Accounting Department Update 2019 by Isenberg School of Management

2019

ACCOUNTING DEPARTMENT UPDATE

ACCOUNTING

IN THIS ISSUE Message from the Chair

Accounting at Isenberg

Department News

Strength in Auditing

MSA and Transitions Program

Graduate Certificate in Forensic Accounting

Alumni Highlights

Student Profile

Community

UNIVERSITY OF MASSACHUSETTS AMHERST

MESSAGE FROM THE CHAIR DEAR ACCOUNTING ALUMNI AND FRIENDS, We are proud to share our recent successes and national recognition for the Accounting Program at Isenberg. Here’s what’s been happening:

RECENT HIGHLIGHTS FROM OUR NATIONALLY ACCLAIMED FACULTY •

ur faculty ranks #2 in the nation in auditor O judgment and decision-making research and #7 in the nation in audit research overall.** About 60 percent of our students go into auditing, and they are being taught by the nation’s thought leaders in auditing and auditor judgment.

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s one of the worldwide centers of audit research, A our school is now one of the permanent hosts of the International Symposium on Audit Research, beginning in 2019.

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ssistant Professor Andy Kitto was selected among A faculty nationally to be one of three Research Fellows at the U.S. Public Company Accounting Oversight Board (PCAOB) in Washington, D.C. Andy’s work informs the PCAOB of the economic implications of its policy decisions.

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ur new Graduate Certificate in Forensic O Accounting, offered in our MSA Program, is being led by Lynda Schwartz, who was literally one of the original pioneers of EY’s global forensics practice for more than two decades.

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s one of the world’s leading audit researchers, A Professor Chris Agoglia is serving as the Senior Editor of Auditing, the world’s premier audit research journal.

OUR STUDENT EXPERIENCE IS AMONG THE BEST IN THE NATION •

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ur students keep winning national competitions. O This year, Isenberg Accounting students won Deloitte’s national Project Run With It competition and placed second nationally for the second year in a row in the EY Inclusive Leadership competition. This follows other recent awards as national champions or national finalists in PwC, Grant Thornton, and EY case competitions. ur Volunteer Income Tax Assistance (VITA) O program again won the IRS’s national award for most volunteers, most volunteer hours, and most returns prepared. Every year we have one of the five largest VITA programs in the nation, helping low-income people with their taxes free of charge. ur large and rapidly growing Master of Science in O Accounting (MSA) program has about 250 students (and counting), offering students New England’s #1 ranked MSA program* at about half the cost of the many Boston-area private universities we compete with. Students can take classes in our state-of-theart Business Innovation Hub, a $62 million facility opened in January 2019 in Amherst, online, or (starting this fall) at our newly acquired Mount Ida campus in the Boston area.

The reputation and value of an Isenberg Accounting degree keeps on growing! Go Isenberg! Go UMass! Sincerely,

M. David Piercey, PhD Professor, John F. Kennedy Endowed Professor Accounting Department Chair *Source: 2018 Public Accounting Report **Source: 2017 BYU Research Rankings, top 6 accounting journals, past decade 3

UNDERGRADUATE ACCOUNTING PROGRAM RANKINGS

#2 MASTER OF SCIENCE IN ACCOUNTING PROGRAM RANKINGS

#1 #3

IN NEW ENGLAND SMALL FACULTY SIZES, ENTIRE U.S.

Public Accounting Report 2018 Rankings

UNIVERSITY OF MASSACHUSETTS AMHERST

IN NEW ENGLAND

SMALL FACULTY SIZES, ENTIRE U.S.

Public Accounting Report 2018 Rankings

ACCOUNTING AT ISENBERG At the Isenberg School of Management at UMass Amherst, we focus on preparing accounting students to make informed, data-driven financial decisions for businesses. The expert faculty and diverse classroom and professional experiences at Isenberg teach students to avoid competitive traps and unlock new growth opportunities so they’ll be valued advisors to their clients.

