| Awards Presented at the
2003 Midyear Auditing Conference 2003 Outstanding Auditing Educator
Award
The Outstanding Auditing Educator Award Selection Committee included Bill Felix (who received the award in 1989), Nick Dopuch (the year 2000 recipient), Barry Cushing (last year’s recipient), and Mike Bamber (Section Past President). When I think of the accomplishments and contributions of this year’s Outstanding Auditing Educator Award recipient, I wonder where to begin. I am not going to dwell on his research record. His first publication was in the Journal of Accounting Research (1969), which was shortly followed by his 1972 paper that was published in The Accounting Review and won the AAA Competitive Manuscript Contest. He has over 100 publications, many of which are at the forefront of auditing research. Nor am I going to dwell on how our Outstanding Auditing Educator has served as a great ambassador for audit research and the Auditing Section. He has held honorary and visiting positions at numerous universities in Europe, Asia, and Australia, always spreading the word and encouraging auditing research. What I would like to recognize are two achievements that affected me personally and I know many others. As a Ph.D. student some years ago, I stayed up one night reading the draft of an AICPA monograph that had me transfixed by its findings on auditor consensus and its implication for auditing research. Our Award recipient conducted this research as the first KPMG audit research fellow. The monograph, Internal Accounting Control Evaluation and Auditor Judgment, coauthored with Jerry Turner, subsequently won the AAA’s Wildman Award. The second accomplishment I have to recognize is that our Award recipient founded in 1983 the annual USC Audit Judgment Symposium. To put this in perspective, this was long before our Midyear Conference. This was not the only auditing conference created about this time, but the others were by invitation. If you could pay your way to California, you could attend the USC Symposium and, reflecting your host, what you found was a conference characterized by a constructive and positive atmosphere. To push the boundaries of our young discipline, researchers from other disciplines often served as panelists and discussants. Finally, I should add that this year’s Outstanding Auditing Educator Award recipient’s service to our Section includes serving as President, Editor of Auditing: A Journal of Practice & Theory and, at one time or another, serving as chair or a member of just about every one of the Section’s committees. On behalf of the Selection Committee, the Executive Committee, and all our membership, I want to congratulate Ted Mock, Arthur Andersen Professor of Accounting at the University of Southern California, on his selection as the 2003 Outstanding Auditing Educator. 2003 Distinguished Service in Auditing
Award
The 2003 Distinguished Service in Auditing Award was presented to Professor Zoe-Vonna Palmrose. This award recognizes exemplary service to the auditing profession or the Auditing Section and scholarly contributions to the field of auditing. Criteria for the award are outstanding career achievements over a 20–25-year period that have a lasting and significant impact on the field of auditing, as evidenced by service to the auditing profession, or the Section, or by significant contributions in scholarship. Professor Palmrose has excelled in all three areas. Professor Palmrose has provided significant service to the auditing profession in numerous ways, five of which are particularly noteworthy. First, Professor Palmrose was the only accounting academic who was a member of the Public Oversight Board Panel on Audit Effectiveness, which was formed in response to concerns by former SEC Chairman Arthur Levitt over earnings management and the quality of financial reporting. Second, she served on the Auditing Standards Board Task Force, which developed SAS No.99, Consideration of Fraud in a Financial Statement Audit. Third, Professor Palmrose served as a research consultant to the National Commission on Fraudulent Financial Reporting (The Treadway Commission). Fourth, she built a database of litigation against auditors and other parties between 1960 and 1995 that she shared with others through the AAA publication of Studies in Accounting Research #33: Empirical Research on Auditor Litigation: Considerations and Data. Finally, Professor Palmrose (with Susan Scholz) has built a database on financial restatements from 1997–2002, which has been helpful to both the General Accounting Office in their study on restatements and the Financial Accounting Standards Board in their revenue recognition project. Professor Palmrose has made numerous contributions to the Auditing Section. She has served the Section as Secretary-Treasurer, chair of the Research Committee, chair of the selection committee for the Outstanding Auditing Dissertation Award, member of the