It was great to see so many of you at the Seventh Auditing Midyear Conference where we celebrated the 25th anniversary of the Auditing Section. For those of you who could not be there, what a conference it was! Friday evening we had a gala dinner/dance. Between the dinner and the dancing was a program where all of our past presidents were honored. Twenty of the twenty-four past presidents were present. Karen Pincus (our current past-president) served as Master of Ceremony and reviewed each president’s term by highlighting accomplishments and by relating a few funny stories. A special tribute was given to Fred Neumann, our first president. Fred received a hand-drawn self-portrait with an inscription thanking him for being our “lead-off” president. The evening was topped off with a champagne toast and dancing. It was a wonderful event, planned and orchestrated by Linda McDaniel (The University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill), Midyear Conference Program Chair.

In addition to the 25th anniversary celebration, the Midyear Conference had its usual outstanding program of papers, panels, and plenary sessions. The Friday morning plenary session featured Rick Causey, Executive Vice President and Chief Accounting Officer for Enron Corporation. Rick spoke of the major changes in Enron over the past several decades. The audience was treated to a fascinating discussion of how Enron has decentralized its organizational structure and employed technology to keep up with the fast pace of change in the energy business. In the Friday afternoon plenary session, Robert Elliott of KPMG gave a thought-provoking and fast-paced presentation on “21st Century Assurance.” For those of you who missed his presentation, Bob’s slides are available on the Auditing Section’s web page.

The program included 47 papers covering a broad range of research, education, and practice issues. There were also five panel sessions. I heard many people say that the panel session on “Independence and Non-Audit Services” was one of the best panel sessions they had attended at any conference. Other panel sessions covered the 150-hour rule, International Accounting and Auditing Standards, and Internal Auditing Standards. The program attracted a record number of attendees (over 270).

The day before the Midyear Meeting, Rick Tubbs (The University of Iowa) led the second annual doctoral consortium. Over 40 doctoral students attended the all-day consortium where they were treated to research presentations and an editors’ panel. It was another great success. Dan Simunic will chair next year’s consortium, so be sure to encourage your doctoral students to attend.

The section owes a great deal of thanks for the outstanding job that Linda McDaniel and her planning committee did in organizing such a terrific conference! I always wonder how next year’s conference can top the previous one, but somehow it always does. So don’t miss next year’s Midyear Conference, which will be held January 2002 in Orlando. Next year’s Program Chair, Jeff Cohen (Boston College) already has a number of interesting ideas for the conference in his plans.

One of the most important things we do at the Midyear Conference is to present awards. This year we gave our four annual awards and two special awards. While, you can read about each of these awards elsewhere in the newsletter, I want to briefly mention the two special awards. On the occasion of our 25th anniversary, the Executive Committee and the Program Planning Committee reviewed the history of our section and decided that two special recognition awards were warranted. At the Friday luncheon, we gave a “Lifetime Achievement” award to Robert Elliott. Bill Kinney gave a summary of Bob’s achievements and the section presented Bob with a hand-drawn self-portrait. At the opening plenary session, the Section gave Bernard Milano and the KPMG Foundation an Award of Merit. With Bernie’s leadership the KPMG Foundation has provided significant support of the auditing education and research. Please look for more details of these announcements in this newsletter.

When I assumed the presidency of the Section, I indicated that one of my priorities would be to survey auditing/assurance services courses to find out what changes are taking place in our courses. The task of conducting this survey was given to the Education Committee chaired by Eric Johnson (University of Indianapolis). The committee has completed a survey of over 300 syllabi. The preliminary results have been compiled in a paper that was presented at the Midyear Meeting Forum. We are looking forward to seeing the final results soon.

Another priority for my presidency was to evaluate the Section’s committee structure. During the fall semester, I surveyed current and past committee chairpersons and at the Executive Committee meeting in Houston we made some needed changes to our committees. First, we decided to streamline and strengthen the Regional Chair position and the Membership Committee. We will be combining the two committees into one that will be called the Membership and Regional Chairs Committee. There will be an overall chairperson and a chairperson for each region. The committee will have specific responsibilities for proposing auditing paper and/or panel sessions at each regional meeting. In addition the committee will be responsible for developing membership-enhancing activities at the national level as well as the regional level. Second, many responses to my survey indicated that committees were becoming too large. Thus, we established a maximum committee size of 7, unless there is a good reason to have a larger committee. A number of other minor changes were also made. We believe that these changes will strengthen our committee structure.

The planning for auditing sessions at the AAA Annual Meeting in Atlanta is underway. Robin Roberts (University of Central Florida) has received a large number of papers and several proposals for panel sessions. In addition, I am currently finalizing an agreement with an important executive from a major corporation in Atlanta to serve as the speaker for the Auditing Section luncheon at the Annual Meeting. This person will talk about technology and how it is affecting the company and its internal and external auditors. I hope to see you at the luncheon in Atlanta.

Congratulations to the new officers who were elected at the Business Meeting in Houston. Joe Carcello (University of Tennessee) will be our new Vice President–Academic and Rick Tubbs (The University of Iowa) will be our new Treasurer. They will begin serving their terms of office in August 2001.

Let me close by thanking all of you who are doing a great job on the Section’s committees. I would also like to give a special thanks to the other members of the Executive Committee (Abe Akresh, Mike Bamber, Mark Beasley, Audrey Gramling, and Karen Pincus) who have worked so hard on the Section’s business. The Section is fortunate to have such a dedicated and talented group of people.

Thank you again for giving me the privilege of serving as President of the Auditing Section and please contact me if you have any questions or comments about the Auditing Section.

Stanley F. Biggs
President, Auditing Section