WE DO THIS BY OFFERING: • Expert faculty who are top leaders in the auditing field. Our faculty ranks second in the nation when it comes to auditor decision making and seventh overall in auditing. Considering that the majority of students start in the auditing field, learning from our award-winning faculty gives them a true competitive advantage. • Flexible and efficient curricular options. Our curriculum allows students to graduate in seven semesters with a bachelor of business administration and to complete a master of science in accounting, all within four years plus a summer. This is a costeffective, timely approach to meeting education requirements for CPA certification. • Teaching, tutoring, and mentoring opportunities. Many of our talented seniors are teaching assistants in various courses across Isenberg, including accounting. They are actively involved as tutors and mentors.

• Hands-on experience. We give students real-world skills, like the Semester in the Profession internship program, the Volunteer Income Tax Assistance program, and case challenges offered by many of the accounting firms. • A ACSB Accounting Accreditation. AACSB represents the highest standard of achievement for business schools worldwide. Isenberg is part of the one percent of the world’s 13,000 business programs that have earned the AACSB Accounting Accreditation. AACSB-accredited schools produce highly skilled graduates valued by employers over graduates from non-accredited schools. Isenberg is proud to have this distinction. .

Isenberg’s bachelor of business administration (BBA) yields employment opportunities in most private accounting and finance jobs and offers exceptional preparation for a graduate degree. Isenberg’s master of science in accounting (MSA) program allows students to complete their degree in as few as two semesters after the senior year. Taught by some of the world’s top researchers, Isenberg’s doctoral program in accounting prepares students for exceptional academic careers in business schools. Isenberg also offers a transitions program that allows students without an accounting degree to gain entry in the MSA program after successful completion of an accelerated prerequisite curriculum.

DEPARTMENT NEWS ISENBERG STUDENTS EXCEL IN COMPETITIONS “Participating in national and regional case competitions has been a fantastic learning experience,” observes Rachel Sanderson, a senior-year accounting major at Isenberg, who will join PwC as a forensic accountant after graduation. “Simulations in the classroom are valuable, but you need to apply what you’ve learned,” she says. “For me, case competitions have been the best way to accomplish that.” Last August, at the accounting honors society Beta Alpha Psi’s annual meeting, Rachel was on the national championship team in the Project Run With It competition. The competition, which was sponsored by Deloitte, targets social and pragmatic issues valued by the accounting profession. “The firms take the teams’ recommendations very seriously. In fact, they implement many of them,” observes Cathy Lowry, Isenberg’s faculty advisor to the school’s Beta Alpha Psi (BAP) chapter, Delta Nu. Rachel and her three teammates—from the University of Wisconsin Whitewater, the University of South Dakota, and Elon University—devised strategies to help the Maryland Society of CPAs increase its membership, especially by targeting younger accountants. “Rachel was Isenberg’s hands-down choice for the competition,” explains Professor Lowry. “She had lots of experience in previous competitions and she’s also our BAP chapter’s vice president of competitions.” That experience includes first-place honors in the 2017 Kohl Invitational

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Competition, where she joined forces with two Isenberg marketing majors and accounting major Kylie Patterson ‘19. The team proposed seniormanagement-level solutions to a firm’s high-priority challenges. In another win, a team of Isenberg accounting students captured second-place honors in Deloitte’s 2018 FanTAXtic case competition’s North Atlantic Division. “It’s invitation-only and a big deal just to be invited,” emphasizes Lowry. The Isenberg students tackled a 200-page case. Their challenge: determine whether a client should switch from a C corporation to an S corporation, given the new Tax Act. At the national BAP meeting, another Isenberg team earned second-place honors in EY’s national Inclusivity Awards. The students presented a proposal abstract (no case study involved) for inclusivity initiatives, which they subsequently implemented. These included hosting EY’s U.S. inclusivity director, Ken Bouyer, who described his firm’s initiatives to Isenberg students. The team also lent support to the LGBTQ community through the campus’s Stonewall Center and advocated inclusivity at a local elementary school. This spring, Isenberg and EY will cohost a case competition at the school, and next fall, they will team up for a daylong Inclusivity Conference at Isenberg. “These and similar activities have sparked increasing student enthusiasm and involvement,” notes Lowry. “Just as important, they’ve raised our program’s national profile in the accounting industry. We are gaining national attention and contributing to Isenberg’s reputation. You might say that we are helping to brand Isenberg itself.”