Auditing Standards Committee, speaker at the Auditing Section Doctoral Consortium, and in a number of other ways. Professor Palmrose also currently serves as the AAA’s Vice President–Research. Professor Palmrose has made significant contributions to scholarship. Her research on auditor litigation has been widely cited, and it has been published in The Accounting Review, Journal of Accounting Research, Auditing: A Journal of Practice & Theory, and the Journal of Accounting and Public Policy, among numerous others. Her research has been funded by grants from the AAA’s Independence Research Grant Program, the Accountants’ Coalition, the KPMG Peat Marwick Foundation, and the Coopers & Lybrand Foundation. Professor Palmrose received the AAA’s Competitive Manuscript Award for her 1988 paper in The Accounting Review, “An Analysis of Auditor Litigation and Audit Service Quality.” The members of this year’s selection committee were: Joe Carcello (President, Chair), Dan Guy, Bill Kinney, David Landsittel, and Jerry Sullivan. 2003 Innovation in Auditing and Assurance
Education Award
In 2002, the Section’s Executive Committee created this new award as part of the Committee’s efforts to encourage innovation and improvement in auditing and assurance education. The criteria used to judge submissions include innovation, educational benefits, and adaptability by other educational institutions. Nominations may include, for example, a set of teaching materials, a creative instructional strategy, or an insightful teaching approach to a particular topic. Since this is the first award given, the 2001–2002 Executive Committee served as the award’s selection committee. It is my pleasure to announce and present our first Award. The award winners are Jay Thibodeau and his coauthors, Ulric Gelinas and Elliott Levy, for “Norwood Office Supplies, Inc.: A Teaching Case to Integrate Computer Assisted Auditing Techniques into the Auditing Course.” I know that some of you have already used these instructional materials. The case is described in articles in The Auditor’s Report (Fall 2001) and Issues in Accounting Education (November 2001). The case is also supported by its own website, http://ecampus.bentley.edu/dept/ac/norwood. 2003 Notable Contributions to the Auditing
Literature Award
The 2003 Notable Contributions to the Auditing Literature Award was presented to Tim Bell and Arnie Wright for the monograph they edited, Auditing Practice, Research, and Education: A Productive Collaboration, published in 1996. The criteria notes that the award is “to recognize research works of exceptional merit that make a significant contribution to auditing or assurance education, practice or research.” Tim and Arnie’s monograph has made significant contributions on all three dimensions. They led a team of over 20 well-known researchers and practitioners to provide an extensive analysis of the collaboration of auditing research and practice. The monograph has proven to be extremely useful to researchers by providing a comprehensive background of the development of research and practice interactions. It has also been informative to educators, particularly those leading doctoral seminars, by demonstrating the often puzzling linkages between research and practice. It also has helped research influence practice by documenting the role of research to practitioners, including standards setters, and by summarizing complex research results in a concise, collective manner. The 2003 Notable Contributions Award Selection Committee was composed of Mark S. Beasley (Chair), Jagan Krishnan, Jordan Lowe, and Linda McDaniel. 2003 Outstanding Dissertation Award
The 2003 Outstanding Auditing Dissertation Award was presented to Dr. Kin-Yew Low of Nanyang Technological University, and the Chair of the Outstanding Dissertation Committee Award was presented to Professor Ira Solomon of the University of Illinois at Urbana–Champaign. The Auditing Section began presenting the award in 1988. Initially the award was presented only to the author, but since 1996 the Section also presents an award to the Chair of the dissertation committee. Dr. Low’s dissertation is entitled “Coping with Identified Budgetary Time Constraints: Auditors’ Industry Specialization and Risk Assessments.” Several high-quality dissertations were nominated for the 2003 award and the recipient was selected by a committee consisting of Rachel Schwartz (Chair), Jim Bierstaker, and Chris Hogan. The criteria for the award are the timeliness and importance of the problem(s) addressed, the creativity of the research, the development of an appropriate theoretical framework, the appropriateness of the research method and analysis, the potential for publication in a scholarly journal, and the potential for the results to have an impact on the practice of auditing. The Section solicits nominations from the membership by July 1 of each year and presents the award at the following Midyear Meeting. |
