more appreciation of "how greediness corrupts and how selfishness adversely affects innocent stakeholders, including Arthur Andersen and Enron employees and Enron shareholders."

The experience confirmed for her the importance of having an emergency fund and of periodically updating her resume, she said. She also gained a great appreciation for the lessons she learned at Baylor about the risks involved in auditing and "how crucial business ethics is."

The former students mentioned lessons they learned at Baylor that went beyond the boundaries of the classroom. Johnson said she felt support from a professor who sent her an encouraging e-mail.

The simple gesture of a lunch in Dallas for about 50 Baylor alumni who worked at Andersen, hosted by Dean Terry Maness and several Baylor faculty members, touched Dunn. "That meant a lot to us as a group because we had been through a lot of turmoil," he said. "I'm not sure any other faculty reached out like that."

Maness said he and faculty, as well as key alumni, started talking about the idea near the end of summer. "We decided it would be a good idea to show our support…and to tell them how much they mean to us," said Maness. He said he and other faculty also went to Houston and would have done it elsewhere if they could have. "Our alumni connection is something that we need to develop more fully than we have. This is our initial step to find significant events in the lives of alums to develop that," he said. One of his goals is to create ways of connecting alumni so that Baylor can help them with career changes. But he was gratified to discover at the Houston and Dallas lunches that "a large proportion had landed with other accounting firms or clients."

The problems at Andersen and elsewhere have not turned students away from accounting degrees, he said. "What's interesting is that our accounting majors have surged. There's still a need for accountants, and this has attracted attention to the industry."

Or, as Wedemeyer put it, "This is not one where work went away. It just went down the street." But Andersen's collapse generated many ripples, Wedemeyer noted. "If you take a guy who has been retired for a number of years, living off retirement that was largely funded by earlier earnings, he is now living off Social Security." While younger retirees got their money, other young employees lost their capital, "which is substantial," he said. "The 85,000 in the United States…in terms of the breadth, it's a great deal more than the 4,000 you hear about on Enron. I'm not going to drag it around, but it sure is hard to get over."

But he, like others, will go on to other things.

As Treadwell said, "We are where we are, and all of us are starting someplace else. We can all feel sorry for ourselves, but at the end of the day, a lot of people are going to turn this into an opportunity."