FACULTY RESEARCH HIGHLIGHTS Isenberg’s nationally acclaimed faculty have been actively conducting research for publication in the field’s top journals over the past year: The Accounting Review •

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Jeremy Bentley. “Decreasing Operational Distortion and Surrogation through Narrative Reporting” (in press). David Piercey and Chris Agoglia. “Custom Contrast Analysis: Current Trends and a New Approach,” with R. Guggenmos (2018). Yao Yu. “Management’s Responsibility Acceptance, Locus of Breach, and Investors’ Reactions to Internal Control Reports,” with H-T. Tan (2018).

Journal of Accounting Research •

Jeremy Bentley. “Disentangling Managers’ and Analysts’ Non-GAAP Reporting,” with T. Christensen, K. Gee and B. Whipple (2018).

Accounting, Organizations and Society •

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Bradley Bennett. “Staff Auditors’ Proclivity for Computer Mediated Communication with Clients and its Effect on Skeptical Behavior,” with R. Hatfield (2018). Graham Gal. “The Influence of a Good Relationship between the Internal Audit and Information Security Functions on Information Security Outcomes,” with P. Steinbart, R. Raschke, and W. Dilla (2018).

Contemporary Accounting Research •

Yao Yu. “Do Investors React Differently to Material versus Immaterial CSR Initiatives?” with A. Guiral, D. Moon, and H-T. Tan (in press).

Journal of Accounting and Public Policy •

Matt Sherwood. “Effects of SOC 404(b) Implementation on Audit Fees by SEC Filer Size Category,” with M. Ettredge and L. Sun (2018).

Abacus •

Matt Sherwood. “The Structure and Attributes of a Strong Board of Directors,” with A. Masli and R. Srivastava (2018).

STRENGTH IN AUDITING The Isenberg Accounting Department has developed a specialized expertise in the field of auditing: Our faculty ranks number two in the nation in auditor judgment research and number seven in the nation in auditing overall, per the 2017 Brigham Young University faculty rankings of publications in the top six journals over the past decade. What’s more, the University of Massachusetts Amherst will be one of the permanent hosts of the International Symposium on Audit Research beginning in 2019. Three Isenberg faculty members—Chris Agoglia, Bradley Bennett, and Matt Sherwood—serve as the 2019 Organizing Committee for this prestigious international auditing research conference. Approximately 60 percent of Isenberg’s accounting students go into auditing as a profession, and they are being taught by the nation’s premier thought leaders in the field.

CHRIS AGOGLIA, PHD (UMass Amherst)

Senior Editor of Auditing: A Journal of Practice & Theory Winner of the 2019 American Accounting Association Notable Contributions to the Auditing Literature Award Past editor of Contemporary Accounting Research and Behavioral Research in Accounting

DAVID PIERCEY, PHD (University of Illinois)

Editor of Accounting, Organizations and Society Past editor of Auditing: A Journal of Practice & Theory

GRAHAM GAL, PHD (Michigan State)

ISAR 2019 Boston, MA

UNIVERSITY OF MASSACHUSETTS AMHERST

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June 7-8, 2019

Editor of Journal of Information Systems Past president of the Information Systems Section of the American Accounting Association

BRADLEY BENNETT, PHD (University of Alabama)

Past KPMG Professor in Residence Past American Accounting Association Wildman Award Medal Winner

YOON JU KANG, PHD (University of Illinois)

Winner of the 2019 Best Paper Award from the American Accounting Association’s Auditing Conference

MATT SHERWOOD, PHD (University of Kansas)

ANDREW KITTO, PHD (University of Florida) Assistant Professor Andrew Kitto, who joined Isenberg’s faculty this year from the University of Washington, was selected as one of only three Economic Research Fellows at the Public Company Accounting Oversight Board (PCAOB), the regulatory body that oversees the audits of public companies. The fellowship program is intended to generate high quality, publishable economic research on topics of direct relevance to the group’s mission: protecting investors and promoting the preparation of informative, accurate, and independent audit reports.

