The best way to stay current in the business world is to join it.
Why a Residency?
What can a university professor with years of teaching and private-sector experience learn by returning to a Big Four firm like KPMG? Quite a bit, according to the professors who have already participated in KPMG’s Professor Residency program.
KPMG established the Professor Residency program to strengthen ties with the academic community at schools where it recruits. Another principal goal of the program is to give professors the opportunity to polish their technical skills, gain up-to-date industry experience, and increase their understanding of workplace and marketplace demands their students will face after graduation.
KPMG piloted its Professor Residency program in the spring of 2006, when Shelley Rhoades-Catanach, an associate professor of accountancy at Villanova University, joined the Federal Tax practice in Chicago for a four-month residency. Professor Rhoades-Catanach gave the KPMG program high grades, calling her residency “a great learning experience” and “once-in-a-lifetime opportunity.” KPMG has since expanded the program, based on this and other positive feedback.
Four tax professors have participated in the program to date. Robert Scharlach, professor of clinical accounting at the University of Southern California’s (USC’s) Leventhal School of Accounting, joined the Tax practice as a professor in residence in October 2006. His residency was originally scheduled to end on January 2, but he said he was “having such a good time,” that he extended his time with the firm to early March.
A True Learning Experience
The most recent professors have good things to say about the program and their experiences as well. Ralph Burnett Tower, Jr., Professor of Taxation at Wake Forest University’s Calloway School of Business & Accounting, and Jean Wells, Assistant Professor of Accounting at Howard University’s School of Business, completed their residencies with KPMG’s Tax practice in the summer and fall of 2007, respectively. They came to KPMG with a keen desire to learn and they were not disappointed.
Professor Tower, who worked out of the firm’s Charlotte office, was impressed by training opportunities at the firm, and he took full advantage of them. He attended the State and Local Tax practice’s week-long Bootcamp training July 16-20 in Chicago, for instance, in addition to Web-based courses on FAS 109, FIN 48, and many other relevant matters. He also tapped into the firm’s knowledge management resources. “KPMG has a wealth of information I can use in my research, and it’s so easy to access here.”
Professor Tower says his assignments during his residency helped deepen his understanding of the international tax and tax controversy arenas. He worked closely with International Tax Managing Director Marc Swanson on corporate reorganization and restructuring projects related to M&A activity and with Federal Tax Senior Manager Monica Swanson on IRS audit defense projects.
For Professor Wells, residency with the firm’s Washington National Tax practice enabled her to delve more deeply into various tax policy issues, including the energy bill tax provisions, the constraints of the pay-go conundrum, and various alternative minimum tax proposals floating around the House and Senate. “It’s good to be in a national tax office at a Big Four firm and be on the cutting edge of what’s happening in tax,” she says.
This was familiar territory for Professor Wells. Before entering academe three years ago, she had spent a few years as a tax manager in the Washington National Tax Policy Services group at another Big Four firm. She put what she learned at KPMG to good use to enhance her academic research and publishing credentials.
Professor Wells also had a chance to see the new tax simulation based on the fictional client “Project Vlog, Inc.”, while attending the firm’s week-long intensive Tax Fundamentals training for new tax hires. “I was very impressed with the high-quality, interactive tax training software that simulated the real world tax preparation process from the preseason planning all the way through the finalization of the tax return,” she says.
Applying the Lessons Learned
The past professors in residence are thinking about how their experience at KPMG might benefit their students. They are eager to apply in the classroom what they’ve gleaned at the firm.
In talking with KPMG Tax professionals, and from what he’s seen, Professor Tower was surprised by the technical demands of the job. “The level of technical knowledge required is much deeper than I had expected,” he said. And he thinks many of his colleagues in academia would be equally as surprised.
He was also pleasantly surprised by the workplace environment. “KPMG is a good place to work, and that’s not just a slogan,” he says, noting that much more attention is placed on work-life balance and career development than when he was in public accounting as a tax professional in the late 1960s and early ’70s. “The firm seems to really value its people,” he said, joking that the partner in charge he worked under back then must have been in Patton’s Third Army.
When Professor Tower headed back to Wake Forest in September he planned to make a few course adjustments. He wanted to “stretch” his students a bit further and give them a more solid technical foundation to prepare them for what’s ahead, he said. In addition, he’d like to invite more professionals to the classroom as guest lecturers to give his students a better grounding in real-world tax practice. He’s also thinking about restructuring his lesson plans, perhaps allowing more time for students to discuss key points in his lecture toward the end of the class, not unlike the approach KPMG takes in some of its training.
Professor Wells hopes to move forward her idea for developing a master’s of business administration program with a tax concentration at Howard University. In late July, she discussed the concept with KPMG Tax principal Michelle Andre.
Her idea is to develop the tax part of the curriculum in conjunction with a firm such as KPMG. “Some academicians teaching tax don’t have real-world experience, so they often develop curriculum in the abstract,” Professor Wells says. “But curriculum should be guided by what’s happening in the marketplace.” For these and other reasons, she notes, it would be helpful to have professionals working in the field help design curriculum.
The KPMG Professor Residency program and other similar initiatives can play an important role in helping to educate tomorrow’s tax professionals.
Learning the Ropes
Professor Amy Dunbar has joined KPMG as our newest Tax Professor in Residence. An Associate Professor of Accountancy at the University of Connecticut at Storrs, Amy is working closely with the Federal Tax Financial Services practice in New York City during her four-month residency, which started in early January 2008. She is focusing primarily on supporting engagement teams that are serving large financial institutions.
Interested?
For more information, or to apply to the KPMG Professor Residency Program, please contact Malana Konkle, Campus Recruiting, at 312.665.4478 or mkonkle@kpmg.com.
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