LYNDA SCHWARTZ ’86, CPA

Dr. Kitto spent the fall 2018 semester traveling to Washington, D.C., to conduct research for several projects that he proposed to the board related to market structure, competition, and concentration in the U.S. audit market. Among these projects is his dissertation examining the effects of audit firm mergers on audit efficiency and audit market competition.

One of the founding members of and the first female partner in EY’s forensics practice, helping lead it from a practice of only 40 professionals to a global practice with thousands of employees worldwide

While in D.C., Dr. Kitto has the opportunity to engage closely with PCAOB staff and serve as a valuable resource to staff economists. His time there will also give him first-hand experience dealing with the most pressing issues facing the profession so he can bring a more complete perspective into the classroom at Isenberg.

Years of experience with PwC’s analytics group and auditing research expertise

Director of Isenberg’s Forensic Accounting & Analytics Program

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HIRING

FIRMS

OUR STUDENTS

CohnReznick

KPMG

RSM

Deloitte

Grant Thornton

PricewaterhouseCoopers

MSA AND TRANSITIONS PROGRAM TRANSITIONS PROGRAM GROWS Isenberg’s MS in Accounting program continues to expand, currently comprising about 250 students. A growing number of them enter the program via the groundbreaking Accounting Transitions program, which was created to give non-business majors and professionals a path of entry into the school’s MSA program. “We launched the Transitions program in response to the high number of MSA inquiries from individuals with non-accounting backgrounds,” says Jeanne Bagdon, director of professional programs for the department. “A lot of folks are looking to change careers into accounting, and many in the industry value accountants with specialized backgrounds or professional experience in other industries like, for example, health care.” The first Transitions class of 25 students completed the program in the summer of 2017 and became MSA students that fall; in 2018, the size of the Transitions class had more than tripled to 87 students

from all over the country and from a wide variety of backgrounds—their undergraduate majors run the gamut from physics to film to psychology to kinesiology. Students in the program take four fully online courses focusing on financial accounting and reporting, corporate governance and risk attestation, cost management, and taxation.

MS IN ACCOUNTING PROGRAM EARNS TOP 30 RANKINGS Transitions students who complete the coursework in good standing can be exempted from the GMAT exam and receive admission to the MSA program, which continues to earn national rankings within the top 30 from the Public Accounting Report. The rankings, which are based on a national survey of nearly 1,000 accounting professors from 200 U.S. colleges and universities, place Isenberg’s MSA at the very top of programs in New England. It’s number 26 in the nation overall, and number 9 among programs that offer degrees that can be completed entirely online.

WHERE 2018 TRANSITIONS STUDENTS COME FROM

GRADUATE CERTIFICATE IN FORENSIC ACCOUNTING Fraud investigations and regulatory compliance issues are commonplace in modern business and government, and well-educated professional accountants who can handle complex corporate governance questions are in demand. Isenberg’s new Graduate Certificate in Forensic Accounting, starting in the fall 2019 semester, builds on the school’s existing resources, offering a professional credential to students looking for the skills they need to track patterns of financial transactions and identify discrepancies. Completion of the certificate requires four courses: • Data Analytics • Introduction to Forensic Accounting • Fraud Investigation • White Collar Investigation The program’s designers include highly experienced and renowned researchers and practitioners in the field of forensic accounting: Lynda Schwartz ’86, director of the Forensic Accounting and Analytics Program, created Isenberg’s first Introduction to Forensic Accounting course in the spring of 2017. Her passion for the field developed over 26 years working with Ernst & Young, where she helped found the Fraud Investigation & Dispute Services practice in New England. She currently consults with companies on anti-fraud and compliance issues. Eric Forni ’04 is a senior trial attorney for the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission. He teaches White Collar Investigations, a course that focuses on the skills business leaders need to negotiate the current legal and regulatory environment.

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Matt Sherwood, Isenberg assistant professor, earned his PhD in accounting from the University of Kansas in 2016 and teaches Financial Statement Auditing and Data Analysis. Before earning his PhD, Matt worked for PricewaterhouseCoopers as a manager in the Data Assurance Group. All four courses will be offered online as well as in a hybrid format, where some classes take place at the University of Massachusetts Amherst’s Mount Ida Campus in Newton, just eight miles from downtown Boston. A Data Analytics course, for example, that meets at the Mount Ida Campus one Saturday afternoon a month will be a great opportunity for a busy professional in eastern Massachusetts to meet with Isenberg’s stellar accounting faculty in person. All course credits earned toward the Graduate Certificate in Forensic Accounting will transfer toward the Master of Science in Accounting program for students who pursue that degree.

Learn more at isenberg.umass.edu/accounting

AN ISENBERG SPECIALTY

Even before the school began offering specialized courses in forensic accounting, Isenberg turned out professionals who have become leaders in the field: Elisabeth da Silva ‘92, partner, DiCicco, Gulman & Company Tony Jordan ‘96, partner, EY LeeAnn Manning ‘98, managing director, Grant Thornton Peter Resnick ‘93, vice president, Charles River Associates Jeff Sallet ‘93, special agent in charge of the FBI’s Chicago office Robert Temkin ‘62, senior advisor, DiCicco, Gulman & Company

Forensic Accounting Certificate Instructors

Lynda Schwartz Introduction to Forensic Accounting

Eric Forni White Collar Investigations

Matt Sherwood Financial Statement Auditing and Data Analysis

ALUMNI HIGHLIGHTS

A few Class of 2015 donors (left to right) with Professor Sean Wandrei: John Kuselias, Matt Doiron, Frankie Abad, Kelly St.Cyr, Professor Wandrei, Greg Clarkin, and Tyler Virtue

ANNUAL GIFT WITH LOTS OF CLASS “As Isenberg accounting graduates, my classmates and I remember the cost of our education,” remarks Frankie Abad ‘15, a senior auditor with EY. “Just about all of us received some sort of financial assistance as students.” Frankie and a dozen of his classmates have created The Class of 2015 Commemorative Scholarship, an annual award for a “charismatic,” “fun loving,” “personable,” and academically outstanding accounting student. Now in its third year, the scholarship, awarded at the department’s Annual Accounting Banquet in April, has honored two students to date. Last year’s recipient, Kevin Cai ’19, has done exceptional things at Isenberg. A Commonwealth College student with a 4.0 grade point average, Kevin held internships with EY, BNY Mellon, and PwC, which he will join after graduation. At Isenberg, he was a teaching assistant and a senior student administrator with VITA, an annual Isenberg/IRS partnership that offers free tax preparation assistance and advice to individual filers.

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The scholarship’s 2017 awardee, John Mooney ’19, also served the local community as a tax preparer with VITA. A dual accounting and economics major, he excelled last summer as an audit intern with Grant Thornton. And he made his mark with the accounting honor society, Beta Alpha Psi, as a leader on a case study team under the society’s aegis. “Creating the scholarship wasn’t complicated,” emphasizes Frankie, who traces the idea for the gift to conversations at Isenberg alumni gatherings in Boston. Text messages among the classmates followed along with creation of a Facebook group. Next, the ringleaders emailed their classmates with a pitch to participate and a link to an Isenberg giving page. “As recently graduated alumni, we decided that we didn’t have to wait to earn six figures to make a meaningful gift,” Frankie recalls. “We’re also quite proud of our class—we’d like to be recognized as the greatest class of all time!” Apart from that aspiration, Frankie and his classmates have demonstrated their impact as a role model for every graduating class in the Isenberg family.

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Isenberg opened so many doors and opportunities for me.” — DENNIS HANNO ‘90PHD, President of Wheaton College

DENNIS HANNO ’90 PHD, President of Wheaton College

MARY KATE DODGSON ’17 PHD,

Assistant Professor of Accounting at the D’Amore-McKim School of Business at Northeastern University Isenberg PhD graduate Mary Catherine Dodgson received top honors for her dissertation—“Navigating the AuditClient Relationship during Sensitive Events”—in the American Accounting Association’s Accounting, Behavior and Organizations Section at its 2018 Research Conference. “Deciding to get my PhD at the Isenberg School of Management was easily one of the best decisions I have made for my career. The Isenberg Accounting Department is truly one-of-a-kind! I received constant support during the PhD program from my advisors, my fellow PhD student friends, and the rest of the accounting faculty. The Isenberg Accounting Program really sets up graduates for success as faculty members, and I’d recommend the program to anyone considering pursuing behavioral accounting research.”

Dennis Hanno, who has been president of Wheaton College in Norton, Mass., since 2014, learned about more than accounting during his time at Isenberg, where he also served as a faculty member and undergraduate dean during his career. “Isenberg opened so many doors and opportunities for me,” he notes. Dennis’s dissertation was one of Isenberg’s first in the then-nascent field of behavioral accounting. Today, the school is a research powerhouse in that discipline. After graduation, he taught at Boston College as well as Isenberg, where he became undergraduate dean in 1998. In 2006, he moved on to Babson, where he served as undergraduate dean, vice provost, dean of its graduate school, and then provost and vice president.

Why not, asks Dennis, equip Wheaton’s students with realworld entrepreneurial skills that empower their commitment to liberal arts and social change? “Beginning with Isenberg, I’ve done my best to convince business students to pursue a broader education,” Dennis At Wheaton College, Dennis has remarks. “Now I’m connecting elevated social entrepreneurship liberal arts students with business to central status. Many business skills that will help them to further their own goals.” schools, including Isenberg and Babson, have strong entrepreneurship programs.

STUDENT PROFILE FROM AN UNDERGRADUATE NUTRITION DEGREE TO AN MSA How does a skilled professional with a BS degree in nutrition sciences from Cornell wind up as an accountant? Isenberg MSA student Sylvia Wu explains: “After several years as a sales rep with Oracle and a nutritionist with WIC (Women, Infants, and Children), I decided that, for me, nutrition was more an avocation than a vocation. I came to appreciate the management aspects of those jobs— especially teamwork.” Sylvia got the accounting bug from her many friends who were accountants. “I’m not sure I would have considered accounting without their encouragement,” she admits. Sylvia embarked on a search for accounting programs in academe and found that Isenberg’s MS program made the most sense for her. The big difference, she notes, was the school’s accelerated 15-credit Accounting Transitions Program. Targeted exclusively to non-business graduates, Transitions rapidly brings its students up to speed for the MS program itself. “Transitions was entirely online and fast-paced— you might say overwhelming,” observes Sylvia. “It compressed something like fourteen weeks into six. Fortunately, the faculty and my fellow students were outstanding.” She adds that she appreciated diving into accounting with other students who lacked business training—their backgrounds included biology and criminal justice. “My favorite Transitions courses were personal taxation and financial reporting, the second taught by Bill Brown—Isenberg’s current undergraduate dean— who was fantastic.” The curriculum also included a team project involving an audit. “It exceeded my expectations. Everyone on my team pulled their weight and worked together,” she emphasizes.

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SYLVIA WU ’19 MSA “The Transitions program set me up to succeed in the more evenly paced MS program,” Sylvia continues. Largely onsite at Isenberg, the program offers students a mix of career services and coursework. “It was a balancing act,” she says, “because the career services piece involved lots of networking, job interviews, and presentations by public accounting firms.” Sylvia adds that Jeanne Bagdon, director of Isenberg’s Professional Programs in Accounting, made a huge difference, encouraging her and keeping her on track.

SUCCESS AS A GRAD STUDENT AND BEYOND For Sylvia, that tenaciousness paid off when after a semester in the program, she secured a challenging winter internship with PwC. “After a week of training in auditing with the firm’s software system, I joined an audit team,” she recalls. “That’s where I did most of my learning.” And a huge learning curve it was, she emphasizes: “It was an apprenticeship environment where you learn both from others and by teaching others yourself. I loved it.” The affection proved mutual: In October, Sylvia will join the firm full-time as an auditor. MSA coursework at Isenberg also played a critical role in Sylvia’s successful internship. Two favorite classes, she notes, were Sean Wandrei’s course in taxation and an online course in data analytics. The latter, she observes, examined many topics, including “the impact of machine learning and other technologies that will streamline and improve operations.” In the months between graduating from Isenberg and the start of her new role, Sylvia will focus on the inevitable CPA exams—one more stop en route to a successful career. “Isenberg,” she says, brought me to this point. And it is bound to bring me farther.”

Sylvia Wu â&#x20AC;&#x2DC;19 MSA 17

COMMUNITY

C.A.M.P. students visit Fenway Park

FOCUS ON INCLUSIVENESS In January, Isenberg upped its commitment to diversity by appointing Sport Management Professor Nefertiti Walker as the first Associate Dean for an Inclusive Organization. According to Walker, accounting firms will play a major role in her work: Executives from PwC are leading on-campus workshops revealing unconscious cultural biases in the workplace and next fall, EY will collaborate with the school to offer a daylong conference devoted to inclusive leadership—an effort spearheaded by Isenberg accounting lecturer Cathy Lowry. Those new undertakings build on a proud history of diversity, inclusion, and community initiatives by Isenberg and its Department of Accounting. For example, C.A.M.P.—the Careers in Accounting and

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Management Professions program—is the department’s July program for Massachusetts high schoolers from predominantly underrepresented backgrounds. Now in its 20th year, the program offers business-focused talks, workshops, skill-building activities, and field trips. The idea behind the successful initiative, notes Isenberg Assistant Dean of Undergraduate Programs Melvin Rodriguez, is to motivate minority students to pursue collegiate majors, and ultimately careers, in accounting and other business areas. “For the students, C.A.M.P. is an information accelerator, exposing them first-hand to Isenberg and a wealth of career-focused insights and information,” he emphasizes. During this year’s expenses-paid weeklong retreat, Isenberg faculty members introduced the 28 students to accounting and its sub-disciplines of auditing, managerial accounting, tax, and forensics. The curriculum also introduced the students to marketing, operations management, and other Isenberg majors

and career opportunities. And they got inside advice on academics and campus life from Isenberg students, who acted as counselors.

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One of the things that I love about Isenberg is the commitment to diversity and inclusion. So, as a successful underrepresented minority in the accounting profession, I want to be the example to these children, so they can understand that they have the same opportunity to get to where I am.” — TONY JORDAN ’95, EY Partner, volunteers for Isenberg’s C.A.M.P. program

C.A.M.P., notes Rodriguez, is also a bonding experience. The students lived together in UMass Amherst’s Commonwealth Honors College dorms and ate together in the university’s award-winning dining commons. They participated in a movie night, an ice cream social, and other recreations. And they spent a day in Boston, visiting EY, Fenway Park, and the Massachusetts Society of Certified Public Accountants.

C.A.M.P. receives generous support from the Massachusetts Society of Certified Public Accountants, Susan and Richard Gulman ’79, Scott ’92 and Melissa Kaplowitch, and Margery ’84 and Mark Piercey. The Big Four Accounting Firms also provide support with contributions, and gifts for the students.

STUDENTS PREPARE TAXES FOR COMMUNITY MEMBERS Isenberg’s Volunteer Income Tax Assistance (VITA) program helps low-income people complete their tax returns for free. From early February through early April, accounting students gather three nights each week to spend a couple of hours working with community members. Every year, the school has one of the five largest VITA programs in the nation, and in 2018, Isenberg won recognition from the Internal Revenue Service for the large number of volunteers involved and hours they worked, and for the number of returns they prepared.

VITA 2018 by the Numbers

110 3 3,429 Number of students who volunteered

Number of faculty who volunteered

Number of hours logged by volunteers

1,679 $1.45 Number of tax returns prepared by volunteers

million

Total amount refunded to clients based on returns prepared by volunteers

Accounting Department | 121 Presidents Drive Amherst, MA 01003

News, notes, and inspiring examples of Isenberg students and alumni driven to reshape the world through accounting.

WE DRIVE THE DRIVEN. Â®

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